I'm curious to know what people feel is a fair rate for a PHP programmer to charge. Usually the rates I charge locally are in the $50-$100/hr range depending on how busy I am at that moment. Higher rates for the times I'm busier. It usually works out well for both the client and myself. Trying to charge the same rates online get me laughed at, insulted or ignored. What's the going oline rate for an experianced PHP developer these days?
It depends where you go online I think. Some places everyone competes for the lowest possible bid and then you're looking at anywhere from the $20-35/hr range, though I've seen some people go as low as $15. Other places you can show work you've done and charge in the range you're doing locally. It just depends where you're trying to pickup work. Doing work for people around here can be a good thing as well since there is a lot of it available, especially if you're fairly skilled at it. A good reference here can go a long way.
I won't say where, but I've seen even lower than $15/hr quotes offered. As Bazkaz said, it depends on your market. I work with small businesses mostly, some strictly online but most are expanding their BnM business to the web when they call, so I don't really have the 'price wars' problem. Also, my company charges by the job which helps to circumvent any hourly wage negotiations with clients. My best suggestion, is expand what you're doing locally to a larger area, then larger and larger, etc. until you're global. That's how my company began. We started by dealing with local clients only, then expanded our marketing and networking to a state wide level, then national... you get the picture. If you're good and reliable, and keep your target market the same but just expand the reach you shouldn't have to worry about lowering prices to keep busy. Scott
Normally I don't program for money, I program to improve my skills and help out people, it just makes me feel good. So I normally charge only $8~$10 per hour, helping with charity and church websites, school websites, etc. Don't know if that helps. Julian
For the people here I give a HUGE discount in my programming, but generally I would charge a client $30-$40 an hour depending on what the project was.
People from east-europe & india often work for $200-$250 a month! And they work hard, often > 12 hours a day. The bad side is that you're not in the same time zone and many of them deliver bad work so you really have to search hard and ask for examples of their work.. Try f.e. scriptlance/elance/getacoder.
I hired an onsite programmer for a company I managed for $12.00/hr. CAD. He was pretty good, but unreliable, but got the jobs done nevertheless.
You go much lower than $15 an hour and you will be emailing someone like me to fix the code. Happens at least twice a day for me. One poor dude got this huge system, all requiring register_globals and magic quotes! WTF! Just estimations, good idea from this: People that are just lazy and pumping out code without truly debugging: Less than $8 Newbies who just read a few tutorials: $10 Newbies with good starter education: $15 Newbies with good starter education and some experience: $20 Moderdate experience: $25 Elite in all things php and related: $25+ (I have seen as high as $65/hr., but that was before the economy hit the fan.) php, java, javascript, flash, ect: This guy is expensive, but bad a55. Looking at the $120 /hr range. This is who the big dogs hire. He works as well as 15 indians and his software rocks. I try to keep it competitive as best I can, but with the thoroughness and quality I give, I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I went lower all the time, though I give discounts and such to returning customers and my prepaid packages are a good deal...lots of buyers on those. But really it depends on the market dude, just gotta feel it out. AND REMEMBER: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR IN ALL THINGS! You get paid for knowledge, not output. That is just how the american economy works. Don't know about elsewhere. I had friends that graduated with their associates and got a contract for $80K /year off the bat for some of the big dogs. So, it truly depends on your attention to detail, work ethic, and knowledge level. Example indian code: BAD!! YOU WILL BE HACKED!! That is $8 /hr work. Not kidding you. After I repaired: There is the price difference. The second is secure and stable and php5+ friendly.
Yea, you will figure out over time, paying less for coding get's you less. I generally charge about $25-$40/hr online depending on the person and what they have at hand. Offline, I charge about $80/hr. I like fixed payouts however because you can hide and sometimes charge more even though the client doesn't realize it. However just on dp in particular, you wil find a lot of low-class programmers dragging down prices, so people expect high quality designers to work for that price & it just doesn't work that way. You will also find trends in personality, usually go hand in hand with trends of their wallets. If you're dealing with someone that has bad english, or types awkwardly, I wouldn't expect them to have much, but that's just me; it might not be good generally, but I think it's great to be very judgemental (don't be forward about it) of a cleint when you first speak to him, based on jobs in the past of coarse.
Crap, I didnt even see the post date on those. How the heck did I find this old a55 thread? lmao But just to add-on, seems that 95% of people here want something at nearly no cost. Not a good place to find work, imho. We are expected to give top-knotch code, yet they give us enough money to barely feed our selves, let alone our families.
haha, oh well. I was pretty interested to see this thread! Contributing to it -- I usually charge $25.00/hour for php work and anytime I have to learn something new, it's off the clock.
i am looking for a decent coder....contact me on messenger/skype fixing a social networking script...lots of work...but none of it difficult -- mostly adding to the db and code that exists