Undead_Hunter - 5:56 pm on Feb 2, 2004 (gmt 0)

Antsaint:

I agree - I'm sorry I used the word "cheap". What I meant to get across to those from India and those using outsourcing is that both sides need to consider what is a good wage "over there".

I'm just afraid that Indian firms who are new to this will make the same mistake I made at first, and one I see happening in the lower end of this industry, which is that they're not charging enough long-term. So, if they're charging $7 US an hour, maybe they should really be charging $18 or more...

Outsourcing might be a bit different, though. According to the Brenner Book (which I re-read for clarity last night), the average one-person shop has about 30% productivity.

That means 60% of your time is spend looking for work, and 10% on "paperwork", answering email, etc.

So - you need to base your hourly rate on that 30% time, and NOT on 100%. Therefore, if you plan to make $50k, which is around the industry average for webmastering in the corporate world - that's $24 an hour. BUT you'll only be able to work 1/3 of the time...

So you really need to be charging $72 an hour!

That's a VERY simple concept that I think the majority of us don't take into effect.

When you have a partner, things change. Your partner can be as much as 75% effective... they do the work while you do the marketing. That brings the productivity up to 50% from 30%. So you can adjust accordingly...

Of course, the alternative to charging more is that you work 15-16 hour days - spend the daylight hours looking for work, and the night time do the work you get... who wants to work too hard for too little money? How long can you do it before you start to burn out?

Hunter