If you make $20/hr slinging code. Consulting that be $80/hr. May seem high, but really it is quite low. The big boys charge $250/hr. I think that rate is fair for small businesses.

If you need justification for charging a certain fee. Research numbers on how much it costs to actually hire someone full-time and all the extra costs associated with it. Time, Interviews, Job board placements, training, benefits(big costs long haul). If your being hired to do something you know and pretty much getting going on day one, they should be paying a decent sum of money for you, because you had already done the legwork, you step in and work.

You are also temporary to them if the contract ends(a.k.a they fire you), as employee you get unemployment(extra cost to the company), exit interviews, more time and money wasted. If you an IC the contract ends, what are you going to do. Look for the next gig, more time spent with no money coming in.

My favorite pricing quote is the one about the artist, name escapes me. A lady asks him to paint her caricature of face and he get out a piece of paper, paints a few lines and she says it's amazing and ask how much, he says 5k or something. She says thats ridiculous it took you five minutes. He responds no it took me my whole life.

I'm not saying I'm picasso or monet or whatever, but the work you do today will be added to your overall experience and knowledge that you will apply to the jobs of tomorrow, and you should be compensated for that. i also don't change $1000/min (it be nice) - sorry for rambling

Think about what you need to make, and double it. Then double it again. You're probably getting close to what you ought to charge. I expect to pay $50-$200/hour when I hire a contractor (depending on whether they are famous for what they do or not), and when I did contract work I billed at $125/hour. I was reasonably well-known for the field I contracted in, with a published book and code sprinkled throughout the project I supported, and my name appearing daily on the related mailing list--I probably should have been charging more, as I never lost a customer because I cost too much.

Someone once told me that if you, as a contractor, don't get a response of "fuck you!" in response to your estimates about half the time, you aren't charging enough. That's probably really good advice. You'll work less, but work better, because you can really devote yourself to the clients you do have. This assumes that you are really good. If you aren't really good, then you'll just have to take what work you can get at whatever rate you can get. Doing fantastic work fast is more important than working cheap, because people will recommend you if you're good and expensive (they'll say, "This guy is a bit pricey, but he does amazing work") but probably not if you do crap work and don't pay enough attention to them (if they say anything at all about you, they'll say, "I can never get this guy on the phone, and he does sloppy work, but he works cheap").

If you were hiring a contractor, which of those choices would you call? And which kind of customer would you rather work for? The cheap customer always demands even more than he's already getting, and expects to be treated like a king for it. The customer that wants great work is grateful when he finally finds someone that will deliver--at just about any price.

Also note that the larger the corporation, the more you need to charge to deal with their red tape. You will have to invoice according to their rules, you will have to keep yourself updated in their vendor database, you will have to deal with additional tax forms, and you will have to get sign-off on projects from more people. Working in a big corporation will also drain the life from you at an alarming clip, because they will have meetings over the stupidest crap--you'll be getting paid huge sums for eating donuts and listening to endless arguments over what to name a table or a variable, but you will probably die a little inside, as well. After my first couple of experiences with big corporations, I began to charge extra for soul death (that's not how it appeared on the invoice...I just added another $25/hour to the rate).

Basically, take your desired salary[including expenses/fringes], divide by 100, and that's your daily rate. You can come down a little for long term work, say more than 2 weeks.