You seem to not realize that $100/hr is hugely underselling yourself. I am working at a startup (vesting 1% equity in lieu of higher compensation). I work 47 we

You seem to not realize that $100/hr is hugely underselling yourself. I am working at a startup (vesting 1% equity in lieu of higher compensation). I work 47 weeks or less, probably for 30 hours per week or less (time actually spent working). Using those numbers, my hourly is about $75. But I also have more say over the direction of the company, free health care, a weekly grocery allowance, 3% match on retirement, and they pay the 7.5% employer tax. This is my first full-time programming job, and I just finished my first year with the company. If you do anything at all approaching good work, then 5 of your points are meaningless, and it basically boils down to "Talk rates right there in the ad, if they're as low as $100/hour." If I decided to start freelancing, I would take the per-day strategy and charge no less than $1500 per day. I would plan to work about 200 days per year, to pay about $100,000 in taxes, about $5,000 in health care, and another $15,000 toward retirement. That leaves about $117,000 in take-home pay, which is only about 50% more than I take home now (and actually probably less than any Google engineer). Any less than that, and it just wouldn't be worth it.