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As a kind of food-for-thought question rather than a topic-hijacker, how much should cost of living be taken into account for your pricing? E.G. if living in M
by kspaans 12y ago
As a kind of food-for-thought question rather than a topic-hijacker, how much should cost of living be taken into account for your pricing?
E.G. if living in Manila is 50% cheaper than living in SF (http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/manila/san-francisco http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/manila/s...) (and my apologies to gdiocarez if they don't live in Manila!) you probably shouldn't price yourself at 50% of the wage of a US remote worker. But what about, say, 5% cheaper than the competition so that you can compete on price (or indeed earn more, relatively speaking) without devaluing your skills?
I think current advice here does a good job of giving you some algorithms for taking your cost-of-living and working upwards to a reasonable wage from there.
(Full Disclosure: I've worked in Waterloo, Canada and currently in London UK, so I'm used to a generally lower salary than comparable jobs in the US and currently pay similar living costs to SF and NYC. :P)
- bitJericho 12y agoOr price yourself 5 percent higher and employers will thank you're 5 percent better than everyone else.
- kspaans 12y agoYeah good point. Others have also made good arguments that it's silly to base your price on cost-of-living. :)
- ams6110 12y agoYour cost of living doesn't really have any bearing on what your services are worth to a client. Talk to the client about what their goals are and how much value your contribution will add. If you are automating a routine clerical function that will save one person an hour a day that is obviously going to tbe worth less than if you are doing something that will save 100 people 4 hours a day. Note that these two tasks may take YOU exactly the same amount of time to implement but the client will have entirely different perception of what each is worth, and will/should be able to pay accordingly.
- gdiocarez 12y agoWow, your lucky. I dream of going to Canada. Thank you for the advise.