[thelist] Going Rate

David Bindel dbindel at austin.rr.com
Tue Jun 15 17:46:32 CDT 2004


On Tue, 2004-06-15 at 14:37, Kay C. Tien wrote:
> Just curious to find out what's the going rate these days for freelancers.

How heavy is a rock?  How long is a piece of string?

Your question can be answered using the general method that a good
majority of us use: ;)

1. Find your SPY (Sites Per Year) ratio.

Take the number of websites you have developed as a freelancer and
divide it by the number of years you have been freelancing web
development.  This is the starting point; if you have a low ratio (less
than 22, according to most sources), you should probably give up now and
leave the market to the veterans.

2. Take the square root of your SPY ratio.

This helps to normalize the resulting values so that no single developer
gets more than his/her fair share.

3. Multiply by the average profit per website you have made.

4. Multiply by your WPM (Web Proficiency Multiplier).

Take the number of years you have known HTML, and multiply it by the
number of years you have been using the Internet divided by the total
number of years you have been using computers.

This gives a good estimate as to how well-developed your HTML skills
are.

5. Add your typing rate, divided by 65 (the industry standard).

This step can get confusing because your typing rate is normally
measured in Words Per Minute (WPM) which creates an ambiguity with the
Web Proficiency Multiplier (also WPM).

Your typing rate estimates how fast you will be able to type up your
source code and the client's copy.  The less time you take at that, the
more you deserve to be payed, right?

6. Add $0.95 in Honor Of Al Gore's Internet Envisionment (HOAGIE)
because he "invented the Internet" and deserves a mention in our
rate-finding techniques.

7. Add or subtract as necessary to reach your desired rate based on what
you think your services are worth and what you estimate the client is
willing to pay.

Good luck,
David Bindel

http://www.davidbindel.com



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