My wife was offered a freelance gfx design opportunity to create a growler label for a local brewing company. They have asked for a quote as opposed to offering a flat amount. How do you guys determine pricing? Estimate how many hours the job will take and multiply by a standard hourly rate ($15/ hr?) ? Or do you just look at a project and say, I will charge $XYZ for the label, regardless of how long it takes? She is historically bad at pricing freelance work (underestimates time it takes her to complete the work), and I'm not familiar with how this shit works either. Thanks.

well imo that depends on your business model

I use to do work airbrushing and stuff, depending on the situation i would charge upfront amounts if i knew what it would take.
and on other situations especially when clients wanted some say in the work i would charge hourly.

So imo
If she is given creative freedom and a deadline i would charge a flat ammount.
IF the client wants to be included into the design process than there should be a flat sum and then an hourly rate after x amount of hours OR hourly rate for any work at all.

thats how i did things

15$/hr? If it's for commercial use she could charge thousands, easily. If you want it done for pennies, maybe try the Graphics Request subforum here.

I don't charge anything less than $40/hr for anyone, and that's not even expensive. I think the rate looks expensive to consumers, so it's in her best interest to do her best to estimate her time and charge a flat rate. Envision a traditional 8 hour day and assume you worked every single minute of those 8 hours and think about what you usually end up with..that's $360. That's if you're including the brainstorming/research time where she's trying to get inspiration. I usually tone down my price for this time, although it's technically part of the process. Now, obviously most package design doesn't get done in a day, so ask her to think about how many days it would take to create the finished product, including revisions. If she worked a traditional mon-fri for 8 hours a day, then that's $1800. If she wanted a cleaner, less scary number, then she could go with $1500. It's funny how $1500 looks less scary than telling someone you charge $40/hr.

For tax purposes she's probably going to need to make a proper invoice, so she might want to plan out what that would look like as well.

True

You have to factor in the fact that some people may want you to make endless changes and revisions. I read An article about a graphic designer that spent 6 months designing a logo for a bank after having charged a flat rate

Another thing you can do is charge a flat rate for the logo work itself, like say that you charge $750 for a logo which includes 1 round of drafts with comments and choosing a design, round 2 with refining and coloring the design, and round three the final design

And then on the invoice /agreement say that any further changes are $## an hour