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AlgoRythm
2y

TL;DR how much do I charge?

I'm freelancing for the first time; regularly, I get paid a salary.

I'm freelancing as a donation: the hours I put into this work directly translate to deductions in my tax. I don't get paid any money directly.

I'm doing some web-based enterprise software for an organization. Handling the whole process from writing responsive front-end code to setting up the server and domain for them and even managing myself. So full stack plus dev ops.

My normal salary is $31 an hour and at work I do less. I largely do maintenance for existing applications plus some very minor new systems design. I don't do any server management (different team) and I damn well didn't buy the domain names for my company. So I think it's safe to say I'm taking on a drastically larger role in this freelance gig.

My moral dilemma is the organization will basically say yes to any price - because they don't pay it, the government will (up until the point I pay 0 taxes, I suppose)

I've done some minor research on what other freelancers charge for somewhat similar things and I get pretty wildly varying results. I've seen as low as $20/hr but I really doubt the quality of such a service at that price.

I'm thinking around $50 USD an hour would be a fair price. For even further reference besides my actual salary, I will say that I am in a urban / suburban part of Florida, where developers are very hard to find locally.

Is $50 too high? Too low? This is a very complicated system with (frankly excessive) security practices and features. Before this they had a handful of excel spreadsheets in a OneDrive folder.

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  • 0
    2y
    Oh - not to mention, I'm sort of due for a promotion at work, so $31 an hour is a bit low for my experience level
  • 1
    2y
    Tactical dot .
  • 2
    2y
    I’d dig a bit more. You don’t need the rate freelancers get paid, but rather the rate contractors bill the government.
  • 1
    2y
    @jeeper my company charges 75/hr for development time. I would say that's fair, but I'm going to charge 50 most likely
  • 1
    2y
    generally not less than 60$/h.
    you need health insurance and other insurances. you have expenses. and you need to take into account non billable hours (like aquisition, vacancy and shit like that). you also want to take savings into account and you have cost of living.

    do not make the mistake to throw out some random number which "feels okayish". You're a programmer. do the maths.

    there's a lot of resources on how to price as a freelancer (for those who work on an hourly basis).

    do not confuse your employee rate with your freelancer rate. those are two completely different things.

    and yes, they may not pay you directly. but imagine them telling another company "hey, I found this very cheap dev" and company b approaches you. good luck pricing that one appropriately.
  • 4
    2y
    How to calculate your hourly rate.
    Calculate for a year. Divide by how many hours you want to work.

    (Yearly cost of doing business)
    + (Your desired salery)
    + (desired Profit margin %)
    + (15% Contingency)
    = $$$ / 2080 hours [40h/w].

    Cost of doing business = Rent, electricity, tax, equipment, licences, subscription, Marketing, Customer akquisition, outsourcing. Think everything that you need to run your business. Add it all up for a year.

    Best of luck 🙂
  • 0
    1y
    If the government is fitting the bill, there's no moral issue, charge to the point you pay zero tax
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