I'm covering for a local computer shop and wonder what to charge

[reicherb]

I'm going to be covering 1 day next week for a 1 person local computer shop (2 people if you count the receptionist). He mainly works for small businesses maintaining and installing PCs and small scale server. The servers are mostly NT4 and 2k. The workstations vary from 9x to NT/2000/XP.

He needs to take a day off next week and wants me to cover for him if something comes up. We haven't decided yet if I should come into the office or just be on call in case something happens.

I'm currently a network admin in a small school district. I maintain 8 Netware 5.1 servers, 2 Win2k servers, about 650 PCs, and a few other things. I've been doing this for a little over a year now and have a BS degree in Computer Networking (if that really matters).

What do you guys think would be a fair price? We talked about either an hourly rate if I come in all day, or a fee for being on call plus a rate for coming in if I'm needed. I really don't know which is better and what to charge in either case.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[ATLien247]

Why not get paid as much as the guy you're covering for does?

 

[reicherb]

I'm not sure it's that easy. He may not charge a flat rate. It sounds like he has contracts with his customers. I don't really have that info. He was just looking to hire another tech a couple of years ago and interview me. He decided he couldn't afford another tech, and I found a different job.

He has also asked me to give him a price.

 

[rgwalt]

Is he going to put you on payroll, or is this under the table? The reason I ask is that taxes will factor in. Computer consulting can be pretty pricey, so don't sell yourself short. Ask yourself this... If you were doing this full-time, how much would you want to make in a year, and figure it out from there. If you figured on going for $25 an hour for an 8 hour day, then you'd make $52,000 a year before taxes, which isn't bad.

Ryan

 

[reicherb]

I'm not sure if it's under the table or not. I was thinking about asking for $20/hr which is slightly more than I make right now at my current job. But I actually would rather do the on call thing and only go in if I need to.

 

[reicherb]

any other thoughts?

 

[ScottyB]

$75 for the day for being on call, $20 an hour if you actually have to do something.

 

[reicherb]

Originally posted by: ScottyB
$75 for the day for being on call, $20 an hour if you actually have to do something.

That seems pretty reasonable.


Now I just hope that none of my servers go down when I'm on one of his calls since they are about 45 minutes apart.