200 Dollars Per Hour!

That's about £1,000 per day. What am I talking about? iPhone Contract development. The US figures come from Raven Zachary's blog on OReilly. These rates won't last, but at the moment he reports it's averaging $125 an hour with some developers getting $200 an hour. Expect to work solid for a month to two months completing an application.

Contract work is a curious phenomena. Normally once you have achieved 2-3 years solid work experience you can try your hand at it. It works best if you're young and don't have dependents, though a working live-in girlfriend or wife is not a bad thing. Why because as a contract worker there will be times when you don't have a contract. I have been a contractor twice in my life. Once was a 3 month contract that got extended and lasted two years. The other more recently was at my present employers and lasted six months and they used it as a "try before you buy" to see if I was worth employing permanently. Both contracts were in the finance sector and paid very well but not quite these top rates!.

Contract rates are set by the market. At the moment there is a lot of demand and a shortage of iPhone SDK developers. Lots of people see the App Store as a gold mine and have ideas they want turned into iPhone Apps. They consider it worth paying someone $10,000-$30,000 to develop an app. if it does well it will easily recoup the cost. So forget 2-3 years experience if you have written and published an iPhone app then you are worth your weight in gold in the contract market (possibly!).

• Link to Code Library for iPhone