vincevincevince - 12:07 pm on Apr 8, 2009 (gmt 0)

Blimey!

140 hours a month is 1680 a year; or 32 hours a week: 6 and a half hours a day Mon-Fri. Adding on 25% for your overhead time (invoicing, billing, maintaining facilities, buying consumables, being on call 24/7... etc) and that's a healthy 8 hour a day job equivalent to a full time 9-5 grind.

Now, what do you think they should be paying you to provide the equivalent of full-time webmaster services? Most certainly it should be at least 25% more than they would have to pay someone in-house; because they don't have to pay for your medical insurance, sick leave, liability insurance, payroll overheads, office space, computer equipment, redundancy / notice payments, etc. etc. That means when they pay you $28k it's the equivalent to them of paying at most $22.5k to someone in the office.

Do you think, given your location and their requirements, they could find a suitably skilled full-time webmaster able to understand their site inside out, as well as administer their server 24/7, by offering a pay of $23k a year? If it were doubled, to $46k? Doubled again to $92k getting close yet?