Client asking me to charge per image on Hourly-Job system

[romanso182]

Hi friends! I searched for this question, but didn't find any answer, sorry if there is something somewhere.

A client wants to hire my services for long term. But instead of paying for hours, he wants to pay by each piece USING the HOURLY-JOB system. So for example, instead of paying me to create 30 small images in 3 hours, and pay for 3 hours(which I calculated as a estimate for my time doing 30 images). He wants to pay me a specif value for each piece(for example $0.60). So I need to calculate and Input manually as Worked Time in Hourly system. The values doing by each piece or by hour are very close, maybe I lose 2 to 4 dollars in total, but I guess that's ok for now.

I don't know if I'm being naive, but I think he want this way because, every week the numbers are different, so in a week I create 20 images, in another 35, and it goes on changing. So he doesn't need to keep creating Job Postings or Milestones. I just calculate the total value of the pieces done, and translate it in hours that I input into the Hourly system, so it goes in a more autonomous way.

My question is, is that against any Terms of Services charging him like this? It ok to do so? Can I suggest him a better way? He also wants me to sign some agreements, so I being extreme careful, I just want do everything right on UpWork.

[mtngigi]

There is no payment protection if you use manual hours. This doesn't sound like a very good deal for you. I would tell the client this only makes sense working flat rate.

Freelancers can add milestones, so he doesn't need to do anything except fund them. He can also fund one milestone and upon completion of that milestone, he can release an agreed-upon amount ... then the balance automatically moves to the next milestone. Nor does he need to keep creating new job postings.  Settle on a per piece price, settle on the number of pieces per milestone, and that's the amount he releases.

If he's not willing to consider those options, I would just say thanks, but no thanks.

[JoanneP]

Hi Rodrigo,

In addition to Virginia's advice, please check out this help article about Fixed-price contracts for more information. Thank you.