What should be the fee of a freelancer?

[Parvesh Khatri]

Hi everyone,

I created a project for a person (kinda client),

I made a JS program to compare(data in two or more google sheets) and insert data into Google Sheets.

I don't have any idea about how much money should I ask him/her?

Please help!

[Stahlmann]

You'll have to evaluate how much your time is worth and how long it took.

[Parvesh Khatri]

29 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

You'll have to evaluate how much your time is worth and how long it took.

The client only gave 2 days, I did it in time. I worked 6-8 hrs

[Avocado Diaboli]

Basically, take what it cost you to make it and sell that. That includes the time and labor you spent plus any significant expenses on your part to get the job done. For comparison, take whatever you earn at your job and calculate the hourly wage you earn. Say your wage is $20 (just for illustration purposes), for 8 hours you've invested $160 of your time and effort, so that's what you should charge. Include any time spent on meetings about the product as well as any time spent demonstrating the result or teaching someone how to use it as well. If it's a one-off thing, you can leave it at that.

 

But if you intend to do this more often, you also need to consider all the other expenses attached to it. For example electricity. If your PC was using 300 W for the entire time it took to create, that's 2400 Wh. That's not significant enough to include in the bill for this one-time job because a kWh is a couple of cents in most places, but if you scale up the operation, you'll need to consider that. Same thing with other utilities as well as the rent you pay for your place. You're using your space not just to live but also as a place of work, therefore it's reasonable to also include that in your calculation. And last but not least, also consider any type of insurance or even pension funds if you want to do this full time. You don't need to break this down on the invoice, but simply keep that in mind. Also, since you're using your own PC for that, calculate the cost of the PC and for how long you might want to use it. That way, you know the rate of amortization of the equipment, which you can also include in your fees.

 

Basically, you need to make sure that everything that you've used in the process of making the product is somehow accounted for by the fee you're demanding, otherwise you're paying for that out of your own pocket. That's why the typical fee you pay for a contractor isn't just their wage, but also to pay for everything they used while they were doing the job you gave them.

[Sauron]

This is something you should have discussed and agreed upon with the client in advance... I'd say 200$ might be fair?

[wasab]

$150ish USD per hour if you are a solid and experienced consultant whom the company outsourced the project to. Most company usually hired contract workers at a much lower rate and develop softwares in house though.