I think it depends on the circumstances what you should do. Such as whether the client has a real budget. Honestly for me it is relatively trivial to find clients with shoestring budgets versus adequate ones.
But ideally you set things up ahead of time by finding a client with a decent sized budget and then charging by the week. The billing increment is one week.
Then just make sure to have regular delivery or discussions as often as possible with the client. They should see the deliverables progressing, even if it's just the architectural details being worked out at first. They should be judging based on useful things obviously happening and being explained or being able to use the next version rather than just looking at hours to try to guess whether they are getting a good deal or something.
For me, we will see how it goes. Right now I have a weekly billing client who I am a bit worried I will have to replace because things in this niche are so dead right now. But there were a few other projects I may be able to pick up. I am definitely going to try to find one that can afford a week or two though because realistically all of the projects have gone on for more than two weeks so far, generally speaking more like 2-8 weeks each.
When it's going to almost certainly take a month to complete a project, trying to get out of an extra hour every day or something is a questionable strategy because it's a significant investment anyway, and the biggest risk really is most projects just not delivering usable software at all, which means all of that money gets wasted.
But ideally you set things up ahead of time by finding a client with a decent sized budget and then charging by the week. The billing increment is one week.
Then just make sure to have regular delivery or discussions as often as possible with the client. They should see the deliverables progressing, even if it's just the architectural details being worked out at first. They should be judging based on useful things obviously happening and being explained or being able to use the next version rather than just looking at hours to try to guess whether they are getting a good deal or something.
For me, we will see how it goes. Right now I have a weekly billing client who I am a bit worried I will have to replace because things in this niche are so dead right now. But there were a few other projects I may be able to pick up. I am definitely going to try to find one that can afford a week or two though because realistically all of the projects have gone on for more than two weeks so far, generally speaking more like 2-8 weeks each.
When it's going to almost certainly take a month to complete a project, trying to get out of an extra hour every day or something is a questionable strategy because it's a significant investment anyway, and the biggest risk really is most projects just not delivering usable software at all, which means all of that money gets wasted.