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[nycphp-talk] NYC Freelance rates

Jaz-Michael King JMKing at ipro.org
Tue Jan 21 11:03:25 EST 2003


I was gone all weekend so I'm late to the rate party, but after 6 years in NYC I have a few notes:

If the job pays less than $50 an hour and you want it for referral purposes, do it for free.
If you want to compete with similar skilled peers, you have to charge similar rates.
Small businesses pay plumbers $50 an hour. They should be paying you at least that.
$80 seems to be a rule of thumb, economy schmonomy. Just because there's a bad economy, it doesn't deflate your rate, it just deflates your chance of getting the job. PLENTY of people are getting full rate work.
Customers who want it cheap can never handle project creep. You'll end up making enemies.

For the record: my base rate is $125 with a month lead time, scales up depending on how much notice and what kind of emergency it is. My major selling point is I can work twice as fast and twice as efficiently as any 40-50 an hour guy. Sell your experience and skills, if it's too expensive for them you probably shouldn't take the job. At worst, find someone who does want the job and reap a 10% commission.

Jaz

>>> joshmccormack at travelersdiary.com 01/20/03 12:09PM >>>
I think there's some major league low balling going on. I bid for a project and was told by the company about the competing bids. People are looking for anything they can get, and don't want to risk overbidding. I think you'd need an impressive history, good sales pitch and good clients to get $40-$50 with consistency these days.

Josh

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Edward Potter wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>   I was just wondering what the going rate for freelance (NYC) PHP 
> programmers was? I have a client that says she is getting scores of 
> resumes where guys are charging less then $20 an hour. I had assumed it 
> was about $40 - $50 these days.
> 
> thanks
> 
> -- ed



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