Freelance work pricing

They taught an awful lot in my "Interactive Media" course, but they did not cover how to charge and quote people for freelance work very well. It kind of keeps me from going out and looking for work because I have no idea if I should charge by the page, the project, or by time. I am just finishing up a website now for a friend. My actual first paid website making job. I decided to charge by the hour and just came up with an estimate of how long it would take to finish the project. My estimate turned out to be off by about 5 hours, so I don't know. For my own reference, here is an approximate breakdown of time HTML/CSS site with some jQuery 1:30 to modify existing template to match new design 1:30 to add home content, and tweak things, make funtional 1:00 to add 6 basic pages 6ish to get those pages looking right, and fiddling with style to get everything looking perfect Joomla install & Basic Free Store (using simple caddy) 3:00 to install Joomla and modify existing template to resemble look of website 3:30 to find correct extensions, perfect template styles, and create working store framework In addition to these times there was probably another 1 to 2 hours of miscalanious time I did not record and 2 to 3 hours of talking over, emailing, and teaching to client. So the final time varied between 16 and 22 hours. A bit more than my original 12 to 14 hour estimate. I'll have to reflect back on this at some point in the future to help me figure out how to quote and charge for any new projects.