This is a recipe for disaster. I have been full-time freelance for the last 4 years, and scaling into a full-service consultancy with all the accoutrements (lik

This is a recipe for disaster. I have been full-time freelance for the last 4 years, and scaling into a full-service consultancy with all the accoutrements (like an office for my employees), and I can tell you that $100/hr is really a bare minimum for meaningful profit margins on developers. I have a few contracts under that (for various reasons), and with the new hires I'm contemplating, I am going to have to raise their rates or drop off and replace them with better paying clients. As a freelancer, you might be able to get away with $70-$80/hr minimum, but $100 minimum still is easily within a reasonable price range. I would expect a fair market rate for great developers to be something more like $150-$200/hr. Unfortunately, I have a hard enough time getting clients around here at $100, but in order to really have the business firing on all cylinders, I would need to be charging $150+ for each developer hour. The margins at $100 and below are barely enough to make payroll; there is almost nothing left to pay for things like significant marketing or PR, investment in equipment or facilities, loose time to spend on internal projects or internal maintenance, etc.