Excellent guide! The only suggestion I would make would be to de emphisize the number of hours and simple think of dollars/day based on a 5 day week.
Working 6 or 7 days a week is fine for the short term while you build your business, but not sustainable if you want to have and enjoy a family... or a life for that matter. Reality is that you will most likely work day 6 'on' your business instead of billable time.
Figure up a realistic average of the number of billable hours you expect each day... and consider that you will have unbillable customer hours as well as administrative overhead hours. Example: So you feel you can consistantly put 10-12 hours a day into your business... most likely you will only consistantly get to bill for 60-75% of those hours (once you get your flow worked out..). Remember, it is easier to get employees to the 100% billable mark... but as the business owner, or even a manager, you are going to spend a fair amount of time on things that aren't billable.
Divide your daily $ needs by the number of average hours you expect to be able to bill for and there you have your hourly rate.
Do some research on what your competition is charging... is your number smaller than that? If so, great, but don't shoot yourself in the foot... charge a little less, don't be a bottom feeder. Do you need to charge more than them? If so, charge the same or less but you know you're going to need to put a lot of effort on leveraging your time (as mentioned, recurring subscription type items and working on more than one PC.)
That's all I got... thanks for the post!
