What should marketing contractors get paid per hour?

The hourly rate is based on several factors: 1) Location (where you live), 2) Your experience in the field 3) What the person willing to hiring you has budgeted for the project.

Your friend paying you half of what a big company pays you has to do with resources and capital. Or your friend is taking advantage of you and getting your services at a steep discount. Non-profits generally pay on the low end of the scale for your field, but again it determined by how much they have budgeted. So its probably not a good way to determine how much you should be paid hourly.

Do some research and check out Salary.com or Payscale” to get a better idea for how much others are getting paid in your field.

Good Luck!
R

As a side-note, don’t think of non-profit as non-revenue. Think of non-profit as an organization that pays little or no taxes. Many non-profits have huge budgets.

Charge what your clients are willing to pay. If you stay as busy as you like, or need, to be at $50, then charge that. If you have more work than you can do at $50, go up. Test the waters at $75.

It is much easier to go down in price to get a client you want, than to go up on one you already have a contract with.

I was once flooded with web work at $45 an hour; now at 75–100 per hour I have less clients, make more money, and have a higher quality of client to work with.

My experience in the field of non-profit PR contracting has been that standard rates start at $40 per hour and can go much higher if the contractor has lots of experience. Firms charge upwards of $100/hour. I would say start at $50 per hour, but don’t assume you will be working anything close to 40 hours per week, since you will have a lot of “unbillable” hours (time spent chasing down new clients, solidifying deals, researching, doing your accounting, etc). Also, the low end of this scale might still seem like a lot to you if you have been a salaried employee at a non-profit, but keep in mind that as a freelance contractor you are responsible for your own health insurance, retirement, etc. Also, if you still want to continue helping your friend for $25 an hour, many contractors will offer a discounted rate—or even pro-bono time—to friends or non-profits, so I don’t really see anything wrong with charging different rates to different clients.