Need advice

Scorpion

I'd appreciate any considerations on the following.. Preferably from those with similar experience or knowledge.

I've been doing contract web development for a company from home for several months now. Basically, when I get a site finished I get paid plus an addition couple of hundred every month for setting up domains, email aliases etc etc..

Recently, the company purchased an entire remote server on which I have been given root and am to administrate. The hosting company maintains the physical security but everything else will be my responsibility: Configuring Apache, MySQL, PERL, sendmail, ftp, user accounts etc etc..

However, Nothing has been mentioned in terms of administration fees but I feel I should charge them for this. Despite compensation for the amount of time I'll need to spend online to manage everything, I should be paid for doing the job.

What I'm wondering is, what's a reasonable rate for remote linux administration? I am not inexperienced but I haven't done it professionally before..

Do you think I am being reasonanle in applying these additional charges?

Any information would be helpful.

Thanks.

mneylon

If you have to spend time doing 'genuine' work maintaining a site, then you should be able to charge accordingly.
However, if you are offering a hosting service, basic technical support should be included in the price, or an explicit pricing structure agreed on.
Setting a price for your own work is a difficult matter. You may feel that as a sole trader your overheads are lower and you need to price yourself according to market forces. However, you should not underprice your skills.
Actual charges are a difficult matter, but I know that some of these were discussed a while back. If you have a look at some of the IT recruitment sites you should get some idea (eg NewMediaCV )

I hope that's of some help to you