Every now and then, this gets asked in a technical mailing list: “How much would you charge for doing service X?”
Every now and then, a friend would ask me: “I have a side job to do service Y. How much do you think I should charge?”
To both questions, my answer is always: Get as much as you can get away with. Unless, of course, you’re doing the service for charity, in which case you should charge nothing.
The tricky part, of course, is finding out how much you can get away with. There are three factors to consider:
1. How much does it cost you to do this?
2. How much are your competitors charging for this?
3. How much is this worth to the client?
The first is about knowing yourself. The second is about knowing the market. The last one is about knowing your client, and salesmanship. Master all three and you can get away with highway robbery prices.