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Not sure why you consider this such a touchy subject that you had to do it anonymously. Charging money for your services and skills is not a bad thing. I've rarely done software development contracting, but I spent several years as an IT contractor (with a lot of scripting, and simple web-based UI work to make it possible for non-technical people to carry on when I've gone). I started at $95/hour, and by the end was quoting $150/hour with a four hour minimum for off-site work, and eight hour minimum plus expenses for on-site work (with a $1000/day discount rate for multiple days). Most of my development work over the years has been product-focused, wherein no one client paid for the whole thing. I would build as generally as possible, retain ownership, and sell the result to many customers. I wasn't very good at this for the first five years or so, however, and ended up doing a lot of development for pennies on the dollar. I would talk to a potential customer, they'd say, "We wish your products could do X and Y." and I'd think, "Yeah, I bet a lot of people would like that", and would offer to provide it for some ridiculously low price ($199, or whatever) as a plugin for my existing product line...spend two or three weeks working on it (and sometimes money for icons, design, other developers, etc.) and then never sell another copy of that plugin. I suggest not doing that. |