/write Been freelancing as a designer for 3 years now and a few people asked me about it so thought I'd share.
When I started I charged $35 an hour, working evenings and weekends and still only making about $3k a month on a good month, one month it was $1,100 and I nearly went back to a full time job.
Then a client asked for a fixed price for their whole website instead of hourly, I said $4,000 kind of randomly and they said yes straight away. That project took 2 weeks and made me more than the previous 6 weeks combined. So I started doing fixed price with everyone and stopped tracking hours. Last year I made $94k working maybe 25-30 hours a week.
I think hourly pricing kind of punishes you for getting faster at your job which is backwards. Anyway hope this helps someone, happy to answer questions.