What is a fair hourly charge for routine site updates?

Question

What do you consider a fair, yet profitable hourly wage for routine updates/management (ie - information, maintenance, database management) for your average site?

What factors do you use to set that rate?

As a reference...I usually quote around $25/hour...am I getting ripped?

EDIT: Initially I was hoping for this to be a good reference for people in general as well...but since it was asked - I am in the Tucson, AZ area.

Answer 1

It mainly depends on where/who your working for. If you have to update it often with lots of information then charge what you normally would. If it is a one time thing, charge a little bit more than what you normally would.

P.S. When in doubt about how much to charge... overcharge! $$$

;-)

Answer 2

Take the thousands part of what you would consider to be an acceptable annual salary and double or triple it; this becomes your hourly rate. I'd start with tripling it (or more), and going down from there. You're better off to come in with a high quote and work your way down, because (a) raising your rate is a lot harder than lowering it; and (b) the client will feel happier when they've worked you down a bit because they feel like they're getting a deal.

So, $25/hr works out to you being happy making $12k/year.

Start off by telling them that you usually quote $100/hr (or whatever you feel comfortable with), and if they balk at that, follow it up with something like, "But since I really like working for you and want your business, I'll drop down 10% right off the bat."

Don't feel bad like you're overcharging them -- as long as you do good work for what you get paid, both you and your customer will benefit. It's tough to walk into a conference room and ask for what you feel is a shocking amount of money, but this is because most geeks (myself included!) have a habit to think we're worth less than we really are.

And, who knows, you might actually get the higher rate that you quote.

Answer 3

This is kind of an open ended question with a lot of 'well, you could do', but generally speaking you will find a fairly typical formula (plenty of variation in amount of days and hours below, so choose based on your own guidelines):

Take 214 days (work days per year after holidays, vacation, sick time, etc.). Take 8 hours a day. Multiply the two. That's your total work hours per year. Take the amount of money you want to make/feel you are worth per year based on your skillset or market value. Divide that number by your total hours per year. That's your rate.

You can also adjust for profit/taxes, etc. or quantity of work (e.g. a maintenance contract vs. normal freelance hours).

Remember, time is time, regardless of what you are doing.

Answer 4

I think $25 / hr is a very low quote, although this also depends on your experience, what your actually doing, and where you live. I've been with companies that jump at finding a good person to outsource under $50.

What is fair, is the most ammount of money the client is willing to fork over without feeling like they've been ripped off. How do you find this number? Well I don't know. Something I've seen which works preety well is where a company buys a block of hours in bulk, then they can tap the resource at will until the hours are drained.

Edit

Keep in mind, if you have other work which you can make more money off of you need to drop them as a client or raise the rate. Don't raise an existing customers rate too much unless your willing to risk loosing them.

If you do drop them I'd recommend doing it as professionally as possible, you never know what the future will hold

Answer 5

IMO for maintenance I guess it depends a lot on your skills/experience and the responsibilities the client would trust you on. i.e. a wealthy client would probably prefer spending 10x money on something that would be done just perfectly as expected without even have to double check it was done whereas a little company would prefer saving money and spending more time supervising ...

If you want a precise answer you would need to say where you are located, rates are very different from place to place !