Choosing a Rate
There is no right answer. But the decision is not as tough as you might think.
One of the biggest concerns of a budding freelancer is what to set as their rate. The nice aspect of a full-time / in house position is that your boss sets your wage, and you either accept it or deny it. When you are a freelancer, you are the boss. You have to be the one to decide how much your time is worth. A lot of bloggers / freelancers have their own methods on how they determine their rate, but their is no absolute rule.
There are a few aspects to consider when you are determining your rate. Some of these may be common sense, some might not. And when you take this for your own freelance business, you might not take all aspects into account. In the end, it is still a personal choice that you have to make and be happy with.
Your Experience
This is one of the most obvious considerations. How long have you been doing what you are doing? This doesn’t just have to account for your freelance time. If you have done work for a studio, in classes, or whatever the case may be that all counts as experience.
Your Skill Level
Some people would lump this in with your experience, but in reality they aren’t directly connected like most people think. You can be doing this for 15 years, but never learned more then HTML with tables. The best way to determine, and show, your skill level is to build your portfolio. Collect all of what you done and show it to people to get feedback on your skill level.
Your Expenses
Obviously, you have to be making more then you are spending. But these expenses are not your personal expenses. The expenses I refer to are those of the business. Things like the cost of the software you use, cost of the computing hardware, cost of the space where you will be working from. Your rate should reflect how much it costs you to do business.
Your Preference
Like I keep saying, you have to make your rate fit for you. In the end, whether you charge $50/hour vs $75/hour is a personal preference.
Hopefully this helps clear up some of the common questions when you are deciding on your rate as a freelancer. Again, these are just the key aspects that I consider, not a map to the right rate for you.