A minor success in my sideline provides great joy

[rayinpenn]

I get a call from a lady in another part of the country for me to fix some code that her late husband had written years ago. There’s a problem though- she’s a Mac user and I write in Windows. I do some research and yes the program should run the same (I discover not always). We talk a bit and I discover she’s used another guy on the website portion at $150 per hour. I look at the site and it’s pretty simple (yikes I charge $50 an hour).

I write the the first portion for testing and say 4 hours to do the job. In reality it will likely take 8 hours but I refuse to charge her for my learning Apple/pc differences. Plus I walk away with another skill. We have a couple iterations and do some debugging on the phone and late yesterday afternoon send her the latest version. Within 20 minutes she sends back a email. ‘Yay it’s working’.
I am overjoyed as I wondered could I pull it off.

In the midst of all this a prior client calls has me on the phone for 1/2 hour and I then write a little ditty for him send him the code and bill one hour. Based on the feedback from this forum I bill if I’m teaching on Goto meeting or WebEx (sharing screens).

In all this I am reminded I like helping people, solving problems and being productive. I think I’d get just as much joy from working in Lowe’s helping people with plumbing problems.

Yesterday was a busy day for this retiree -today it’s raining I think I deserve a double nap.

 

[Red Badger]

I try for a ~20 minute nap every day. However, with our recent regional move, naps have lately been rare as hen's teeth.

 

[rayinpenn]

I try for a ~20 minute nap every day. However, with our recent regional move, naps have lately been rare as hen's teeth.

++ Get those cat naps in!

 

[dixonge]

I get a call from a lady in another part of the country for me to fix some code that her late husband had written years ago. There’s a problem though- she’s a Mac user and I write in Windows. I do some research and yes the program should run the same (I discover not always). We talk a bit and I discover she’s used another guy on the website portion at $150 per hour. I look at the site and it’s pretty simple (yikes I charge $50 an hour).

I did about 2 years of web dev (2013-2014) and slowly upped my hourly rate as I gained experience. I was often fixing things other, higher-rate people had done. Mostly I did package deals. I remember when my first $1000 job accepted my proposal -- was both elating and scary!

Keep up the good work

 

[rayinpenn]

I did about 2 years of web dev (2013-2014) and slowly upped my hourly rate as I gained experience. I was often fixing things other, higher-rate people had done. Mostly I did package deals. I remember when my first $1000 job accepted my proposal -- was both elating and scary!



Keep up the good work

I google it
“Reasonably skilled freelance web designers make about $75 per hour. This figure can vary though, according to CSS-Tricks. Website Builder Expert estimates that the cost to design a website is $30 to $80 per hour and the cost to develop it is $100 to $180 per hour.”
I feel bad ...

 

[target2019]

I did about 2 years of web dev (2013-2014) and slowly upped my hourly rate as I gained experience. I was often fixing things other, higher-rate people had done. Mostly I did package deals. I remember when my first $1000 job accepted my proposal -- was both elating and scary!

Keep up the good work

Yes, congrats to Ray.

If the hourly rate is too low, bottom feeders may appear too frequently. Not in this case, but it is something to consider for future requests.

One thing that helped me simplify the quote process was to have an initial rate (say $90/hr for hour 1) and then have a lower rate for additional hours (say $75). I also instituted a minimum total charge of 3 hours ($240).

Customers get hung up on hourly rates. As we know, if you can produce a perfect fix in 1 hour, you're not the $25/hr offshore solution. So one can charge accordingly for being responsive and accurate.

You walk a fine line with each customer. If a potential does not understand what an experienced programmer can do, then you may not want that business.

But for now it is all good!