I work for a university as tech support for anyone and everyone who works for this university. I've just been recently asked by one of the professors here if I would work on his personal PC. I agreed, and charged him $20 hour with an hour's minimum pay.

Since I'm relatively new to charging people for this kind of work, does that seem fair? I want to beat everyone elses' prices, but I'm not ready to go big time yet. It's mainly just a part time, after work kinda thing.

So, what should I charge and how do I charge it. For example, I did a few diagnostics tests on that PC, which took around 4 hours to complete. However, since I wasn't actually "working" during that time, I only charged him for 2. Was that the right thing to do or should I have charged the full 4?

 

I usually charge just by the job. $20hr seems fair enough to me.

 

The "geek squad" price list isn't a bad indicator.

I vary the rate by what I'm doing. If I'm hacking away at someone's Active Directory b/c they had a DC bomb itself into non-existance, it's a higher rate than when I'm trying to remove the latest in malware from boobies.com off some bonehead's machine.

rate * complexity * time * skill-set-rarity = job price

$35 * 1 * 1.5 * 0.75 = $40 for a quick XP install. I charge a bit more if I have to go onsite or p/u and deliver.

Don't undervalue your skillset. There's a boatload of people out there that _THINK_ they know what their doing.