Ask HN: What should be my hourly compensation? what is yours?

3 points by throwaway 13 years ago | 7 comments

I've been working as freelance web designer/developer in an Asian country. I primarily get projects through referrals. My current clients have very low budgets. Since, small businesses here are not comfortable with variable (hourly) pricing. I've been doing fixed rate projects only.

I consider myself decent at front end design, front end coding and ruby on rails. I have few finished rails applications I've developed, which I haven't hosted because I don't have a server with good rails support.

Enough about my background. Now I get approached by people from countries like US for freelancing, after checking my github or stackoverflow profile.

Now, since I haven't worked on hourly rate basis, and I'm working for incredibly low price for clients here(recently finished an ecommerce website design and front end coding for $300). I don't know what should be my hourly compensation in respect to the work I deliver.

So, I seek you guys/gals help. What should be my hourly rate for doing rails work? and for doing front end coding?

If you are comfortable, please share your hourly compensation and some insights regarding this subject matter.

Thanks

aoprisan 13 years ago |

I supposed it depends where your client is located. In the US northeast, a senior developer makes around $50-80/hr. I've done a few fix rate Rails projects that took about 20-30 hours in all for about $5k, so around $25/hr.

throwaway 13 years ago | |

The client is New York based. BTW do you mean $250/hr for fixed projects?

nayefc 13 years ago | | |

Pretty sure he said $25 and not $250..

MattBearman 13 years ago |

I'm based in the UK, but work with American clients, my rate is £45 / hour, which is currently about $68 / hour.

To give some perspective, I do Rails, PHP, JavaScript, and front end, and I've got around 6 years experience.