Unemployed Developer

I’m sure a lot of us have searched through the web and the job boards out there to find out how to pick an hourly rate for our freelance work. Normally you are told pick a number that you want to make in a year, subtract your expenses and voila you have a number. It’s certainly more complex than I’ve described, but in a nutshell that is how it can be done. For your help here is a great page that can help you determine your rate should you need help: Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator. Read more »

As a freelancer in the past, present and certainly future I often am faced with many clients who don’t know what they want, especially how much they are willing to pay and what an “average” rate for services is. However, I am also faced with the clients with fixed budgets and they know what they want.

In the past I have offered fixed prices for my work. This method allowed me to attempt to get to know as much as I could in regards to the scope of  project and then bill  accordingly. As I gained more experience as a freelance developer and project estimator, I found myself either billing really high or really low. If I bid really high, this was a positive for me, but not for the client. I had to ask myself, is that really the kind of developer I want to be? Alternately, if I under-priced my bid, then I would find myself quite frustrated for not doing a better job in determining the scope and cost of the project before quoting a rate. This frustration tended to show in the code, as I found myself rushing to finish these projects so I could get back to more lucrative work. Again, I had to ask myself,  is that the kind of developer I wanted to be? In both cases, the answer was a resounding NO! Read more »