

How much to ask for as Freelance dev? - Apane

So, I have a project that I&#x27;ve been working on for the last 3 months and I&#x27;ve been paid $40&#x2F;hr at around 40 hours a week.<p>However, I had to split that with the designer I&#x27;ve been working with, as I&#x27;m strictly backend, so it&#x27;s clear that I wasn&#x27;t making nearly as much as my job demands.<p>The 3 month contract is now up and they&#x27;d like to continue working with myself and the designer even after launch. In other-words, they&#x27;d like to sign us to a 12 month contract&#x2F;yearly agreement and have us on fulltime.<p>At $20&#x2F;hr each it&#x27;s not worth it, but I&#x27;m thinking about purposing an $80&#x2F;hr, 40 hours a week agreement. So that we&#x27;re both making $40&#x2F;hr each as we should be.<p>Is this reasonable? It is to me, considering there&#x27;s no benefits, dental, etc...<p>Thoughts?
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techjuice
Can you provide more information?

Location (You, client and designer (City, State)), programming language and
frameworks.

Is this simple or advanced work in your opinion?

You will need to add money to cover the following and should have different
rates for your designer depending on the level of effort, experience they have
and the skill set required.

You need to get paid for: Taxes, food, rent/mortgage, gas, vacation, medical,
dental, sick days, vision, savings, rainy day money, retirement, investments,
entertainment, software, hardware, an accountant, other businesses expenses
and any other things you may want or need for your job. So these should be
added to that final rate that you charge the client per individual.

Since they want to take you on full time I recommend forming a business (at
least an L.L.C.) and have your designer and anyone else you need as a
contractor or employee to you. This would allow you to hire more people and
get a higher rate than what you are receiving now along with more flexibility
in growing with the client.

I recommend creating a chart with all of your current and possible future
expenses for an entire year so you can get a better look at where the money
will disappear too. As there might be some things that are now showing up for
you now that you might only see when you have everything in front of you.

For your contract I recommend preparing things to take to a business lawyer
first by breaking it down into separate projects and pay rates for you vs the
designer. This can be the same rate if you want it to be but normally someone
doing development/engineering/programming/architecture work is paid a higher
amount than someone doing design unless it is high end design(architectural
drawings, advanced 3D simulations, etc.).

Work up a summary of work along with official documentation on what is
expected for each role, the minimum hours per week, business hours, what you
require from the client and milestone deadlines, what the penalty costs are if
deadlines are not reached or required information is not given, along with
wording on an agreement for changes that occur and what the cost of said
changes are after x amount of time. Do you supply your own hardware, or will
the client supply it for you. As depending on what is required you may be
classified by law as an employee of the company or a contractor, which you
will need to check with an attorney about.

Once you have a draft ready have an attorney take a look over what you have so
you can make sure you are covered legally with the business your are working
with along with any of your contractors. Also take a look at the rates of
people along with their benefits on popular salary sites so you can get a
better idea of what your rate and your designers rate should be set at.

~~~
Apane
Fantastic advice. Thank you.

To answer your questions:

My Location: Toronto, ON. Client: Orange County, CA. Designer: San Fran,
CA/Bangaldesh India (he's back and forth).

Combined Programming Language/Framework exp: Rails 4.0, Ruby 2.0, JavaScript,
JQuery, CSS3, HTML5, AJAX, Vast understanding of web architecture (http,
TCP/IP etc...)

The work itself is quite advanced compared to other projects I've worked on. I
feel a bit strange boosting the hourly rate up double but the reality is,
taking a project like this on fulltime I need to make sure that my needs are
met/covered.

~~~
techjuice
Those are extremely in demand and high paying skills. For that area (Orange
County, CA) the average salary with benefits is ~$100,000/year+ for a Ruby on
Rails Developer.

You can use sites like indeed.com and salary.com to get an average, but
depending on your skill level: beginner (journeyman), intermediate, senior,
expert or master you may be better placed in the top percentile or higher. For
now since you may be starting out going with an average of what you find on
indeed.com/salary and salary.com

I recommend reading up on rates of employee vs contractor, as contractors will
bring in more than an employee since they have to pay costs that are normally
covered by an employer. Read [http://www.salary.com/pay-yourself-right-when-
being-your-own...](http://www.salary.com/pay-yourself-right-when-being-your-
own-boss/) and [http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/salary-
info...](http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/salary-
information/how-much-should-contractors-charge/article.aspx) for more details.
I also recommend searching glassdoor.com for senior software engineer and
senior consultant.

As one mistake you and your designer would not enjoy and could not change if
it is in black and white is getting what your worth and cover all of your
expenses + personal money for entertainment and the big rainy day. It does
feel strange raising that rate but for a Senior Ruby on Rails developer
contractor the going rate in major metro areas is around $150/hour to
$250/hour or more depending on your specialty. If you want to play it safe I
would recommend doing some more research on RoR developers salaries/contractor
rate to get an average and move it up or down depending on what your expenses
are and how much left over money you would be happily comfortable with after
expenses and taxes.

Here in the USA as a contractor your in the highest tax bracket so pulling in
a gross of salary of $350,000/year+ is not unreasonable as you will net 50% of
that (around $175,000) or less depending on your businesses and tax expenses.
Just be careful with the amount as you have to be careful that your being paid
a fair rate to take care of yourself. If your really good you should be
compensated very nicely for it.

