Charging by the hour is an ineffective value exchange. It works for junior level jobs but it doesn’t work for tasks that require strategic thinking or problem solving.

If you hire a writer for 2 hours to produce quality content and you offer her $20/hour, you are stealing from yourself and from her.

Why?

Writer’s side: She will be constantly thinking that she is getting paid $20/hour and if she works over the budged time (2 hours in this case), she will be on the short end of the stick.  Humans don’t like that! They don’t want other people to take advantage of them, hence the writers creative thinking and artistry will be clouded by that thought!

Of course this way you loose because you get a less quality product.

The better way of charging is to offer a flat fee for a specific result.

$40 for a content piece that is 2000-3000 words long and that covers X aspect of a topic.

Now the artist/worker will be have a new paradigm, that is that she is free of the feeling of being short changed.

P.S. A writing job was just an example of a task that requires strategic and creative thinking. Such creativity like marketing, business, problem solving, web design, etc should  not be limited by time.