What's my hourly rate?

[ciphergoth]

Just got an email. "I'm after a Perl programmer - what's your hourly rate?"

I haven't the faintest idea.

If you work it out from my gross salary, you get £18.82, but is that the right amount to charge? I have never charged an hourly rate before, but I would like to quote something reasonably plausible. Eek, that's like 31p a minute - I go to spend a penny, and get paid about 62p for it. That sounds OK. But I'd like to hear that confirmed from someone who's done contract work before.

I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who knows...

Update: many thanks for the many helpful answers!

Comments

[mrph.livejournal.com]

We've been paying people in a variety of jobs (tech authors, programmers of various types) ?25 per hour. I don't know quite how appropriate that is to your skills & region, but I'd be very surprised if that wasn't a reasonable amount to ask for. Anything under ?20 seems a bit low to me.

Bear in mind that there usually seems to be a mark-up in "per hour" rates vs gross salary, to compensate for lack of job security on short/medium term contract work - so a direct calculated rate is (probably) going to come out a little low.

Then again, I can't claim my experiences are typical, or that I know the field well, so...