1. The non-code business aspect of Freelancing is demanding.  My days
of being a heads down coder with the only concern of slinging lines of
code are over.  Freelancing means you start a business and the
business overhead of starting your own business; talking to accounts
and lawyers, setting up your bank account, tracking time and
invoicing, don't seem to be decreasing as time goes on.  Sure I get
more of the overhead work done, but more of it arrives.

2. It's takes 10 hours to bill 6 to 8.  If I work a 10 hour day that
does not mean I bill 10 hours.  The idea of billing a 40 hour work
week seems impossible to me.  I suppose if I got militant about it, it
could be done, but I'm trying to grow a business and that takes a lot
of attention.  Oh, and there's that life thing too.

3. Figuring out your rate is hard.  In the absence of information it's
hard to figure out what your hourly rate should be.  I've based mine
based on my ability to deliver to my clients which is in large part
due to my proficiency in Rails.  As I become a better Rails coder I
build better code for my clients, sometimes this means I do things
very fast for them which could be bad for me as far as billing hours,
but I believe that higher quality code is worth a premium and so I
increase the rate on each successive job I take.  Still, I'm not new
to Rails but I am new to freelancing and I worry that I'm not charging
enough.

On Aug 1, 2:38 pm, Tim Case <tcrai...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tim,

I agree with everything you said. When I started ADS down the path of
being a development firm I took the lessons from being a freelance IT
professional, namely one cannot do everything himself. The advice I
have heard is stick to what you do best and outsource the rest
(meaning get someone else to do it). For me, that meant hiring full-
time developers. I greatly appreciate you sharing your experience. I
don't think many people have any idea of how much work it actually
takes to get a client. Depending on the level of project you are
trying to take on, it can take days if not weeks or months to land a
project. That is time that is not spent coding. Then you have to keep
the work coming in to stay afloat. Again, more time not spent coding.

Good luck. Please keep sharing your experience. Also, the "Freelancers
on Rails" Google group could gain from your experience as well.

Sincerely,

Robert Dempsey
http://www.techcfl.com

Hi Tim,

IMHO the best option is to find a professional and confidence accountant
& lawyer and spend working time on what you do best. Time tracking and
invoicing should not be so hard if you're organized, and there are some
tools to help on that kind of tasks.

In that case I would increase a bit my hourly rate ;)

Greetings,
   Raul Murciano

Robert Dempsey escribió:

Thanks Robert! I didn't know about this group :)

Greetings,
   Raul Murciano

Spread the love :)

Rob

On Aug 1, 3:01 pm, Raul Murciano <r...@murciano.net> wrote:

Tim,

Out of curiosity, how did you decide on your initial rate?  I'm in the
very early stages of freelancing.  I have a rate that I thought was
OK, but nobody is even blinking (one client even suggested it was
pretty low).  So, I know I need to up it, but I'm not sure how much to
raise it to.

My plan is to keep raising it by $10/hr for each project until people
start blink.  My concern is that I won't see those blinks and I'll
just loose business without knowing why.  Does that make sense?

Thoughts or advise?

David,

Figuring out the rate is hard... but I am including below a list of
real-life rates of languages other than Rails, which might help as
yardsticks to figure out a rate.  If anyone out there wants to add
more, especially
for Rails please do so:

PHP Junior Developer $20 to $35 hr.
PHP Developer $40 to $55 hr.
PHP Senior Developer $55 to $70

Java J2EE India Based Developers - prices are very similar to the local PHP
developer prices quoted above.

Java US or Canada based - Junior Developer - $35 to $45
Java US or Canada based - Developer - $45 to $65
Java US or Canada based - Senior Developer - $65 and above, it can climb a
lot here depending on skills.

So where is Ruby on Rails here?

I think it should be on par with Java for a local based developer, but is
it?  Since I truly do not know the answer here I just post those ranges as a
yardstick, and hopefully someone else will enlighten us.

I know .Net developers make roughly the same as Java developers, perhaps a
little less, but is no wonder why so many people keep coding in Java, it
pays the bills : )

Jose Hurtado
Trumpet Interactive <http://trumpetinteractive.com/>
Toronto, Canada

P.S. Then again Rails and even PHP are much more fun than Java... so I guess
we choose the tools that makes us happy, not just the ones that pay more!

On 8/1/07, David <david.lanoue...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Best Regards,

Jose Hurtado
Toronto, Canada

On Aug 1, 2007, at 4:33 PM, David wrote:

Of course you'll lose some business!  If you raise your rate by a  
dollar an hour, there will always be SOME client who thinks it's too  
much, no matter how little it is.  As hourly rate increases, number  
of jobs decreases.  Period.  This is not a bad thing.  All else being  
equal, having a handful of high paying clients is better than having  
a ton of low paying clients.  The trick is to understand the *rate*  
at which jobs decrease (and it's likely to be a curve, not a line!)  
and find the sweet spot that maximizes your income.

If you REALLY want to be "smart" about it, you can first understand  
that curve, then try to learn how to gauge clients' willingness to  
pay during initial talks and charge price-sensitive clients a lower  
rate rather than lose the job (whenever you're not fully booked at  
your maximum rate of course).  This would theoretically be the best  
way to both maximize $/hr and hours/month whenever you were short on  
hours for a month but it's a very very tricky thing to do and God  
knows I don't have the soft skills to do it right so I tend to think  
it's harder than it's worth more often than not.

-JF

Indian rails house are likely to charge somewhere between
$15-$30/hour. But it wouldn't really be advisable in most of the cases
unless you have someone who can monitor their work ( and you must pay
like 70-80$/hour to the guy who does monitoring ;-) )
--
Cheers!
- Pratik
http://m.onkey.org

Pratik,

Quite true indeed... by the way funny blog especially this code:

class Person
  private
  def method_missing(method_id, *args)
    puts "#{method_id} called with #{args.inspect}"
    true
  end

end

class Indian < Person
  private
  def secret
    puts "We are nuts"
  end
end

i = Indian.new
puts i.secret("Fuck")

# $ ruby crap.rb
# secret called with ["Fuck"]
# true

Cheers Mate!  : )

Jose Hurtado
Trumpet Interactive
Toronto, Canada

On 8/1/07, Pratik <pratikn...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Best Regards,

Jose Hurtado
Toronto, Canada

Rob, you're such a cutie. :-*

On Aug 1, 2:53 pm, Robert Dempsey <robertonra...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/1/07, Jose Hurtado <jlhurt...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'll venture a guess:

Rails Junior Dev (< 6 months experience) - $35 to $60
Rails Mid-level Dev ( 6mo - 1.5years) - $60 to $90
Rails Senior Dev (> 1.5 years) - $90 and above, again climbing a lot
depending on previous web application experience.

Most importantly, discuss your rate with any of your rails buddies. Some
people are charging way too little, but it's hard to charge too much. It's
not unlikely to find contracts for $150+/hr if you can support your
experience. $135k/year is also somewhere in the mid-range for a yearly
salary. Making a lot more than that isn't unheard of.

Hope that gives a nice meter stick. These are just my opinions based on
contracts I've had and people I've talked to. The most important thing with
your rate is being confident about it. Clients like to talk you down.
-Martin