$35 sounds very low. Take a look at the latest salary surveys done by the Australia Chapter of STC (http://www.stc-aus.org.au/surveys.htm; specifically: http://www.stc-aus.org.au/Survey/2005survey_responses_remuneration.htm) Rhonda Rhonda Bracey http://www.cybertext.com.au AuthorIT Certified Consultant [STC members: Vote 1 for Char James-Tanny for Secretary!] -----Original Message----- From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of The Herrings Sent: Tue 1/31/2006 7:15 AM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: First Gig Coming Up Hi All, I'm going for my first paying contract gig. I was wondering if you could give me some idea as to rates. My hunting around tells me that for an ex high end technical trainer (cisco, microsoft, etc) with 15 years of IT experience I should be able to get around $35 per hour for my first real tech writer job. Could you give me your thoughts on whether you think this is fairly close to the money? Cheers Shane "A Real Tech Writer at Last" -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.14.23/243 - Release Date: 27/01/2006 ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************