How much do scripters charge for custom work?

I tend to agree with the "this is part of my social life and entertainment" premise and have had enough bad experiences (both in SL and R/L) to decide it just wasn't worth my time or sense of peace to work for clients who aren't experienced with this whole contracting thing.

I'll do an occasional freebie as a favor or point to the forums for freebie scripts and I have some open source projects I'm working on for the benefit of the community, but I've pretty much closed the door on working for hire. I think if I were approached and decided to take it seriously I would tell them "This is my personal time you are cutting into, how much do you think I should get paid per hour (in $US) for doing this?"

I would agree with the above post, however I do enjoy an interesting programming project and if you can get paid for it then why the hell not?

I have no expectations of being the next Anshe Chung but right now it would be nice to have the odd bit of extra income coming in. My RL income covers the cost of living and not much else so if I can get a few luxuries and toys from time to time due to writing scripts in SL then why the hell not. I'm good at it and I enjoy it.

I'm actually surprised that I enjoy it so much given how close what I'm doing is to my RL job.

Wow, no offence everyone, but you guys charge a LOT. Most of the people I have met that are more of "buyers" than "sellers" have less than 5000L. I usually charge less than 50L for any sort of custom work... Unless it involves me doing some extra research, buying scripts for a RP system, etc.

I assume most of us, when speaking of custom work, are referring to custom scripts someone wants created to use in something they intend to sell. That is exactly where my issue with payment, and the lack of it, comes into play. If someone wants something for personal use, that's one thing and I price it down accordingly. But if someone is looking for scripts designed specifically for something they are planning to sell that's another matter entirely. They end up with a lifetime potential profit stream from this thing and want to give me 1 or 2k (or less!) to write it? No, just no. Now if they want to give me a percentage on each sale that's another matter, but most have no desire to do that and in some cases I wouldn't trust them to actually do it even if they said they would. So that leaves the upfront cost as the only income I will most likely ever see from that particular script as I don't run a script shop or anything of the sort. Is that a flaw in my business plan, such as it is? Probably.

I had one try to charge me $5,000 for a script that is sold on slexchange for $500. Because I had already asked this person to custom create this script and the work had been started, (before I found it on slex), I decided to wait this person out to finish the script. When said person said they wanted $5,000 I said hells no. I paid $800 instead. The script never worked and the person said they would fix it and get back with me but never did. I chalked it up to a screwing, bought the $500 script on slex and decided I'd never contract another script without knowing 100% that it was right.

Be careful, people will dick you around out here!

ZACTLY!

Interesting that they ripped you off by overpricing. In my experience with builder friends, it's usually the scripters that show up outta nowhere looking for work who say they can do it for much less than anyone else that end up either taking forever or providing a buggy script they never fix. This is why you should ask for references and actually check them out before hiring anyone.

But then how would new scripters get jobs, or even be able to sell stuff? I know a really good scripter who specializes in making airplanes, but he doesn't sell any of them (yet). If this person decided he DID want to sell them, how would he get a chance?

In a position of consultancy, I have certainly encountered "scripters" who expect large sums for hacked versions of free scripts which do not work properly and also arrive late. Needless to say I do not recommend that my clients pay them a penny. I have also encountered "scripters" who claim knowledge of X, Y and Z but oddly have no portfolio whatsoever and who display no knowledge of what they claim they are expert in. But this is really very little different to RL.

Indeed it's no different to RL. I've encountered plenty of clueless programmers and even more clueless consultants who charge a fortune and deliver crap. (The lot who recently migrated my RL employer to MS Exchange, 2 months late and not working properly spring to mind)

My plan was to do the work, then nobble it in some annoying but obvious way, give it to the buyer with no-mod perms and they can have an un-nobbled version when they pay me.

References aren't just former employers, they can also include examples of work they've done that indicate they actually have the ability they claim to. In your example, the guy makes airplanes so obviously if he were applying for a job he could demonstrate that the airplanes he makes actually work. I don't know about anyone else but if I were looking to hire a builder I'd certainly want some assurance that they could actually build whatever it is I was looking for. Why would scripting be any different?

I used to be a professional programmer, but I quit. I've found other work irl, and because of that do not need to make a living or anything from programming/scripting. I still can, and sometimes still do though. Occasionally it's fun.

However, my free time is VERY dear to me. So when I program, it's just for fun, or for a very good friend. I generally do it for free even.
If someone wants me to write something, those three things are basically what decides what I charge.
If it's not a close friend, I will charge some.
If it's not something I really want to do, I charge more.
If it's a big project, taking a lot of my free time, my price will go up exponentially.

To get me back to (near) fulltime programming, one would have to offer me more than what a professional normally charges in rl, and let's be honest: there are probably other scripters in SL, who would be interested, and who are able to do the same thing, but at a much lower rate. When I connect to SL, I want to have fun, not work.