"Fair" is a complicated subject.
When figuring out what you should charge for something you should look at a
number of factors:
- What is your time worth to you?
- This can be measured by any number of personal measuring sticks. How
much free time do you generally have available, how interesting does this
project look to you, do you think you can re-use this code for anything
ever, will you achieve some level of personal / professional satisfaction
from it.
- Personally, if I don't have a lot of extra free time, or if the
project looks to be a pain, I charge considerably more. If that kills the
project, so be it, if not, WOOHOO!
- As for calculating an actual billable rate, one way to figure out what
your professional time is worth is to take your annual salary at work,
divide it by 2000 and that very roughly what you make an hour. I typically
double it to cover taxes and then charge that. So for example you earn
$50,000 a year at your main job, you basically earn $25 an hour, So a good
starting point for charging for your time is $50 an hour. Using the "How
much do I like this project" scale, you can then adjust that rate
accordingly. If the project is going to be a pain, bump it up, if it's going
to be fun maybe lower it.
- What can the person afford to pay?
- This is one of the hardest parts of any job, you may come up with
what is a reasonable amount to do the job, but the client may
choke. Great
sales people have a sixth sense for the threshold a client has for a job
($$$). With one off freelance jobs it can be hard to guess what
a person has
available to spend. I've been offered projects where the client wants to
build a competitor to eBay and has about $500 to spend...
- Depending on your relationship with this client, you might just want
to ask what they have available to spend on the project upfront. Then go
back and determine if it's enough for you to get it done.
HTH
=]
--
Alan Rother
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer
Manager, Phoenix Cold Fusion User Group, AZCFUG.org
