Hourly rates

dux

I have been asked to build a discussion forum for someone that may easily adapted for their other sites by the use of a template system. Users would need to register for it and have a profile where they could upload an image of themselves and fill in a few bits of info about themselves. It would also need to perform standard forum functions. I'm building this all from scratch and feel 100% capable of the task.

I've never done any freelance development work so any suggestions of an hourly rate to charge would be much appreciated.

thanks!

🙂

andrin

Depends on where you are in the world. If you are in Sweden a fair rate would be from 30 to 90 Euros. If it´s special knowledge you could charge 150 Euros. But I doubt you could charge this in India ;-)

dux

thanks dude 🙂

anyone else like contribute?

Incidentally I'm in the UK

andrin

In UK you could probably charge more :-) Starting at 50 and going up 110 and special knowledge would give you maybe 200!!!
All numbers in Euros.
Also know that you could charge more if you work in big cities (i.e. London). Of course it works the other way around... If you work in a smaller town you can´t charge that much ;-)

dux

thanks again 🙂) anyone else like to throw their tuppence in?

notionlogic

wtf? £50-£110 per hour ???

I've been doing freelance PHP development for a couple of years now and I've never managed to get a rate like that ! In fact it's been getting worse more recently. Most people run away and hide when you try to charge more than £100 per day or is it just the type of client I'm attracting? 🙁

Just out of interest why can't you just give them phpBB or something similar ? Why reinvent the wheel - apart from the obvious loss of income of course :p

simon622

I have been developing freelance in PHP for 3 years. I am currently working in Baker Street, and charge an in-house rate of £18 an hour. Note, this is with plenty of experience, a BSc and in the big city. Clients have been less willing to put their fingers in their wallets recently, with the downturn.

Agencies will laugh at you if you have less than a years experience and ask for E100+. I have been freelance in java as well, thats where the real money is - and where the real clients still are, but PHP is just so nice!!!

Be realistic, you dont want to scare people off.

But stick at it!!

Arc

Here in America you're lucky to get $15 an hour.. which translates to about 9 Euro i beleive.

matbennett

$15 US is about 14 Euros.

I get around £35 /hour (+VAT) , although I have noticed that I am bloody awful at counting my hours. Depends a bit of what I am doing though. If it is easy work (ie it wouldn't be hard to find someone else to do it), I quote less. It is though rare for me to quote for coding alone, as that isn't really what I do.

Interesting about the big cities comments above. For more unusual work I think that living in the sticks helps keep the price up as there is less competition.

I think that the overall rule is "charge what the market will bear" !

tom77

Like most services, it depends how much it is worth to the client. If you are providing them 10 hours of work that is going to make / save them many thousands then you have to charge a relative amount.

PHP's ease of use makes it more powerfull and verstatile. I have PHP'ed an accounting and billing Intranet for a UK ISP.
Just because we don't program air trafic control systems, doesn't mean we're second rate.
Most people can just about send email.
Don't sell yourself short (and therefore us) short.

dux

thanks for all the comments guys 😉

myraleen

In Canada, my first programming job, i work 7.5 hours a day for 150, about 20 an hour.
Think that's lower then most though, but it is to start. 🙂

ccgorman

I sometimes hire freelancers and can easily get a decent one for £10-£15 p/h in Scotland. If they were a specialist I would pay up to £30-£40 p/h, but it would have to be something real tricky.

I would personally charge per job, for a forum perhaps £500-£1000, whatever your client thinks is reasonable. (and get 1/2 up front)

matbennett

and get 1/2 up front

Just thought that bit was worth repeating!!

dux

ta again - was definately going to try and get half up front. Either way... they won't have access to the scripts.

Now I'm unsure whether to charge per hour of a flat fee....

thanks for all the help

matbennett

For what it is worth, I generally charge a flat fee, but base this on an hourly estimate.

In my experience (which as I say isn't really focused on coding, but involves it), the important thing when quoting a flat fee is to agree in writing exactly what you are doing for the money.

nileshd

I charge between US$45 - $65 an hour on average depending on the type of project. In my contracts, I usually set my estimated total number of hours, deadlines etc.. and get half of the money up front before starting to code.

statrat

$13/hour and I often get laughed at for being too high. i think i'm courting the wrong clients.