Technical & Scientific > Programming
Web Dev Hourly Rate?
micah:
So I've been programming professionally for 12 years now, the last 6 of which were for agencies that charge clients $150/hr for my time.
When I first started doing freelance work, 10 or more years ago, I was charging $35/hr. I haven't done much of anything on the side over the past 5 years, save for a couple projects where I just charged a flat fee of a few hundred bucks. I want my hourly rate to be $75/hr. I think thats reasonable for my skill level and comparable to what some of my colleagues charge to do freelance.
The problem is I've never been able to get that rate. I've recently had several solid leads from Craigslist that all fell through (I'm currently 0 for 4) but even when they seem'd like they were going to work out, the negotiated price I ended up with was more in the $35 to $50 range. No one I can attract wants to pay close to $75.
The other day I responded to a craigslist ad, a guy said he'd pay $50 for what he perceived as "a couple hours of work." He e-mailed me his problem, including the error he was getting. Being the nice guy I am, I wrote him back with a quick solution to fix it himself. He wrote me today to say thanks for the free advice and also said, "I am always in need of good programmers for projects that I undertake. What is your typical hourly rate?"
So what do I tell him? On the one hand, I want to say $75/hr. But I know thats going to sound unreasonable to someone who just wants a cheap, on-call freelancer. I'm willing to take much less, after all, anything above minimum wage beats having to go out and get a second job at burger king, but I don't want to undervalue myself or rip myself off.
What do you think? If you freelance, what do you charge?
Perspective:
Here's my shot at trying to say the expectation while still bringing in the leads from him.
"I generally charge $75 / hour for freelance work, but I also do flat fees for smaller one-off jobs. Feel free to send me a brief description of any work you need done and I'll give you an estimate."
ober:
I think Perspective's idea is good.
On the other hand, I broke out my 'services' and they all have different fees. PHP work is 40-50/hr (although I want to bump it up to 60). Anything touching the database (creating tables, changing tables, indexing, normalizing, etc.) is 60-70/hr. UI (Javascript/CSS) is normally in the same range as the PHP stuff. And you might ask... how do you separate it? It's not always straight forward, but if you separate your stack well enough it's not that bad to split it up and track time accordingly.
I hate flat fee contracts but sometimes you have to take them just to get the business. I agree it's hard to get some people to pay a decent rate and sometimes you need to go in high and negotiate.
micah:
Thanks for the answers guys.
I went with a combo of "its $75/hr" but that its "variable" based on scope, complexity, availability, and clients budget
Jake:
--- Quote from: ober on November 04, 2015, 11:32:38 AM ---On the other hand, I broke out my 'services' and they all have different fees. PHP work is 40-50/hr (although I want to bump it up to 60). Anything touching the database (creating tables, changing tables, indexing, normalizing, etc.) is 60-70/hr. UI (Javascript/CSS) is normally in the same range as the PHP stuff. And you might ask... how do you separate it? It's not always straight forward, but if you separate your stack well enough it's not that bad to split it up and track time accordingly.
I hate flat fee contracts but sometimes you have to take them just to get the business. I agree it's hard to get some people to pay a decent rate and sometimes you need to go in high and negotiate.
--- End quote ---
In my world this approach usually works the best. We have different fees for Professional Services vs Technical Services. If possible, we go in at a time&materials basis, and try to stay away from flat fee - however, does end up happening about 60% of the time anyway. An approach that I found works well (and is pretty easy to sell) is a T&M capped. We bill a customer an hourly rate and the total price will not be over X amount of dollars. If you set this up correctly you should not lose your ass on any deal.
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