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Comment by Rothmic | Hacker News Reader

I charge $125/hr, and I turn down people willing to pay that amount on an almost daily basis. Just another data point.

How do you get that kind of rate? I'm at a bit of a loss on how I could do that, especially with the typical return with most iPhone apps. I am a fairly experienced (now) developer with iPhone apps (3D games, tip calculators, web scraping iphone apps, facebook-iphone apps, etc). I don't live in silicon valley although. (250k people town in western canada)

I'll second the rate. Adding more, most apps we see are typically around $40k (+/- $10k) but as high as $100k.

Congrats if you truly get that rate for every hour you work on multi-month projects.

I'm currently making apps for Disney and I price total projects based on a detailed spec (not hourly), but when you figure actual hours worked, I don't charge anywhere close to this rate.

Do you really not stay up until 4 am polishing the app even when you're over budget?

Get better at estimating.

I typically take whatever I think it's going to be and multiply by 3. I'm usually 75% under budget with this method.

The market will certainly bear hundreds an hour.

So you're honestly making $250,000 (40x125x50) a year doing contract iPhone apps?

Edit: I just saw you posted below about $40/hour. That's fine to overestimate when you're charging $40/hour. My comment is directed at Rothmic and malbiniak above. Apologies for the mistake, drewcrawford.

It wasn't clear in my first comment, but it is representative of a company, not an individual. We're fortunate to have a great team estimating and scoping projects and great developers on staff staying on budget; it's rare that our actual rate is less than what I've cited, and we don't cut scope to stay on budget. Estimating, by far, is the hardest part.

If the app isn't to our internal standards, we'll do whatever it takes to get there, even if it pushes us over budget (ie, staying up until 4am).

Ok, I think this is a big point of confusion. A "company" rate is very different than a developer rate. A company rate usually includes project managers, client liaisons, secretaries, etc. I can't imagine an individual developer getting paid $20,000 for one month of 40-hour-per-week iPhone work.

I think it's important that we make this clear to new developers, so thanks for clearing it up.

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