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.
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
> 1. The non-code business aspect of Freelancing is demanding.
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.
> 2. It's takes 10 hours to bill 6 to 8.
> 3. Figuring out your rate is hard (...) I worry that I'm not charging
> enough.
In that case I would increase a bit my hourly rate ;)
Greetings,
Raul Murciano
Thanks Robert! I didn't know about this group :)
Greetings,
Raul Murciano
Rob
> 3. Figuring out your rate is hard.
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?
> 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?
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
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
--
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?
That sounds about right to me. Another way to check your rates is to
use the hourly rate calculator FreelanceSwitch has created [1]. It will
only take into account your expenses, profit margin, and savings you
want but it works pretty good. I ran it with some estimates and it was
within $2 of what my rate is.
FreelanceSwitch's blog also has a lot of really good content. I found
the articles about marketing your business great [2][3].
[1]: http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
[2]:
http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/10-essential-free-or-cheap-ways-to-market-your-freelance-work/
[3]:
http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/101-ideas-to-get-more-freelance-work-and-generate-new-client-leads/
Eric Davis
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
Might be useful.
I took a look at the rate calculator. Its a useful tool.
But, it only tells you what you need to charge to make a certain
income - not how much the market will bear. However, it's does give
me a better idea of what I need to charge to make ends meet (and make
a few bucks in profit).
--
______________________________
- David Lanouette
- David.L...@GMail.com
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit - Aristotle