Flash and Salarys

[MoetheJoe]

Hi,

I know it is not legal to discuss fees on the forum. trying to find out the best way I can find out how much I should be asking for a full time job, and a contract job.

I have five years professional experience in Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, HTML, Dreamweaver, Cartooning, Illustrating, and Mac and PC application. Obviously I am more skilled in one application over the other.

I have worked full time for a former giant in the cyberworld that went under after the Dot Bomb. I have been freelancing ever since.

What is the best way I can find out how much I should be getting for a full time job, or a contract job.

Mind you, I'm not asking for anyone to give me the fees, just the best way I can find out how much I am worth.

Thanks
Emails are welcome.

[aversion]

moved to the boardroom.

even with what you say above it's impossible to estimate accurately how much you should ask for. There are two really important things in determining wage,

a/ how good you are - and that means how good your portfolio is (and by that I don't mean how showy it is), how well you work with other people, experience is a part of it but I know people with 5 years experience that I would never hire.

b/ how much someone is willing to pay, there are still such widely varying expectations from employers. You could go into one firm and see web designers being paid $25k a year, you could go into another firm, the same size with the same designers being paid $50k a year.

things are getting better and more consistent as things look up for the industry but it's still a bit all over the place.

I really wouldn't know what a good wage in flash design is right now, but there are sites like monster.com where you should be able to find job descriptions for similar positions and see what people are offering?

[johntabita]

Actually, there is nothing illegal about discussing salaries for full-time employment. In fact, go to salary.com for a searchable database of salaries for various occupations.

I can tell you from personal experience that I recently interviewed for 2 similar jobs involving designing/maintaining a company's corporate site. Aside from Flash and cartooning, the skill requirements were similar to yours. One was paying $48k/year, the other one $35k.

As far as freelancing goes, my accountant told me that, in order to compensate for the additional cost of having to pay all of your own taxes (known as the "self employment tax"), you should add a minimum of 30% to what you were being paid as an employee.

(Disclaimer- I am assuming that you are in the US.)

[aversion]

Originally posted by johntabita
Actually, there is nothing illegal about discussing salaries for full-time employment. In fact, go to salary.com for a searchable database of salaries for various occupations.

true, the only thing that's been frowned upon here in the past is people discussing price fixing, which is a different recepticle full of fish.

[geoffmasson]

It's day's reading ad's and what people expect for such little money on some forums and job boards that make you want to consider price fixing.

Situation and market is pretty much everything determining how much you will make. You can pull off a huge deal with a company if they are in desperate need of your services, and this is ideal in a very low saturation market. In the case that your competing with a large number of others, your going to make less, its simply that someone will always do what you do cheaper. Not necessarily better but cheaper.

Thats not to say you should sell cheaper, because that attracts the wrong clients. Read "The Invisible Touch" by Harry Beckwith. It goes into the whole value of clients, and different business models of marketing your services for the proper price. Great read, one of the best books I've read in awhile.

Hope that helped and was somewhat on topic.