Freelance Pay Scale - What should you charge
So, this started out as a bit of a brain dump on the AZCFUG.org mailing list when someone asked what the going rate is for a ColdFusion Developer these days. I recieved a lot of positive feedback on it, so I thought it might be a good idea to share on here.
A good baseline for picking a rate is:
Take what you earn a year, say, $60,000
You work about 2000 hrs a year, so your hourly rate there is about $30 an hour
Being a full time employee has it's advantages (usually..) Steady pay, health insurance, paid time off... You get the idea.
Those "benefits" have a literal value, say roughly equal to your pay.
So as a baseline number, double whatever your assumed hourly rate a full time job would be, in this case somewhere around $60 hour
I then usually add or subtract based on the job itself: Taking over someone else's evil, poorly coded project that looks like a nightmare, I add 50% - 100%
If it's something cool that I've never done before and I can learn from it, I might discount it some.
Also, factor in that you need to pay taxes on this income (we all report all of our side income, Right???) So, assume your going to lose about 40% of the money you make.
The volume of work (guaranteed work), my availability, possible perks (free stuff they make or sell), how tight or loose their deadlines are, do they seem cool or are they going to be a pain in the a**, should all factor into that pricing.
(Comments added by Cheryl Novalis-Marine)
I think you also need to consider Industry and size of the company (maybe even more so than the location). I have a long time client out of Manhattan NY, but they are a smaller company and because they are in NYC they have a lot of high expenses. No way they would be able to pay $200/hour. So, lots of things to factor in when deciding.
At the end of all of that, look at how much money you stand to take home once the job is done, is it worth the time/effort/stress
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