Re: Unfortunately...
"Having said that, I wish I could get away with charging what some of the oldies out there charge. I might actually own a decent car, have some nice holidays and drink fancier beer than the £2.69 for 12 stubbies dreck from Lidl."
At £375 per day for such a skilled job you really are under selling yourself. If what you deploy will save the client so much money then you could be charging a whole lot more based on the value to them. Your hourly rate is far below many other non-IT trades. IT as an industry isn't valued anymore. You will find in the future that your wage is pushed further down by outsourcing and by other younger, cheaper, people. So you will need to compete on quality and on things you probably haven't considered in your end-to-end model. For example what provision has been made for security, what provision for backups, resilience, regular monitoring, etc, etc. What the "oldies" have learned is that simply installing the tool can be done by most technical people with a little bit of learning. That's not necessarily where the money is and also may not be a complete solution. Just because the client wants something installed doesn't necessarily give them what they actually wanted in a full solution.
In your specific cases I have not idea whether you are offering a comparable service to the "oldies" (an offensive term to some by the way). But the cost difference is so large then it at least begs the question of what the other company was providing that your cheaper cost isnt'.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
