Jump to content

advice about what I should charge


SoccerGloves

Recommended Posts

Hello!

 

    I'm looking for advice on standard php-employee payment.  I'm a college student, and I have worked for a local business-man as a steady, per-hour employee for two years.  I feel uneasy because I am not sure if I'm charging him a fair amount - what if he could pay a professional half what he pays me and get the same job done?  He didn't seem concerned about it when I asked him, but I would like to know. 

    I work on projects for 8 dollars an hour, but it takes me a long time to do things.  In the end, I've been paid 4.3 thousand dollars to develop a web spider that does this:

 

  • Logs into any one of 10 different websites.
  • On each of those websites, the spider reaches several hundred pages.  Each page within the site has the same basic layout.  The spider looks through each page for several different pieces of data, and its search involves looping through tables.
  • The data is important to the running of my employer's business, so it is well tested.  If  I know the information will meet a certain criteria, I'll make the spider check what it finds.
  • Each of the websites, while somewhat similar, needed completely different spiders to be built for each one.  The main spider is told what website to visit, and it hands off to the sub-spider responsible for that website.

 

Looking back, I'm worried that it cost him much more money (and time) to hire me, as apposed a professional.  Did he get the short end of the stick?  Through these past two years, I've had to learn regular expressions, cURL, object oriented coding, and good practice, all from scratch.  A lot of his time and money was certainly spent for me to learn these things before I could apply them, not to mention me needing to go back and re-do things because I made in-experienced mistakes.`

 

I'm just looking for thoughts, thanks for taking the time to read!

-SoccerGloves

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Damn, that's a good one for the library of explaining why I'm totally justified in charging what I charge. 

 

But you can't really looked at a finished piece of work after two years of working on it to gauge whether or not the client over paid for it.  Over the course of two years, how many changes did the client make that caused rework?  How many of the sites you were scraping changed formats and you had to update that?  How much time did you have to spend explaining how the internet works to really non-technical people?

 

As much as we rant about how clueless clients are, when someone finds a developer who will work cheap, for the most part they know, at some level, chances are the developer will have to take some time to learn some things while other things will just take longer to figure out.  Having such a long term relationship with this client, the time you spent learning has probably paid off for him in the later work you've done for him.  For instance, if he needed an 11th site added in now, at your rate, I would certainly hope that you've reached the point in your development you'd be by far the cheapest option.

 

And most importantly, this client is happy with both you and your work, which counts far more than whether or not he could have gotten the job done for less.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are very few instances in which you over-charge, in my experiences anyway. Generally if you over-charge your customer, they will let you know. I find that the percentage of the populace that can do this work skillfully and securely is rather low in comparisson to the percentage of the populace that want the work done.

 

In my opinion, it's not about how much your work is worth, becasue let's face it, they plan to make waaaay more money using what you built then what you charged. Instead, it's about what they are willing to pay. We are not the final solution. Websites, Programs, they are never the final solution. They are just steps to the final solution. That being money. A way to earn lots and lots of money. You can't just how much your work is worth, unless you know how much the final solution is worth.

 

That's just my opinion anyway

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As mentioned in IRC yesterday, I've seen people from $8-$50+/hr. It just depends on what you feel is fair. You need to make a profit, but you don't want to screw over a client - because what if they need more work later on?

 

Honestly, I'd bump up your prices, but not charge too many hours to research time ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OP: I priced something very similar at about $5.5k to a potential client, a while back.  Told him I didn't have the availability to do it, but that's what I'd charge if I did, so he'd have some kind of idea of what he was getting himself into.  The project involved a bit more than just data gathering, but I'd say about $4.5k of it was the bot(s).  But... our ETAs might not be the same.  Dunno how long you mean by "it takes me a long time"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the spider that is a good price. A very good price.  I would probably have charged about the same. I am building SEO tools for a company. Been working on quite a few and a lot of them deal with spiders..some are really advanced (3k or so) while others are simpler (1500 or so).  But you should fluctuate what you charge. Most of the time I charge a flat 30.00 per hour.  Sometimes I get paid as much as 50. There is a current client that "offered" me 50.00 per hour off the start with a chance of around 200 hours per month.  So a lot of time it depends on the skill level. But you never stop learning.  I took on a few projects recently that I knew how to do but new elements came up during development and I had to learn some new stuff.  That happens..generally I don't charge for the hours "learning".  What you need is good time tracking software (good luck with that I am still trying to find the right tools for that).  SO as you can see..I have worked for as little as 30 to as much as 50 per hour. It depends on the client, their budget, and their generosity a lot of times. Depends on what they feel is a fair amount.  Don't go too low..set a marker. For your range I would set a flat range of NO LESS than 20.00 per clocked hour.  Track your hours. When your "working" clock those, when your learning clock those separate. The best way is to get a timer with a stopwatch (as I said I haven't found the right tool for me yet).  Go through and clock the hours as your working..if you stop to look something up on Google or learn something you don't know, stop the timer.  Learn it, then start clocking again when your making viable progress on the system again.

 

Overall your on the right track, just keep knocking stuff out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow - I didn't expect so many good responses!

 

 

xylex, you're right about the sites changing and such, I hadn't thought of that.

 

Garethp, That's encouraging, and I hope my code is helping my boss make money.

 

ignace,

8 dollar is a fair amount.
cool! - I'm glad you think it's fair.

 

KingPhilip,

Honestly, I'd bump up your prices, but not charge too many hours to research time ;)
  I agree about the reasearch time - I'm not working on his project really, I'm just learning how to do it.

 

Crayon Violent,

The project involved a bit more than just data gathering, but I'd say about $4.5k of it was the bot(s).
  Hey, that's good to know.  I bet my bots have a lot more bugs than yours would have  :) but at least it seems like I'm not insanely off price.

 

businessman332211,

Go through and clock the hours as your working..if you stop to look something up on Google or learn something you don't know, stop the timer.  Learn it, then start clocking again when your making viable progress on the system again.  Overall your on the right track, just keep knocking stuff out.
  Thanks!  I'm lucky that my boss has a good time clock program, so I'm set there, but I can do better at marking when I'm researching / progressing.

 

This was exactly the kind of opinion I was looking for - you can't see my code, so what I really need to do is work together with my boss and make sure my time is giving him a good working product - but now I know that as long as my work is good, the price is fair.  Thanks!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well $8/hr is a lot of money in other parts of the world.  And yes, there is a world beyond the U.S.

 

Of course. I can also play this game, in some other parts of the world $8/hr is not much at all

 

Well It's certainly not much where I live, either.  My point was that it might be lots of money where the OP lives, so area/cost of living should be taken into consideration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well $8/hr is a lot of money in other parts of the world.  And yes, there is a world beyond the U.S.

 

Of course. I can also play this game, in some other parts of the world $8/hr is not much at all

 

What's your point? That statement is entirely useless.

 

If it's a lot of money where you live you're not going to get away with charging $35/hr just because someone in another country does. You can't just compare salaries internationally like that. In countries where they are lowly paid (relatively to you) it's generally also much cheaper living, so when you adjust for that, you are likely earning just as much as that person.

 

Why do you think many people choose to outsource to companies like India? This is exactly the reason. The average pay in India is way lower than in the U.S.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well $8/hr is a lot of money in other parts of the world.  And yes, there is a world beyond the U.S.

 

Of course. I can also play this game, in some other parts of the world $8/hr is not much at all

 

Justifying the fact even more that one of the most biggest rate dependencies is based on location, which essentially is the cost of living.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As mentioned earlier in the thread I think, if your client is making a return on his investment in your time then your rates are perfectly acceptable to him. It is the relationship between you and the client that is most highly valued. If the client can converse with you about exactly what they require and you deliver, he will be happy to pay your given rates. Of course development costs can vary and your client may get cheaper rates elsewhere, however they may not get the same business relationship that they require. I have had many a client go elsewhere (usually overseas) for cheaper rates. The funny thing is that most of them return as they cannot get the same business relationship that they originally had, and usually have had some issues communicating their needs to other developers.

 

Do not worry about what other developers charge. You may actually be undervaluing yourself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is more than a year old. Please don't revive it unless you have something important to add.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.