Another way to approach this is to ask what they consider a day to be? Is it sitting in the chair from 9 to 5? Is it just doing a certain number of features in a day? Does it involve doing support after hours? Considering that they are asking for a 'day' rate I'm assuming this is their way of asking if they can retain you for full time work the extent of the contract.
In these situations I make it clear that while I'm willing to make them my primary client my business does require me to attend to other matters such as administration, taxes, billing, lead generation, etc.
I never say they can expect X hours out of me a week because quite frankly I've never been good at maintaining a consistent hourly pace per week. When I was doing hourly I averaged about 20 hours a week of programming (I was pretty fanatical about starting/stopping the clock). When I would get closer to 30 that was when I would be pushing a deadline or getting close to burnout.
What I do now is get a sense of what they expect out of me in terms of reliability and production. This tends to be a lot of work up front because I'm building trust with the client. Such as meeting with them more frequently to get on the same page as them. But that up front work pays off dividends later on when I have to bail to attend to family or business matters. Eventually this settles down to weekly communication to see if you're actually meeting/exceeding the client's expectations.
Again I'd emphasize asking more questions about what they consider a day to be? Who knows it might just mean you working on their stuff for 5 hours a day :)
In these situations I make it clear that while I'm willing to make them my primary client my business does require me to attend to other matters such as administration, taxes, billing, lead generation, etc.
I never say they can expect X hours out of me a week because quite frankly I've never been good at maintaining a consistent hourly pace per week. When I was doing hourly I averaged about 20 hours a week of programming (I was pretty fanatical about starting/stopping the clock). When I would get closer to 30 that was when I would be pushing a deadline or getting close to burnout.
What I do now is get a sense of what they expect out of me in terms of reliability and production. This tends to be a lot of work up front because I'm building trust with the client. Such as meeting with them more frequently to get on the same page as them. But that up front work pays off dividends later on when I have to bail to attend to family or business matters. Eventually this settles down to weekly communication to see if you're actually meeting/exceeding the client's expectations.
Again I'd emphasize asking more questions about what they consider a day to be? Who knows it might just mean you working on their stuff for 5 hours a day :)