How much to charge for database design?

[Necronic]

I've been working on Access for a while now, and I am almost at a point where I feel capable of putting out a quality product that people would pay money for. I'm currently doing some pro-bono work for a friend's business to set up a reference and a portfolio. Sadly my best work is done at my day job and I can under no circumstances use that in a portfolio.

Anyways, I've been thinking about doing this for a while now, but I am realizing that I have no idea how much to charge for something like this. Since I am a one man operation with a day job, I wouldn't be able to put more than 10-20 hours a week into a project, and my ability to support a completed database would be limited by my day job, so I don't think I should be charging 'normal' rates, whatever that may be.

The one thing I do bring to the table that most database developers don't is a strong understanding of statistics, process control, and engineering economics, so not only can I write a database for you to your design, I can give you a better understanding of what your design should be. People could tell me really vague stuff like 'hey, I want more aggregate information about my sales figures' and I can interpret that into a number of different options.

I was thinking of charging something really small for my first couple of projects, like 1-300$ depending on the complexity. Anyways, if you were a small business owner and you wanted a database to track inventory or sales or employee performance, how much would you be willing to pay a pretty much fly by night developer?

Also, for those of you who know me and my inability to follow through, please ignore that for the sake of this discussion. It's not like the customers would know that.

[PCT]

does PayScale - Salary Comparison, Salary Survey, Search Wages help at all?

[Necronic]

Somewhat. It does give me an idea what 40 hours of a pro developers time is worth, but since this is contract work, and I am not a professional I can't make a direct comparison.

I'm thinking that I should do my first couple of jobs on a flat fee with a small hourly adjustment. Like 100$ plus 20$/productive hour (not including research). A lot of it will depend on what form their raw data is in, how much experience their employees have with MS office, whether they have in house IT for making sure the database is backed up and connected to the right networks, and how big a project it is.

[Chibibar]

Since I work with databases and server in my job (yes I have experience Chaz hehe love ya bro) maintenance is a tricky thing. Is your day job self business? or you work for someone? Generally, most DB tend to be "stable" for the most part, but when it becomes unstable, broken, or whatever, you kinda need to get on top of things and fix it asap especially if you provide maintenance for it. If you just built it and hand over to the business IT team, then you might still be called upon when they can't figure out how to fix it. (you might want to consider that too)

Also, if you work for someone, be careful when doing "other business" at your current day job. Even email can be consider breach in contract. I know that in IT field (private sectors) there are forms you would sign in confidentiality agreement, if you read carefully, there is a clause that anything that you create while on THEIR time, is technically their property.

While the DB you help built in your day job belongs to your job, it is still your work and you can use as a reference/model (without the data) to show prospective client that you know what you are doing.

like I can use my job that I have setup cabling, patch panels, server configuration, and even IP phone implementation, but I can't give specific configuration setting since those are proprietary info

[Piotyr]

When I did contract software development 9 years ago, I'd give a flat rate per project based on the hours I estimated it would take to complete. I went with a flat rate of $50 per hour, as the professional going rate at the time for contract programming work was around $150 (it's now up to over $250), and since I was a one-man "company" just learning the contract ropes, I didn't want to overestimate my ability or work.

I did four contracts at that rate before I decided I needed something more consistent.