Calculating what to charge for freelance work on the side is a question I wrestled with for a good while. Search the internet and you’ll come up with everything from vague answers to complicated formulas. What I’ve landed on is a simple formula: Take your yearly salary working full-time and drop-off the last three zeros. That means if you are just starting out in web design or development and making $35,000 let’s say, then you you’d charge $35 or possibly $40 per hour. As your income goes up, so does your hourly rate. This rate assumes a yearly compensation in the private sector. If you work in government or higher education you may need to boost this rate in congruence with the market. As you become more accomplished in your work you may also pad the number in kind.
A Worker is Worth His Wages
As you move-up in your career you will find fewer customers that will pay $75 to $100 per hour for web development or design. Those customers however will be very serious and the compensation will be worth your while. As your salary continues to rise your need for side work will continue to diminish and your hourly rate will actually prove to be a protection for your time.
This formula assumes you are picking-up side work in addition to full-time employment. I would not use this pricing structure to launch a business. Running a business full-time will entail much more overhead.
It’s All or Nothing Baby
A year ago I devoted a good deal of time launching a site for our start-up church CedarRidge. I told our pastor that he couldn’t pay me for the work in any form. I’ve made the decision to never do discounted work. There are three distinct categories in my mind:
Pro Bono – This type of work is only done for causes in which I have a high degree of vested interest and only on a limited scale.
Limited Free Consulting – My line in the sand is when my hand touches the keyboard to configure, design or implement any changes for a friend or acquaintance. I’m always happy to engage in conversation even for a couple of hours to help someone out. That is one of the motivators for this blog. I find it stimulating and enjoy the process. Two or three hours is about my limit in this category. If the person needs more time than that, they will need to start compensation at my going rate.
Full compensation – If someone is ready to pay my hourly rate in my field for their site, then they are very serious about the project. I don’t by-the-way charge or engage in related work such as system administration. Though I’ve worked as a system admin, I’m not up-to-speed to the degree that I would charge someone and not interested in working in that area. I’m happy to lend a hand on occasion to a neighbor in which I classify that as free consulting.
The “going rate” for web design or development is all over the map. In no way would I want to take advantage of a customer but in the same vein, if I am going to spend night and weekend hours, I want to be compensated well for that effort. If you, like me work professionally in any given area you will become an expert in your field. That knowledge has value that should receive compensation. Don’t sell yourself short.
What’s your experience with side work and compensation? How have you figured what you would charge?
The keynote speaker this morning at Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York this morning was Gordon McLeod discussed the evolution of the online Wall Street Journal. Interesting to note has been the bounce-back of mainstream online media. Like the WSJ many outlets have come of age in their online environment catching-up with the blogosphere. It’s quite impressive the gains made by the slower moving giants.
The best session of the day that I attended was the Business-to-Business Tactics session. This was one of the sessions that had the most practical input for the job that I do. One thing I appreciate about these type of events is the balance of breadth and depth. Probably the best info is related to segmenting the audience with respect to ads and landing pages.
While staying in New York I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to stop-by the John Lennon Memorial. It was a moving experience to think of that fateful day when John was taken at a young age. I knew that Scott Blitstein from mythermos.com would appreciate this in particular. The memorial is right across the street from the Dakota where he lived and was tragically shot on that cold December day in 1980.
The second day of the SES Conference in New York City was excellent. The day started out with a key note from Nick Car, author of "The Big Switch: Rewiring the world, from Editon to Google." Nick gave an interesting talk about the fundamental changes in the way computing and ultimately how business is and will be done. One interesting concept is what he called the worker-less companies. Consider the following companies and their work force:
Skype: 200 employees. They service the same number of customers as the British telecom who employs in the tens of thousands.
YouTube: 60 employees. Let’s hear it for user-contribution.
Craigslist: 20 employees. This site always amazes me as one of the ugliest and amazingly successful sites. Raise your hand if you don’t actively use craigslist on a regular basis.
Plentyoffish: a whopping 1 employee. He’s apparently done pretty well for himself.
What are the implications for the information technology work force? In this day-and-age it sure pays to be well cross-trained. How will computing continue to change the employment landscape in the near and distant future?
The Exhibit Hall was hosted on three floors with over a hundred vendors. All total the show continues again to hold-up to its reputation.
This is my first trip to the Big Apple. As a history major in college, I have a deep appreciation for the architecture and history of this amazing city. Attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York is an amazing experience of witnessing a city rich in history while learning from cutting-edge marketing and technologists teaching about current and future trends.
Once again Search Engine Strategies holds-up to its reputation as a valuable resource worth the time and money. So far today I’ve focused two sessions on regional search and a basic session on web analytics. I’m rounding-out the day with a panel discussion called "Getting Vertical Search Right" and a final session on "How to Train Your Pets to Search".
Attending these types of conferences, more than answering my questions, lead me to know the right questions and information I need to research. For instance, I heard some interesting statistics on some specific countries in Asia and Europe regarding user search patterns and how to reach audiences in those markets. There were some common themes in most countries such as the prominence of Google as the primary search (aside from China where Baidu is king). But other stats such as the prominence of mobile search varies greatly from Japan being a huge market in contrast to France on the other end of the spectrum. These individual country statistics lead me down the path of compiling a matrix for user stats and patterns for each country. The end result then provides a metric for resource allocation in regards to issues such as mobile site development, language translation, localization and local search.
The Search Engine Strategies in New York is a much larger show than the Chicago show I attended in December 2006. It also, perhaps due to its location seems to draw a more international crowd. That may be due however to the maturation of the SES conference as a whole, I’m not sure.
The conference venue is at the Hilton New York which is conveniently located half-way between Times Square and Central Park in Mid-town Manhattan. It is a top-flight hotel with excellent facilities. I am fortunate to have a room on the 33rd floor with a partial view of Central Park.
Beyond the speakers and sessions, the event provides a wonderful opportunity to talk with the major search engines, consultants and pier professionals. I teased out some interesting online marketing budget from other manufacturing companies similar to ETS-Lindgren that they spend around 10% of their budget in online advertising. This by-the-way jives with the overall national average for online advertising. Networking returns some very valuable information to leverage with corporate leadership for substantiating the potential ROI on a larger budget for instance.
While Photoshop is absolutely packed with bells and whistles, there are a few key tools to unlocking its full potential. The Quick Mask feature in Photoshop is one of them. Quick Mask is essentially a selection tool on steroids. It allows one to select down to the pixel a given area of a photo. While there are many uses for selection to alter color, sharpness and other effects, a very common use is to knock-out a background around an object.
Step 1. Select the background
WIth the shift key click areas of the background that you want to knock-out. The more contrast between the background and the subject the better. In some cases, such as this image the contrast is low so we’ll need to use Quick Mask to do the finer selection.
Step 2. Enter Quick Mask Mode
Notice the icon second from the bottom in the toolbar. This is the Quick Mask toggle button. When in Quick Mask the icon has a darker parameter. It is clear at this point that some of the guitar was selected with the background.
Step 3. Paint the object
To get a very precise selection, zoom-in to get a close-up of the area to be selected. Choose the paint brush to color every area not selected. In this case we want to knock-out the background so the guitar will be painted.
Zoom-out and review for any rough spots. I find using a larger brush tends to create a smoother line as I drag it along the edge of the object.
Step 4. Switch Back to Regular Mode and Inverse Selection
One can either delete the background or choose to inverse selection to the object.
Step 5. Copy and Paste into New Window
I often prefer to paste the object into a new window so as to leave the original image in tact.
Step 6. Delete Background Layer and Save as .PNG
Finished Image
If you prefer resize, rotate image or apply other affects, upload and enjoy. Let me know if you have any questions and if this tutorial was helpful.
Actually this blog started in February of 2007 but I figured it’s worth noting all the same. It’s been an interesting ride. The blog started slowly premiering on blogspot before metriculating over to its own domain shortly thereafter. Spring, summer and early fall were quite an active season for the site. The winter has been a bit slower with gaps in posting. I could probably write a good post on how to kill blog momentum.
This site has been an interesting platform to post tech and productivity tips as well as an array of diverse commentary. The most interesting aspect of the blog has been the wonderful comments back from folks who have helped enrich the site with their wit and wisdom. An off-shoot of thoughtsparks.net has been the birth of techfires.com which with the help of Scott Blitstein from mythermos.com continues to offer a very focused serving of useful web-related resources.
So where from here in this blogging journey? Well, as the date stamps would indicate of late the frequency of postings is on the rise. Like many bloggers, thoughtspark.net is at its core a personal blog. I do hope to delve more into video and multimedia this year on a professional level which will open opportunities for publishing to thoughtsparks.net as well. Lately I’ve been given the opportunity to feed my dream of making videos.
Thoughtsparks will also be a chronicle for some interesting trips this year. Next week I’ll be in New York for the Seach Engine Strategies conference. This summer we are heading off to California for a two week trip back to Salinas to visit friends from twenty years ago when I worked there as a young lad.
Thanks for stopping by. Let’s keep in touch dear friends.
With our oldest nearing official teen-hood, we debated whether to do some remodeling in our current location or relocate. Living in a house that is only a little over 1,200 square feet for five people, it’s tempting to think bigger would be better. After researching other options for residence in the area we’ve come back around to staying put in our current location with a few modifications to maximize our space.
Two primary factors driving our decision to stay put: a) we really love our location and overall design of the house and b) we really don’t relish the idea of incurring significantly greater debt, taxes, utilities and other costs associated with a larger house.
Some Simple Space Saving Ideas Completed
Make the master bedroom multi-purpose. Our bedroom houses guitars hung on the wall, a second computer in a compact desk, an exercise machine and a TV for entertainment.
Add an additional flat screen TV in one of the girls room. Even with a small house there are now three locations for watching movies.
Hang new light fixtures. This isn’t a space-saving feature per say, but it does add a nice touch in the overall style of the house.
On the Horizon
Re-surface all floors except bedrooms with tile. Visually this ties the rooms together and is a nice touch to get away from living on wall-to-wall carpet.
Add some storage buildings in the yard. This is a relatively inexpensive way to offset the need for storage in the house and garage.
Convert the garage to a 400 square foot dance studio/multi-media room for the girls. By insulating, heating and cooling, and finishing-out the garage the girls will have the space they need.
Add a covered porch to the back of the house. With the weather in Texas being so mild most of the year an outdoor living area is a very economical way to add living space.
The temptation is strong to continue to upgrade or move to a larger house that we will fill with more stuff. At what point do we hold ourselves accountable to push against the intense pull of consumerism. A friend of mine once said, "Consumerism consumes consumers." What steps are you taking to push against the pull to consume?
In an ideal world there would never be any do-overs. One thing I’ve learned from being a web developer in a corporation is that this is no ideal world. When the scope of a project or marketing campaign changes so must the web.
TechTourSite.com was originally a very small microsite of just a few pages with limited capabilities. I inherited the site from my predecessor a couple of years ago and it has been fascinating to see the scope of this initiative grow each year. Last year the site was redesigned to refine the look and feel and include more information on the site. Shortly thereafter it became obvious that the site needed a major overhaul as scope creep continued. Tech Tour is now an international event.
No surprise to any regular reader of thoughtsparks.net, the site was rebuilt in WordPress. It features some nifty plug-ins and functions:
Expandable side navigation
Eloquent form submission
Templates which allow for some nice multi-lingual options
Custom fields which come in real handy for unique datasets
The site will continue to grow incrementally with new features such as a photo gallery and other bells and whistles. I think I will truly enjoy not doing a major redesign or redevelopment of the site next year (knock on wood).
Lest my PhP development skills get too rusty, I’m starting on another microsite for the IEEE EMC Symposium for 2009 that will be hosted in Austin. More about that one as the project moves along. One cool feature will be a dynamic schedule configurator for attendees to select their workshops to attend. Will be a hoot to develop for sure.
As I walked into the voting location today I asked the folks there, "where are all the people?" While I know a good number voted early, the turn-out still seemed a bit appauling to me. Living in Texas, we are getting a goodly amount of press today as the day could possibly be a defining moment for the democratic nomination. For the Republicans, there’s still issues to be decided on the ballot, at least in Texas. No matter your political leaning, voting is a fundamental element for engaging in the political process. If you are a registered voter in Texas, Ohio, Vermont or Rhode Island, just do it: vote today.
Going live with a website is always a fun process. This past weekend we launched a site I’ve been working on for a good bit. As I’ve referenced in a recent post, it was built upon WordPress. The site is onedayacademy.com, a school for homeschoolers in Austin, Texas. Some of the nice features of the site include:
A dynamic course schedule that pulls data from a .csv file. This allows the content managers to edit in Excel and then upload replacing the current version. This custom application enables very little training for those who do the up-keep, while offering a flexible interface for the end-user.
A browser-compatible drop-down menu (at least in FireFox and IE the baseline requirement).
A dynamic side navigation that drills-down one level to the child menus and up one level to the parent page. I find that most plug-ins for WordPress navigation are overly complex for such basic functionality.
A clean design. Yeah, it’s not the most eloquent layout, but the more classic design I think and hope will serve the audience well.
In the end the site was done on-time and under budget. That is always a nice ending to any project. As is quite often the case, the real "magic" in getting the project done in an efficient manner requires good project management. If you ask me, that’s the real challenge to most projects. What do you think?