PHP work - what to charge? (1 Viewer)

[plug]

I'm curious.

I've been doing a fair bit of PHP work in web projects recently, alongside the usual design/markup side of things; but I've been offered a bit of a PHP specific project now and it got me to thinking about what kind of rates are reasonable for PHP work. specifically I'm going to be creating an image gallery that will be implemented into an existing site, so I'll be using the GD library a fair bit; I was working on this type of thing recently on an ill fated project so I already have a few classes developed for uploading, cropping, resizing and saving images. which is handy.

so a few of you guys are PHP heads on here; what thinkst youze? cheers!

 

[Bladez]

Hey Plug. Just my tuppence worth...

I'd say 30-40 euro/hour. Charge per hour so you don't get shafted. Clients will come back with new requests if you charge a flat rate.

Some things to watch out for so you don't get burnt :
- Get a specification down early with the client and treat it as a contract. Try to get it as detailed as possible. This is so the client can't turn around at the end and claim that its not what he wanted (which happens a lot).
- Show iterations of your work to the client just in case there are problems in conception. Its easier to catch problems early.
- Don't try to reinvent the wheel. If there is some open source stuff out there that does what you need use it/canibalise it. I'd imagine the image gallery problem has a lot of hours of development and experience behind it so see what's out there before writing your own.

Good luck with it!

 

[plug]

hey Bladez, thanks for that. that's more than I thought actually. I'll know the next time! I just ended up giving a time estimate and a flat hourly rate of €20.

good advice regarding a spec and open source stuff as well; the spec is actually pretty clear in this case, which is probably unusual. as for plugins etc., I'll be including the usual lightbox functionality; there are loads of lightbox plugins out there which is cool. and I'm looking into client-side image cropping. hello yahoo ui. the amount of deadly shit out there now is great.

anyway, thanks again!

 

[egg_]

When I was freelancing fulltime 2 years ago I always charged €50 an hour, and if I was doing it now I'd charge more. I'm a pretty hardcore php guy (been making a living at it since 2000), but 20 quid an hour is insanely cheap unless you're not very good

 

[Bladez]

Nice one with the 50 euro/hour rate. I wish I'd had the balls to charge that. I'd tend to undersell myself just to guarantee getting the work. I'd always the fear that if I asked for 50/hour they'd take their business elsewhere.

 

[plug]

yeah. dunno... maybe I'm not. I'm not that experienced. it's something I've been quite dedicated to in the last year though, and I really like working with php since the oop improvements in version 5. but I haven't had much pure php programming work come my way and that kind of work seems pretty rare here in cork so I have no idea of rates etc. and I was kind of put on the spot about a rate last night; hence the question. thanks for the insight anyway, it's good to get a bit of perspective. in other words, I won't be charging €20 next time

 

[plug]

Nice one with the 50 euro/hour rate. I wish I'd had the balls to charge that. I'd tend to undersell myself just to guarantee getting the work. I'd always the fear that if I asked for 50/hour they'd take their business elsewhere.

I think I'm quoting against another guy as well actually, which kind of gave me the fear.. I didn't want to overprice myself. it's hard to prove yourself when you don't have a hell of a lot of prior work...

 

[Bladez]

20/hour for your first job is fine. It decreases the pressure on you since they are getting you on discount and they are less in a position to demand lots.