Ask HN: How much?

I am using an anonymous account for this post. Indeed, I registered this account solely for the purpose of this post. Sorry, pg.

I have been freelancing for almost a decade, and I still never know what to say when a prospective client asks me this question.

Given that I have always worked alone, and given that I have never talked to anyone about this topic openly, my response has always been based on personal intuition. Now I wonder if I am underselling myself.

I am not sure if this is a taboo topic among hackers, but my impression is that such a thing does not really exist. But given that I don't know any hackers who freelance personally, I have a real need for getting some more datapoints. If I don't know what others are billing, and I therefore bill significantly less out of my own ignorance and misestimation of effort, I reduce the average price at which others are able to charge. The compound effect of this is tha we are all running like hamsters on wheels for very little money.

Between 16 and 21, I made 5 to 10 HTML-only websites for between $2,000 and $5,000. I also made 3 to 5 flash-based intros/websites for between $5,000 and $20,000.

At 21, I made a .NET-based windows desktop app for $50,000.

At 24, I wrote a RoR web-based app for $100,000.

These were all freelance projects built by me from scratch while doing HS and Uni.

Does anyone else feel like sharing what they billed for contract projects (not subcontracting gigs, client-direct only -- before any type of broker takes their cut)? It doesn't have to be something you did personally. Maybe you know what the company you worked for billed for developing a specific type of app. The results will only be interesting if we get numerous data points, and the best way to motivate more responses is to respond yourself.

assuming that your .net and RoR app took less than a year to finish and you're not killing yourself with the hours (around 40/wk), it sounds like you're doing fine.

The problem with billing by the hour is that developer performance varies by a factor of 10x or more, whereas hourly fees vary by about 5x. And most clients would not feel comfortable playing $250-$300/hour unless there was some way for them to justify it. (i.e. more people involved, despite the fact that they may do nothing). Besides, why charge per hour? If I solve your problem, what does it matter how long it took me to do it?

I was not saying that you should charger per hour. I was asking that the numbers you floated will make more sense if you can provide how much time you spent on each of those projects. For example: you mentioned $100k on RoR project. This number will make more sense if you mention whether it took you 1000 hours or 10000 hours or maybe 3 months or 3 years.

150,000/yr (~75/hr) is low.