Freelance Rates for HTML/JavaScript/CSS Development

I'm graduating this June with a Bachelor's degree in Information Engineering Technology. I will be doing some freelance work involving HTML/JavaScript/CSS however I'm puzzled at what rate I should charge. I'm thinking $17/hr is this too high or to low for a new programmer?

Thank you so much for your input and helping me out.

What do you value yourself as?

Thats the rate I would go with. HTML/CSS and JavaScript aren't really the hardest fields to find coders for so you have to take that into consideration. Those 3 alone you can't do much in a real world situation. You should try to get a Server Side language in there and learn how to use all 4 areas effectively together.

That is if you want to be a developer rather than just coding designs etc..

How much experience do you have? You should compare your total product versus industry standards for your market.

If this will be your primary source of income you will need to charge a lot more to account for things like taxes, supplies, etc. If this is side work then you don't have to worry about that so much.

So the real questions are, what is the average hourly rate for the market you will be pursuing, and how do your skills rate compared to industry professionals. After you know this it's easy. If it takes you twice as long as it would a professional, you need to charge half as much, and so on.

For example, my market is local clients. Local designers and programmers go for $75 to $100 per hour. Now you have to take into consideration what a potential client gets for that one hour. An experienced HTML/CSS coder may be able to code an entire page in one hour where it may take someone with less experience 3 or 4. If people expect 1 page to be coded for $100 maximum and it takes you 4 hours to finish it, you should consider charging $25 per hour because you lack the experience it would take to finish in the same time a more experience coder could finish.