1

I work on a help desk for a school but have recently started doing more and more IT in my own time. Usually just for friends and neighbours, but am starting to get suggested to people I don’t know and am wondering what i should charge because so far I have done it for free, or beer ;).

What does everybody else here do? Do i charge a standard hourly rate, or different fixes cost different amounts?

12 Spice ups
2

I charge from $125 to $350 an hour depending on the client and the type of work. For general IT/Networking I charge at least $125 an hour (in USD). For Oracle or SAP it is at least $275 an hour. Database admin, design is at least $250 an hour.

3

Hahah my going rate for a while was a $30 subway gift card just to “speed up” (clean everything and tweak) windows XP. I should definitely charge more. a couple very small insurance companies that friends work for, offered me $60/hour because their consultant left, without warning and didn’t return their calls. Needless to say i had to fix quite a few things. But like you been working my way up more and more as a consultant and getting more money along the way. Almost to the point I should be at. I agree with N3WJL most consultant companies charge in the range of $100 - 300 /hour

4

$125 an hour for home PC

$150 an hour for work and server PC

5

$10 to look at it.

$20 to touch it.

$50 for a BJ

$100 for a ZJ.

16 Spice ups
6

I charge $20/hr if they bring the pc to me to work on in my garage. If I go to them it’s $25/hr starting when I leave my house. If it involving networking it goes to $30/hr. These are very cheap rates, and if it wasn’t for a small community with little demand I might charge more, but for where I am it has worked fine. I would suggest something cheap for the friends/family category and bump it up for more professional jobs etc…

Also, definatly make a warrenty/ lack thereof on your invoice sheet and get your customers to sign. Friends and family is ok but once you start working by referal a little CYA never hurt.

1 Spice up
7

I charge $75/hr for residential. $125-200/hr for business depending on the level of difficulty (Exchange, SBS, VoIP, Wifi, Security, Cabling or plain old break/fix). Or I will just charge by the job depending on what it is.

I second what Byron stated by having some sort of disclaimer on your Invoice. That is a must.

1 Spice up
8

In Australia - When I first started charging, I charged $30/hour and it was fine as a cash-in-hand hobby … but then “friends of friends” needed help, then small businesses that friends of friends ran, etc. Initally I stuck at $30 but I found that people are actually totally and completely happy to pay for a job well done, so I started up a company and changed to:

Friends/Family - no charge. Coffee and lunch required.

$60/hour for residential/home users (TBH these fixes can often be more difficult than business issues, but home users won’t pay $600 to fix an 8-year old PC even if it did take you 10 hours to fix it, so you have to tweak your invoice downwards based on what you think they’re willing to pay. Nowadays I try to avoid touching people’s home PCs. As soon as you touch it, even if you didn’t change anything, for the next 3 months whatever happens to that PC is your fault… even if they click Yes at every internet prompt).

$120/hour for basic business IT, no ifs no buts. $120/hour is quite cheap, and if I’m on-site and they want me to wait on hold with their ERP Support, it’s still $120/hour.

$180/hour for the more complex business work (Cisco programming, server troubleshooting, multi-site connectivity, etc).

I like multiples of $60 for rates… fits nicely in with 15 minute block charges.

We have flat rates for common tasks - new server builds, new PC builds, Windows reinstalls, etc.

Again, I’ve found people are completely happy to pay for a job well done. In comparison to the market, we’re on the low end, but we’re happy there.

9

For home jobs I charge £40 for the first hour and then £30 an hour after that. Verrrryyy cheap rates seeing as the likes of PC world etc wont even look at it till you’ve given them £90…

10

My company has me listed as $120/hr if I were to be outsourced, so that’s what I go with. If my company says I’m worth $120/hr then I assume I’m worth $120/hr. I don’t get involved in things I don’t know though, I’ll let N3WJL do that.

11

When I used to do this I kept it simple:

$60 an hour to fix, plus any hardware/software costs (someone tried to burn me on this one once)

$30 to diagnose.

I only did work for residential. Always got a signed estimate so the person knew how much they’d be spending.

The paperwork also stated quite clearly that none of their future problems would be fixed for free. “If I answer your phone call, you are paying me.”

1 Spice up
12

In the UK you technically have to declare it as a job so you can pay more income tax otherwise the government gets a bit pissy about it so I’m just going to say I do everything for free.

2 Spice ups
13

I do my best to dissuade anyone who asks as I hate doing “homers”, (especially for family) but I have sorted some PC’s/Laptops for work colleagues and I usually accept the kind gift of a bottle. I only do these because I hate seeing people ripped off.

1 Spice up
14

50 an hour if you are someone I work with. 100 to 150 for anyone else.

15

I am in the UK, i hate doing them do but get asked all the time at the moment and i need some money. One’s for work colleagues i always do for free

16

In 1996, the last year I was in retail, I charged $65/hr. for “normal” calls, and about $50 an hour for clients who bought blocks of time.

I’d say now it would be in the $120 range - first because that’s the going rate, and second because I don’t want to work on the problems that consume too much time; issues that are relatively easy to fix, but also come with “can you retrieve this, that, and the other thing?”