Unit economics
Effective hourly rate: the only freelance metric that matters
Your headline rate is a vanity number. Your effective hourly rate, total income divided by every hour the business consumed, billable or not, is what you actually earn. For most freelancers it lands 35–55% below the rate on their invoice once you count admin, sales, and unbilled rework. This piece shows how to compute it, why it's always lower than you think, and the three moves that raise it without raising your rate.
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