Here's the thing with project rates - I'm obsessive with clocking time. I clock everything, every second. Sometimes you bid on a project where you say to yourself "oh yea! I'm getting $300/hr for this" but what happens is as it drags on you try to clock less time to justify the rate and just start guesstimating. In reality if you clock meetings, calls, time responding to emails, documentation, research, project planning etc the rate always ends up being much, much lower. Its not just time coding.
Anyhow not saying that's your situation, but I think a lot of people who claim high rates forget about non-production hours when they make their project quotes.
But having Java and Perl skills are definitely more valuable than just PHP... And yes, having established, stable and valuable clients with big $$ over the long term certainly helps.
My personal big issue was that I deliberately dropped all my clients from pre recession times to work on a startup and then had to find new work in 2009, to my dismay discovering that half my old clients either went out of business or couldn't afford me any longer... Keeping relationships up really matters.
Oh huh. That is interesting, because I was always convinced I can never charge too little here when I need a lot of money to begin with to live in such an area. (Just the other day I found out my health insurance company was going to charge me $100/month more...almost making me consider getting a job instead or finishing school...)
> Here's the thing with project rates - I'm obsessive with clocking time. I clock everything, every second.
I am too ;) I use Billings or Harvest (depending on where I'm working) to time everything obsessively. I don't actually bill anyone based on purely the time, but it gives me a sense of how much time it took me to do certain things because if I end up spending way too much time hand-holding a client then something needs to change. DO NOT get into the habit of not clocking things like responding to client emails (other than like short one liner type things) and whatever, because you are right...it can be a huge time suck, and it's hard to estimate how much time that will end up taking. Whoever originally came up with the idea of quoting in excess of what you really think it is time and money wise was smart ;)
> But having Java and Perl skills are definitely more valuable than just PHP... And yes, having established, stable and valuable clients with big $$ over the long term certainly helps.
I don't even really know that much Perl...Java I learned in school, I'm trying to do more Cocoa/Mac/iPhone/(iPad?) stuff now that the iPhone has really kicked that off because I wasn't really doing anything with it since I had first played with cocoa/objc in like 2005-6...I know bits and pieces. I usually won't take on a job involving something I don't know much about, but my scattered knowledge does come in handy as I can be extremely flexible in getting things done the way people want them. So yeah, if PHP is your only skill, you should branch out if at least to be qualified for more jobs out there.
Established clients are far more important, and I'm sorry to hear that :( I'm trying to work on a startup right now, but it's hard because I have to pay my own bills, cofounder can't quit her job yet, and other such little things... But keeping up relationships, if only to have lunch and say hi, is a good thing to do with your best clients. It's a tough time for everyone right now and has been for a while, don't worry :)
Here's the thing with project rates - I'm obsessive with clocking time. I clock everything, every second. Sometimes you bid on a project where you say to yourself "oh yea! I'm getting $300/hr for this" but what happens is as it drags on you try to clock less time to justify the rate and just start guesstimating. In reality if you clock meetings, calls, time responding to emails, documentation, research, project planning etc the rate always ends up being much, much lower. Its not just time coding.
Anyhow not saying that's your situation, but I think a lot of people who claim high rates forget about non-production hours when they make their project quotes.
But having Java and Perl skills are definitely more valuable than just PHP... And yes, having established, stable and valuable clients with big $$ over the long term certainly helps.
My personal big issue was that I deliberately dropped all my clients from pre recession times to work on a startup and then had to find new work in 2009, to my dismay discovering that half my old clients either went out of business or couldn't afford me any longer... Keeping relationships up really matters.