Thread

I have a question for England based freelancers or freelancer employers. I am a us based web developer that works for print shops, design shops and other web developers that either do not have in house programming skills or have an overflow of projects.  I have reached a level of success where I can not make any more without cloning myself.  I heard England is in need of developers and realized that the pound is worth nearly twice as much as the dollar.

Does anyone from England know if there are any opportunities for an offshore developer and what the going average hourly rate is for freelance work in the England market?
(Do not post what you make or what you pay I just want a general number)

The going rate in the US I believe is $35 to $50 depending on experiance.  This leads me to believe I could make $70 to $100 equivalent us dollars in England. The only problem would be how to market to England based companies and proving my skill level and ability to deliver.

Most of the time it depends on who you are working for. Many design agencies arn’t huge coperations and you have to take that into account. I’d say starting at £25 p/h as a good bench mark, and up your rates when you get a link with a company who can trust you.

I have done some freelance in the US and have earned much more than $35-$50/hr.  If you are good at what you do, you are selling yourself short at that price.

@Jamie - Thanks for the advice.  25 p/h would be the same I am making now so there would be no loss to try that route.  Since I actually charge on a project by project proposal basis and not hourly increasing my rates could be gradually done.  BTW…I caught your podcast earlier today I posted a comment.

@Thurting - Is the work you did straight to consumer or to another web developer that has to resell your work?  Even though I have been doing this for 5 years I still have a hard time knowing the value of my work.  Being a freelancer does not allow you to benchmark yourself against co-workers or peers or get a feeling for the value of your work in the market.

Thanks for the feedback.  I wish there was a website that has information on the going average rates for web development in different markets and locations.

The majority of the freelance work I have done in the past has been for creative agencies.  While I couldn’t give you any firm numbers, I know that most of that work was delivered to clients at a higher price than that paid to me.  However, I also know that in some cases the client billings were equal to mine, and the agency in question did not turn a profit and may have actually lost money.  Usually this happens if the agency does not have in house web resources, has an existing client who wants to expand to the web, and wants to appease that client to keep the account.  Regarding rate, the number also depends on what services you offer.  If all you are doing is writing PHP code, then $35-50 may be reasonable.  With the exception of complex AS coding, my rate was fairly standard.

I work for half a groat per day, plus a tot of gin at lunch time, I’ve also managed to squeeze in free top hat and monocle repairs as part of the contract.

Seriously though, as Jamie said, £20 - £25 per hour seems about right for a contractor.