When you code HTML/CSS...

Well as far the discussion goes... i charge $20 per page which takes me around 4 hrs to code.... going through the competition i would increase my rates as i go one improving my skills.... i have come across websites which charge more than 100$ per page for xhtml/css pages and they r doing pretty good too....

Regards

So how would someone go about dividing overhead into the hourly rate and still make things fair for customers? Overhead costs such as software...

I used to code in what ever made things work right in IE + FF when I was coding specificly for myself and not freelancing. Plus I've coded for years using tables to manage images. I understand that is not they're ordinal purpose but I don't understand why it's looked down upon.

Anyway, I have recently started freelancing for a few people on MSN. So I've began cleaning up my code and making it all Valid Strict XHTML/CSS and also been practicing on making my code tableless.

As far as an hourly rate, I'm very new to freelance and taking each project as a learning experience. So I'm only charging about $10/hr because It's taking me like 4-6 hours as I am taking it slow and reading sites as I do it to learn the best ways.

As far as images go, lets say you had ringtonegurus.com to code... Would you remove the buttons and slice the image as a background for a div then put div's inside it with the buttons? Or would you slice it into several bits? (Like they have apparently done.)

Originally Posted by Jeff Andersen So how would someone go about dividing overhead into the hourly rate and still make things fair for customers? Overhead costs such as software...

Julian, did you have a chance to see this? Would like to know how you do it, as well as the others who do this for a main job (Seen.to?).

Would this thread help you Jeff?:

http://www.talkfreelance.com/showthread.php?t=13899

Okay, so it's more of an estimate than anything? Just a fair guess at what would be reasonable to put on each client for your overhead.

I don't charge hourly as such but usually have around $100-200 per project. Broken down its about:

$46 an hour. Judging I take around 3 hours per design (even if its complex)

I work for cheaper aswell doing around $40 a design for some people.

Like 45 for complete valid xhtml / css. Delivery is usually under 2 hours, my latest project took about 20 minutes.
Zack

Originally Posted by Jeff Andersen So how would someone go about dividing overhead into the hourly rate and still make things fair for customers? Overhead costs such as software...

There are two ways to think about this. One is figuring out what you absolutely need to make a month to live and then what you'd like to make in a year. Then coming up with an hourly rate.

The other way is to come up with an hourly rate based on what you need to make and then mark-up every project 20% or something to that effect.

When I quote projects, I always pad a few hours in for overheads/extra costs and the time I spend on discovery and proposal writing.