Prices

[Rick Meeker]

Bare in mind also that as an employee of some company, you only pay half of
FICA, and your company pays the other half.  When you're self-employed, then
you essentially get to pay your Social Security tax twice.  Therefore, I'd
suggest that $30-$40/hour is good for part time contract work, but you
should think about charging a little more based upon your experience.  It
should also always be negotiable based on the type of work (e.g. designing
an infrastructure implementation versus doing the repetitive grunt work to
implement the design).  Don't let your customers get the better of you
though as you don't want to "work for free."

-----Original Message-----
From: kclug-bounces at kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] On Behalf Of
Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 7:26 AM
Cc: kclug at kclug.org
Subject: RE: Prices

I like how Monty thinks on this and I'd go $30-40/hour also.  What you
have to remember when figuring a rate to charge is that if this was your
only business, you would have to pay for health insurance for yourself
on top of getting a salary.  This almost always comes out to double the
hourly rate you would make if you were an employee.  But, if you are a
sole proprietor and working on multiple contracts, they each pay a
portion of this to get your services.  This makes sense because they
only need 1/3, 1/2 or some other fraction of your time.  It is then up
to you to fill the rest of your time slots.  I personally like a
full-time contract or reg. employment, but you can make this work and
occasionally make more money.  

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
---Occam