A full breakdown of the $10k job I didn’t land... and why I’m glad I didn’t

A month or so back I had a client request that landed in my inbox that was IDEAL for me.

AAAAND if this sounds familiar, you might remember I wrote about it in an email titled "I call it a F*ck around fee"​

Well, Reader, I've got a juicy lil update for you.

But before I do, let's revisit the specifics, because I know if I were the one reading this email, I'd be curious about the deliverables, the expectations and the dollar figures we're making a fuss about. We all love a sticky beak, let's be fair.

So we get the timeline right, the quote request email landed in my inbox around midday on the 2nd of September, and I replied within an hour. I wanted this job, so time was of the essence!

The client wanted the following:

10x illustrations to be overlaid on existing photography, with three of these to be provided within 5 days of their request (literally had due Sunday the 8th September on the brief) and the rest within 2 weeks. These were to be all illustrated in a consistent design, using the brand colours and with the ability to be swapped from image to image and used for things like headers, promo images etc.

I had budgeted 1-2 hours per illustration, and my hourly rate is $200/hr. I generally like to make sure I capture the illustration time as an average because while I will get faster when it's a series, I know from experience that rounds of changes can eat up time like a hungry hungry caterpillar.

Next, they wanted a vector shape of Brisbane to reflect the river from Milton to Hamilton suburbs. The aim was for the vector to be used as a background asset for the website and other branded collateral. I think I factored in maybe 30mins for that one.

Then we had 20 icons to be developed to represent the services and benefits of the business itself. These were to be in a sketchy style and within my email response to the brief, I made sure to ask about the versatility needs like reversed linework or variations like white on colour and full colour. I know in the past this gets overlooked so I figured address it early.

I budgeted $100 for each, knowing that this would cover me if they came back requesting variations, I'd be covered. The icons they wanted by the 11th of September, so 2 days after the first few deliverables.

There was then a request for 10x location icons for a collection of landmarks that were recognisable to the location. Landmarks that they wanted were listed in the brief and would require a little research to familiarise myself with them. They then also wanted a repeating pattern of all the 10 icons so they could use it if the need arose.

For that, I budgeted $100 for each again, with $500 for the pattern.

And finally, they wanted a Facebook header (of course they did). No idea about the specifics of that, they forgot to add it in the brief pages. This, as well as the location icons and pattern, all had a due date of Sunday the 15th of September, also known as my birthday and the weekend. Whatever, an hour should do for that, so $200.

Reminder: I purposely increased the price of the majority of these items, simply because the deadline was super short and, as I said in that f*ck around fee email, if I was going to stress myself out on this, I was going to make it worth it.

The process above is literally how I jotted it all down in my lil quote-book, a notebook that I use to keep track of gut responses to quotes so I have something to refer back to. This helps me refocus when emotion creeps in when I quote.

When I totalled this all up, it came to $10k. Yeah, $10k can be a lot, but this was going to be a LOT of work in not a lot of time.

I'd need to do hours and hours of work to complete this job, I was qualified, hell I even attached the EXACT style they were looking for in my previous work.

Here's the literal copy-pasta of the pricing part of the email response:

"I often like to ask what sort of budget we are working with here for these illustrations so I can play in the right ballpark. A quick scan of all the deliverables and information puts this at a $9-11k approx estimate without delving too deep into details. I wouldn't see it going much higher unless I've read it completely incorrectly. Is this accurate to what you're looking for? Let me know and we can work something out."

I then followed up on the 4th with an "I'm excited to get started". Nothing.

Then again on the 11th with a "So most of the deadlines have passed". Nada

And finally on the 17th with a "I haven’t heard back from you so I’m going to assume you’ve gone in a different direction or your priorities have changed."

But here's the juicy update.

She replied last night, a full month and six days since she requested that quote, with the not-so-surprising reply of "you're too expensive". In fact, I was told the ballpark I gave was their client's entire yearly marketing budget.

They even used all the buzzwords in their response, telling me that they work with start-ups and small businesses with even smaller budgets and that they instead have decided to go with an up-and-coming designer to get what they needed. None of which was communicated, and truthfully I don't think I would have quoted less if I had known.

They also wanted it all done for $1,000. That's it, not that they provided the budget first place.

At a conservative estimate, this job would have had a time cost of 40 hours minimum, but a full cost would be closer to 50-60 hours to do my best work, which is what I am hired for. This would mean that if I had said yes to this at their budget, I'd be making $25/hr, but effectively half that when you factor in everything that it takes to run a business like mine.

Because remember, your calculated rate needs to cover the cost of running your business AND make you money.

AND that's if everything was done as fast as humanly possible, no rounds of changes and no scope creep. And we both know there would have been scope creep.

That doesn't even factor in everything else I had on my plate at the time, and looking back, that was a freaking busy fortnight.

Put simply...

I quite literally could not afford to do this for less, because it wouldn't be worth it for me.

Past Jaz would have really taken this all to heart, read the email and seen it as a comment on her worth and capabilities. She would have dove back into grovel mode, because any work is worthy work, and then beat herself up about having the audacity to even think she could charge $10k.

But current Jaz is glad she didn't have the opportunity to say yes in the first place (and a little smug that she can now use it as content)

What this all boils down to is the client had really unrealistic expectations and poor communication skills even before we would have started working together.

Which isn't the type of client I want anyway...