

Your Rate - A better way to calculate your hourly freelance rate - udp
http://www.yourrate.co

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neya
Just a small note - While the site's design is simply elegant, the User-
Experience needs to be re-considered. The text boxes give the wrong impression
- I found myself trying to enter the amount into the label field that says
"Money per month". Other than that,everything else is perfect! This is the
best example of a simple idea solving a complex problem. Keep it up guys!

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markhendriks
Thanks, this should be fixed now. When you click on one of the labels it
focusses on the corresponding input field.

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mgkimsal
While I appreciate the simplicity, design and speed of the site, the caveat at
the end "Make sure the rate matches your value proposition. Charge what you're
worth, but be reasonable." is the whole crux of pricing problems, and the site
doesn't really help me figure out "what I'm worth" (also in the header text
too).

If I'm a basic HTML developer with simple Dreamweaver skills from 1999, living
in a major metro area, what I'm "worth" might really be something like
$10-12/hour (in the US). The skills you have that are in demand dictate
'worth' in the market. And really, it's how an employer can translate those
skills in to value in _their_ marketplace that dictates the worth to them. If
they're paying $5000 for website feature X, they reasonably assume they will
get far more value than $5000 over a reasonable time frame (month? 6 months? 1
year?)

Being able to determine the value your skills brings to an employer is
difficult, because it's not just your skills - you're reliant on them to be
able to translate your labor in to money and they may suck at it. I've hired
super talented people that I subsequently had to let go because I couldn't
convert their awesome in to money.

Finding employers that are good at that, and that derive a lot of value from
what you provide is a harder problem to solve, but more rewarding financially
in the end.

Reading "million dollar consulting" (allan weiss) changed a lot of my thinking
on this subject. It feels a bit dated now, but conceptually thinking about
value instead of time for money, even if time for money is all you can get,
still changes your perspective some.

Gentle plug: <http://indieconf.com> \- coming up in just a couple weeks - will
cover topics like these (specifically a session on "science of pricing" with
Brennan Dunn) for freelancers.

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Retric
Reasonable time frame is often 5 years a large company.

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tptacek
This is probably exactly the wrong way to think about your rate, as it hinges
on "how much you want to make every month"; in other words, it's a cost-based
price.

Your rate is set by the market, not by your "reasonable" desired salary is.

In case you're wondering at this point: I think you should be charging more
than this tool says you should. And, obviously, I don't think you should be
billing people by the hour at all.

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otakucode
>Your rate is set by the market

It certainly ought not be. That your rate resembles the market is a
CONSEQUENCE, not a driver. The driver of your rate needs to be based upon the
value of your services. Are you going to enable a company to make $500,000
more next year? Then if they want to pay you $50/hr because it's 'market
rate', you need to tell them to kiss your ass.

The presumption is that everyone is already doing this, and that everyone has
a reasonably correct understanding of what the actual value of their work is.
This is a false presumption, but it is a presumption which is absolutely
necessary for any defense of capitalism. Knowledge of value has to be spread
equally or all of the promises of capitalism fall apart. Anyhow, if everyone
DID know what the value of their work was and set their prices by that, the
idea is that a market rate would establish itself, which certainly would
happen. What we've got today however is employers telling everyone to set
their rates by the 'market rate' and ignore any other drivers... which makes
it very easy to drive down the price over time. That would be why the average
salary of the lower 90% of the economy has only risen 1% in the past 30 years,
even though worker productivity and corporate earnings have skyrocketed.

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tptacek
I don't really follow this, but I think we're in agreement that fundamentally
your prices need to follow the value that your work generates; that value is
orthogonal to what you feel you need to be making every month.

Cost-based prices are for gypsum and tile wax.

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Alan01252
Nice really simple and clean and one of those, I wish I'd thought of that
moments.

Couple of things I'd change.

First ( probably me being dumb ) but for some reason I clicked on "Money per
month" first rather than "amount". Maybe a dollar sign in the text box would
help. Although I realize this has probably been done deliberately so it's
currency agnostic.

I wasn't allowed to put in period characters, I tried to put in 37.5 hours (
standard week in the UK ) and it put that as 375 hours, which screwed the
results just a little bit.

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philbarr
I also clicked on "Money per month" first rather than "amount". I think I'm
used to the edit box being on the right?

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shanelja
I did the same, but I have a feeling it has more to do with the size of the
boxes than the ordering in this case.

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gexla
This is pretty light. Take a look at the calculator at FreelanceSwitch.

<http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/>

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shanelja
To be fair to him, that's a little heavy, I looked at it, scrolled down to the
bottom then closed the page.

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JohnLBevan
Nice design, but not sure about the concept: this doesn't calculate what
you're worth or advise whether the figures you're stating are realistic; it
just does what you could do in 10 seconds in excel. My test-self is worth
infinity per hour just for being really lazy; not wanting to work any hours a
week, take 52 weeks a year off, and earn a fortune for it. This could be
improved by including the market rate which you dismissed to give an idea of
how realistic this is, or by suggesting jobs and relevant
qualifications/experience required to get to where you want to be.

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markhendriks
Thanks for all your comments. My goal with this site is to get you thinking
about your freelance rate / business in general, a starting point if you will.
I'll be doing an iteration on the design and copy shortly.

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Ives
The 1.5 factor for taxes and savings might be accurate for the US, but is way
too low for some places (a factor of 2 would probably still be too low)

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manmal
Yep, in Austria taxes and insurance are approaching and even exceeding 50% of
your income when you cross €100k per year.

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markhendriks
I live in the Netherlands where we too have a high tax rate. If you make an
average income, 1.5x would suffice. Anything above that, 1.5x falls short. The
reality is that the vast majority of freelancers stay well below 100k per
year. I've adjusted the calculation to 2x to account for higher incomes and to
be on the "safe" side. Thanks for your feedback!

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startupstella
i love the simplicity of this, but it's almost too simple. this doesn't take
into account things like experience or skillset which I have found to be key
indicators for hourly rates. it's also unrealistic in that many freelancers
have gaps in work and dont work all the hours they want in a given period
(something we are trying to fix!).

as i've been getting top freelance devs on matchist, i've seen hourly rates
range from $50/hr to $200/hr with the biggest indicators of higher rates
being: self perceived value, years freelancing, and self perceived expertise
of skillset.

we've made the conscious decision not to charge devs by hourly rate, but
rather project milestone values.

Gentle plug: the site we're building, <http://matchist.com> is curated
matching of projects for top freelance devs.

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TamDenholm
I've always based on a mix of what the market rates are vs the value i'm
providing the client.

If i'm creating a solution that will save the client about 50k a year, i'd
probably charge about 25k. To the client, thats a damn good deal, and if it
takes me 3 months or less to build, its a damn good deal to me too.

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jot
The multiplier isn't high enough. It doesn't take into account un-billable
time that you need to spend on sales and marketing or higher tax rates in
different parts of the world. It's more realistic with a multiplier of 1.8 to
2.0

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jrs235
Money per month, is that value I enter suppose to be gross or net? I'll assume
gross and have to agree with others that said this is a bit too light (as in
not enough inputs).

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andrewheins
Nice. I created this exact same calculator in the spreadsheet I'm using for my
freelancing. It's kind of amusing how few knobs there are to twiddle for
freelancing.

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shanelja
£10 per hour... not bad.

I love the simplicity of this, it's definitely a lot easier than thinking
about it myself.

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citricsquid
There's no situation where you should ever be charging so little! That's only
just minimum wage.

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shanelja
I make 50% of minimum wage in my professional full time job as a PHP web
developer in the UK, so at this moment in time, "only just minimum wage" looks
pretty darn good.

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JohnLBevan
My guess is he's a self employed guy without the contracts coming in, or
employed PHP web developer who also works in the evenings & weekends for a
fixed annual salary which is then taxed?

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shanelja
I answered this in the comment below yours :)

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kirchhoff
Love the simplicity of the design.

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dsirijus
Interesting, it has provided me with the exact value I am charging right now
($33).

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255martyn
Great job on the site! I love sites that look great and work well like this.

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yycom
What am I supposed to do?

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tambourine_man
Doesn't work on the iPhone. Can't read left text boxes.

