I've been in business for 4 years now consulting and developing workflow automations for SMBs. I always charged by the hour. I went on vacation for a couple of weeks and obviously that month was terrible because I didn't bill. I had a good structure after that: * Pay-as-you-go: Very expensive hourly rate billed at the end of the week on Fridays * Pre-pay for a chunk of hours now: 5% discount, anything over 20 hours you get 10% discount, anything over 30 hours 15% discount, and anything over 50 hours I am open for negotiations For 4 years that was quite profitable and did well since it incentivizes the client to stick with me by pre-paying for their hours. But then I faced a new problem. People who bought 50+ hours were shocked when I tell them that I used their hours. When I send them a breakdown of where every minute went, they would argue "oh this is a bug! Why would we pay for that?" etc. Also, some people prepaid for a lot of hours, we use some now. Then months later they come back for the rest of their hours when I am at capacity. I also really hate tracking my hours! The problem with value-based billing is that my customer base doesn't really stick to a scope. A lot of what I do is "figure it out as you go" sort of work. Almost like a support package. I tried a monthly retainer, but it was super hard to sell or justify. Also no clue how to extract value from a lot of the projects that my customers ask for. How would you recommend to move away from hourly billing into a more predictable income? Here is an idea that I have that I think would make sense: 1. Price the project based on value or effort - so give the customer a big number and say "this is how much it'll cost regardless of hours" - for example $10,000 2. If they pay it in full right this second, I'll give it to them for $8,000 3. If they want to pay in terms or milestones (10% deposit, 30% on first milestone, etc) then it's the regular $10,000 4. They can choose to pay a small amount monthly up until the project is paid, but this would have 5% risk price. So they can pay $1,000 every month for 10 months, but on the 10th month they have to pay $1,500 Thoughts?