Professional Developer availble for freelance contact work

It's that time of year again, and I need a bit of extra cash for Christmas buying.

I'm a professional developer with a bachlor degree in computer science from Quincy University and 3 years experience developing PHP, ASP.NET, and J2EE applications on multiple platforms.

I'm looking for some quick freelance jobs, and it should be noted that I write professional, Object Oriented code that is well documented and easy to maintain, and I create interfaces that validate as HTML 4.01 strict or XHTML 1.0 Tranisitonal (strict if required). I also have extensive experience with MySQL, MaxDB (same thing... almost), PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MS SQL, and can create applications that are portable and can use a variety of databases.

My going rate is $40/hour, but this fee is negotiable based on the task that needs to be completed.

Contact me at james.r.carr (-AT-) gmail (-D0T-) come for project proposals.

Dang I need to get into the freelancing business.

cody_e - I know programmers of the highest skill and they charge 19 dollars USD. I'm not sure who would charge more than that, and I pity who pays more than that. Most freelancers work for a straight 10 dollars an hour.

At 10 dollars you could just become a computer techinician and do hardware.

10 dollars, hah, I earned more than that for sitting in an office doing nothing most of the time (nothing to do and not being lazy) and for driving a car a couple of hours a day.

If you hire a professional programmer it can easily cost you 100 dollars an hour.

Define professional. I mean everyone here is professional to some extent.

Someone with M.Sc (cs), or someone who has been programming for major companies for the past 20 years.

I'm not saying you can't get "professionals" for less than $100. I'm saying that asking $40 an hour isn't impossible.

I bet programming will eventually evolve to blue collar. I mean with all the cost-cutting stuff.

Excuse me... you think I'd work for the amount I made after high school... when I've got 5 years of college and 3 years experience unde r my belt? Sorry, I'm just not up for ripping myself off.

Obviously you don't know programmers of the highest skill, or they wouldn't be charging less than a real entry level programming job pays. I know costly consultants that can sometimes cost $200 an hour.

People get what they pay for, and if someone pays for my skills, they get professional quality work, not a hack n' slash php script tightly intermingled with html.

Welcome to real world where supply and demand rule the price you get paid not what skills you have. Gone are the days when programmers could get $100/hour, with the amount of programmers around at the moment all offering the same skill level as you (10thousands) deamnd will always push down the amount people will pay for work. The bit of paper you got from Uni, worthless. I am self tought and have more skills than you listed and would never dream of offering $40/hour, consequently I am constantly booked up with work.
But good luck if you manage to find a shmuck willing to pay $40/hour take their money

I don't think you get the point. Sure, YOU may charge $10 an hour, but someone at my level of experience gets alot of work done in an hour, probably enough to equal 4 hours or more of your average coder. I's funny, if not insulting, that you would try to teach me about "the industry" when I make $20/hour currently at my job, and they charge $60 to $100 for the consulting services we do. Sure, we're definately not catering to your typical mom and pop shops, but while freelancing, although I set my price high, I tend to work something for people with simple needs.

Thankfully, some people do understand this, and I have completed a few freelance jobs already. But thanks for coming and trashing my thread, no doubt you probably drove off a couple potential clients.

Regardless, it doesn't matter. I've gotten my extra $500 I needed for Christmas gifts.