This is a great thread, but I have a lot to say about this in particular.
First: don’t charge hourly. Charge a day rate. Serious customers won’t balk. You don’t have a unit of work less than 1 day.
I’ve written dozens of things about how evil hourly rates are, but this is the most concise one: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103417
Second, you can figure out your rate FLOOR by backing out your expenses from a dev salary, but that’s not your CEILING.
Good consultants can charge 3x+ their FTE rate. “Good” doesn’t mean “super awesome coder”; it means “super clear understanding of your value”.
Think of it this way: if your normal project is a week, and someone was willing to book you up for 2 months, you’d give them a discount.
If they could book you up for a WHOLE YEAR, you’d give them a huge discount.
That “discount” is baked into your full time salaried wage, along with “promise to pay no matter how many hours worked” and “lots of benefits” and “it’s a very big deal to fire you”.
- Consultants don’t normally get long-term commits.
- Consultants don’t get paid for stretches where there’s no work to do.
- Clients fire consultants without even thinking about it.
RAISE YOUR RATES.
- Consultants don’t get paid for stretches where there’s no work to do.
- Clients fire consultants without even thinking about it.
RAISE YOUR RATES.
