Services are your best skills, monetized. With services on Contra, clients can see what skills you’re offering and send an inquiry (or purchase a Quick Hire service) with one click, without the back-and-forth hassle of negotiating your rates. Your services act as a menu of the skills you want to work on and get paid for.

On Contra, a service is made up of a few key parts 👇

Title: The purpose of services is to quickly get new paid projects to work on, so it's best to be straight to the point with the title of your service.

Search tags: These tags help clients discover your services on Contra’s Services Marketplace. Add 1-5 tags for your Role (ex. Copywriter, 3D Designer, or Product Manager), 1-5 tags for Tools (ex. Notion, Figma, or Loom), and (optional) 1-3 tags for your Industry (ex. Design).

There are two types of services and three ways to price your skills on Contra:

Quick Hire: List a pre-defined service for a set price that clients can purchase in one click. Clear scope at the start means less back and forth, you just kick off the work. This is good for standard projects, like logo design or building a Framer landing page.

Inquire First: Have clients contact you to discuss and kick off the project. This is good for projects that require special scope from the client, or extra customization.

There are three different ways to price your service types:

Fixed Price — ex. $1000

Ongoing — ex. $100/hour or you can setup as weekly or monthly

Contact for pricing — If your rate fluctuates or if your pricing changes based on scope, you can have a client get in touch with you first to discuss their needs.

You can also add a timeline for how long the project will take from start to deliverable (ex. 1 week).

Explain why someone would want to hire you to get the job done. Add optional details like your Process, FAQs, Requirements (what you need from a client to kick off work), and Example Projects.

The more useful details you provide, the more likely you’ll land a client. This also helps with SEO!

Finally, make your service stand out on your profile, portfolio, or Contra’s Services Marketplace by adding an eye-catching cover image.

Remember, services are your best skills, monetized. Like any other platform, it’s necessary to research the market value of your skills and compare how each person prices their service to find what works most comfortably for you. On Contra, we offer three different options for pricing your services. 👇

A fixed price is a one-time fee a client pays in exchange for a service.

Fixed pricing is best for someone who has been working independently for at least a year, and knows how long a project will take and how much value they can deliver.

A rate is an ongoing price for the amount of time spent on the project.

Hourly rate pricing is best for independents who are just starting out on their journey, and is a great pricing method to use for projects where it is hard to estimate the total time to completion, or tasks that require a lot of moving parts.

If you’re preferred to get paid weekly or monthly, you are also able to set your rate accordingly.

We recommend tracking the amount of time spent for different services, so you can eventually move to a fixed price once you've performed this service multiple times and are able to standardize this offering.

If your rates are negotiable or vary often, contact for pricing is a great way to work out a pricing model with clients individually. Your price can be finalized by identifying the specific needs of your client and their total budget for the project.

And that’s it! If you need help pricing your services, feel free to reach out to us! 📩

Now that you’ve learned all you need to know about services, it’s time to learn about how to get discovered on Contra! 🤝