NYCPHP Meetup

[Brent Baisley]

You've gotten a lot of could advice on this tough question. There are a 
lot of people with poor programming practices who are very confident and 
charge very little. I can't tell you how many MS Access based systems 
I've replaced. Not that Access is bad, it just seems the wizards were 
used to create the systems.

What I tend to do is put a cap on the hours I will charge or even offer 
a flat fee. Most of the $20 hour people aren't willing to do that, or if 
they do, will hit the cap and drop the project. Of course, this requires 
a well defined project scope which can be tough to do when people don't 
know what they want. But if you can strictly define the scope, you can 
also provide a completion date up front. The client needs to be able to 
compare the proposals and see that yours is much more complete than the 
low baller's.

I always make sure I "give" them something. Initial analysis is free is 
they grant the project to me, otherwise I charge them an analysis rate. 
I submit $0.00 invoices for things I do outside the scope of the 
project, like troubleshooting a printing problem for a user. If this 
happens a lot, you can start charging them. At the very least you show 
them your other talents.

I picked up a number of clients who have me come in on a regular basis 
for preventive maintenance. In one sense I am one of those $20/hour 
people, but that's what I charge for updating virus definitions.


On Monday, January 20, 2003, at 12:03 PM, Edward Potter wrote:

>  I was just wondering what the going rate for freelance (NYC) PHP
> programmers was? I have a client that says she is getting scores of
> resumes where guys are charging less then $20 an hour. I had assumed it
> was about $40 - $50 these days.
--
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577