Salary requirement for PHP Programmer

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LazyD

LazyD

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Dec 7, 2006
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Im looking at a contract position for a PHP programmer. Ive never really done freelance work for another company and im kind of stumped at what to put for a salary requirement. I was think $35 an hour - however, the web design company I work for now charges $135 an hour for programming(Thats ASP), I tend to think their prices are way over-inflated though...

Any opinions?
 


Depends on where you are. Seems low though. I worked as a contract C programmer 8 years ago in the Boston area for $35/hour. And that was low at the time. I would think you could get $50 easy if not more. Then again depends on the your experience and the level of the position. PHP is easy compared to C. :-)
 
I'm not a programmer... but I think you should ask other people in your city what the avg is, and if you're working as a private contractor/freelancer/consultant type, remember they are able to charge more than someone just working in-house.
 
Well as with most things a general bumbling programer isn't worth all that much. But the more niche you get and more niche experience you have the more you can charge.

As a php programmer you might be lucky to get 35-50$/hour but as a php programmer that understands seo and a little about production/design you might get 70-80$/hour. Now where you're going to get top dollar is when you can say "My specialty is coding automated PPC systems using the api or building bots, I can build scrapers to find good keywords, automate the uploading of those keywords and then automate the tracking to find which convert.... blah blah blah" you get the point the more specialized you are , especially with something that brings value to the company the more you're worth.

Also if you haven't chose a route to specialize in chose something that makes the company money.

General pays little, niche and specific pays a lot in most things. It becomes much easier to create a name for yourself that way as well. Oh you need someone to code an xyz system for you? Well everyone knows the best douchebag for that is Moose McGillicuty

P.S. Just like you know if you need an ebook promoted Jon's your go to guy..... What's that you have a get rich ebook you need to promote? Oh talk to Jon over there at WF!
 
Hi LazyD
My brother does this on the side in the UK and charges £40 per hour. Don't get me wrong he is good, but that is seen as very cheap. Most commercial companies will charge somewhere between £65 - £85 per hour. Hope that gives you an idea of where to kind of aim at; completely agree with Smaxor too about the more niche the better.

Darkwing
 
I do freelance web design in my city, mostly HTML/CSS/PHP. I charge $15/hr. I'm also a senior in highschool, so I'm not living off the pay. A web designer I interned for charged $90/hr and a guy my uncle introduced me to charged $225/hr.

In my case, the people I do web design for are not very tech savy. I'm sure I could charge them more if I wanted and they would pay it. Most people I've come in contact with view web design as a very complicated business, and are willing to throw money at their site until they think it looks good.

I would recommend hosting all your clients as well. I host most of mine and this provides some nice consistent income. They will pay more for the hosting than a traditional webmaster too.
 
It's getting harder to get a decent rate, especially with rentacoder being around. Unless you have a client that isn't interested in shopping around or have an extensive resume list of awesome work, getting more than $40-50 will be tough.
 
Thanks for all your opinions guys....

I really dont specialize in one thing, if I were to say one area of PHP I excelled in is database driven websites with admin backends, not very special I know...

Right now im working on a complete PHP Scheduling system for an ambulance company with built in credential tracking system... Is that anymore impressive?

I think im gonna stick with $35 an hour as a base and then see where it goes...
 
Don't forget to pad your rate by whatever your effective tax rate is. Otherwise, you're not truly earning $35/hr.
 
Im 19 (Im not saying age should be a factor, but is to some people) and im not 100% of my skills, right now I work for a web design company and im getting payed $15 an hour for HTML/CSS/Cleanup Design on cheap production sites that look like crap. Id love to get into PHP and if i have to take $35/hour then so be it, still more then im making here. Im going to submit my email with $35 an hour and ask if they would allow me to do it outside of my current working hours. Ive only been with the current company about a month but I dont want to jump ship yet if this contract PHP position doesnt give me enough hours...
 
LazyD said:
Im 19 (Im not saying age should be a factor, but is to some people) and im not 100% of my skills, right now I work for a web design company and im getting payed $15 an hour for HTML/CSS/Cleanup Design on cheap production sites that look like crap. Id love to get into PHP and if i have to take $35/hour then so be it, still more then im making here. Im going to submit my email with $35 an hour and ask if they would allow me to do it outside of my current working hours. Ive only been with the current company about a month but I dont want to jump ship yet if this contract PHP position doesnt give me enough hours...
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Just be careful that you don't bite off more than you can chew. Bid on projects that you KNOW you can manage. The worst thing you can do is say "yeah i can do it" and then realize that you're going to have to spend a huge amount of time learning new tricks, and potentially miss deadlines, etc.

If I were hiring someone to code for me, they better know what the f they are doing.

Good luck!
 
like comparing apples an zebras. Indians are all but worthless unless you can give them an exact thing to do like type a captcha. Next to that you'll spend more time explaining how to do shit to then programing it yourself.

Based on what you've shared I'd pay yah 20$/hour and not a dollar more. Sounds like you don't have production experience so you'll be learning alot at you go which == slow which also equals low pay. :D

Dealing with someone like yourself I'd go with per project until you learned all the interworkings of site design/dev/deply... Oooo that's kind of fun

*in his booming voice* "Until you learn the D Cubed strategy of site construction"
 
I have production experience but only with HTML/CSS crap. I have had a few web design clients that wanted some decently sized PHP stuff put into their sites.

I wish there was a way I could show the work ive done, especially in administrative backends and the inner workings of some of the stuff ive done, but since alot of it is being used on active sites I really cant...

For starters, im sure its not spectacular by a long shot but here are 2 of my own sites that are done in PHP/MySQL

Credit Cards for every situation - Browse our Credit Card Offers
States Realty - Realtor Directory by State & County

I also did Health First Training - CPR and First Aid Training for a client - It features dynamic paypal integration and the ability to edit all of the content on each page. The admin area includes pages to add/edit/delete content of each page, dynamically created rosters for each course he offers with the ability to add/edit/delete registerants and some other goodies...

BTW, this is for a contract position, its not like a freelance thing where I bid on the job, this is for on-going contract work.
 
engaged said:
I py about $4 to Apu in India and he works 18 hrs/day
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I think when you outsource there are three factors you look for.

1. Get the job done fast
2. Get the job done well
3. Get the job done cheap.

You can usually only get 2/3 also... So is apu taking forever or is he a shitty programmer?

I'd prefer to pay more to have the other two.
 
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