On Fri, March 2, 2007 12:33 pm, John wrote: > This may be deviating a bit from the intent of the list, and someone > feel > free to say so if the list shouldn't be used for this. My apologies in > advance if that is the case. This is NOT a self-advertisement! > > My question is regarding the "going rate" for software development > consulting - Way too open-ended a question... In what region? For what specialties? How experienced is the developer? You can hear numbers from $15/hour in off-shored out-sourced quotes to $X00/hour for experts in a particular areas. X could even be a 2-digit number, for that matter. Somebody somewhere probably even uses a 3-digit number for X. Might as well ask us how much you should pay for a house without saying where, how big, and in what condition... That said: If somebody is giving you solid steady ongoing work, you'd maybe want to give them a "discount" from your usual rate, possibly in the 10% neighborhood, since you'll be getting enough hours from them to make it worth it. Perhaps even invoice them at full price, but with the discount as a line-item at the end, so they know what they are saving. It can also be difficult to track time on such an open-ended deal at first. I *highly* recommend you have a process in-place for that client to open up new "tickets" with you, and to track the progress of whatever needs doing and what got done. This is also crucial to prioritize the zillion things that will get thrown at you with (probably) little organization on their side of things -- Or, at least, it will be organized to their convenience and not necessarily in the best order to get your work done efficiently and with their true best interests. If you have a dozen 5-minute tickets, you can lump them together and charge for an hour. If you have no tickets and just do a dozen 5-minute tasks spread out and don't account for them, it's like being nibbled to death by ducks. NOTE: One reason I got back into a full-time position is that I sucked at this kind of administrivia, and it just plain wasn't any fun (to me) to change myself to be better at it. YMMV -- Some people have a "gift" link here. Know what I want? I want you to buy a CD from some starving artist. http://cdbaby.com/browse/from/lynch Yeah, I get a buck. So? -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
