Pricing, am i getting ripped off here

Hello, have kind of a general question and wasn't sure where to post it.

I have been working on this website for about a year and a half now on an hourly basis but it has become a bit overwhelming considering what I am making, and i am wondering if I am being irrational or my concern is justified.

Well it's a work at home job, and i do all kinds of things, PHP development, Customized Flash Work, all powered by a CMS so someone who doesn't know squat about HTML can update the site.

I work for an hourly rate at only $10 an hour which i know compared the industry it really stinks. It also is hard because I receive atleast 2 emails from this person every day and have become almost a 24-7 tech support guy i feel sometimes. It also angers me because the hosting company who does some development too probably charges way more then I do.

I just needed work before, but now I am much more experienced and have a full time job so its really hard for me to spend my free time out of my full time job for this wage

I feel i should probably demand a raise so at least i am making a fair wage but don't want to overcharge either since its for a single guy not some kind of large business, and if i try to charge to much im sure he will look elsewhere for help. Any suggestions on what I should ask for, and if he doesn't give it to me I wonder if i should just quit...

Thanks for any input

Single guy, big company, small organization ... it doesn't matter. You MUST charge a rate that will apply to ALL!

10$ is pretty darn cheap but at least you are charging something. I would bump that up to 20$ at the very least.

Now ... concerning this client of yours, what was the agreement you had in the beginning? Did you specify a timeframe? Did you offer such services as "tech support"? What kind of agreement did you have with him?

Here's a nice article I found from the guys at BlueFlavor that might help you out a bit - Pricing a Project

Hey thanks for quick reply.

Unfortunately when I started we didn't really set up an agreement other then the hourly pay scale.

I did it originally because i needed internship credits to graduate college (though it wasn't really suppose to be a free thing, they expect you to get paid). I had to complete 350 hours of work for a credit towards graduation, so the pay wasn't really important to me at that point. However after i completed this my help was still needed and at that point I wasn't a college graduate.

Now that I have a degree and a good deal of experience it seems to change things a little. I have a 9 - 5 type job now too (its a temporary thing, and I am hoping i get this salary position with benefits) the 9-5 temp job is also $10 an hour but I spend a lot of time in meetings, and eating free food, so its enjoyable. Working at home seems to be different, I am just in front of a computer working straight through the hour with no break really and no meetings.

Hopefully I am able to land this salary job so then if he refuses to give me a wage and i decide to stop working for him I will still be making plenty of money. Maybe I should also work out what i am charging for these tech support calls and meetings I have with Him.. $20 an hour sounds fair

thanks again

Hm, you could always just tell the guy to find someone else. If you really don't want to do that, there are a number of things you could do in addition to asking for a raise. Were it me he contacted me several times a week to do work that takes only a few minutes each time, I would still charge $10/hour with a minimum of $20 per session.

hehehe...you little devil...applying a min...lol Still Ryan...$10 dollars per hour is not much for a website designer...why are you working for so cheap?

I know, but a minium would at least make him think twice before calling with something minor...

Yeah, but $10 dollars is not your website design rates...right?

No, I charge 100 dollars an hour for the first three, then 70 after that. I've been getting a lot of not-web-work lately, though. It's annoying...

hah thanks for the additional input, i hadnt checked the forums here for a few days...yea $10 an hour does suck esp for the work ive been doing lately. Luckilly the work for this project is almost done with...theres about 30 - 40 hrs of work left so im asking for $20 for this last stuff. After that I will be a developer, but I will just take the money thats not the sales commission (15-25% sales commission) so this should work out better as long as we dont give ridiculously cheap quotes here.