Work out your living expenses per day, this is quite easy to do
Work out what your business expenses will be per day, once again pretty easy
Divide by the number of hours you want to work a day
Add a bit for profit, you need this.
Once you have that figure you have your hourly charge out rate..
I think you're missing something here trev. By all means work out what you'd like to charge as an hourly rate in order to cover your living and business expenses, but if your potential customers find you too expensive, you won't win any jobs and you won't earn anything.
From my experience, the process is:
Try to find out what your competitors are charging, ie what's the local "going rate";
If you're new to the business, pick a rate that's a bit lower, especially if you're going to take longer on most jobs due to your inexperience;
Work out a price for each job based on the number of hours you expect to take and materials cost plus a margin on materials for purchasing admin and dealing with occasional faulty goods;
Run the business for a while and see how it goes. If you're winning every job you bid for, put your rate up a little. If you're losing most bids, try and work out why and, if necessary, drop your rate a little. If there aren't enough jobs to bid for, try and improve your marketing.
And, going back to trev's point, if the rate you think you can charge isn't enough to pay your business and personal expenses, then abandon the plan and go and do something else.
