What's The Most You Have Ever Made Per Hour

[mtshastawriter]

Posting on another thread got me to wondering - what's the most that you have ever made for 1 hour's work?

I write documents for a company who pays me $100 per doc. The documents are typically 3-10 pages in length and take me about 3 hours, on average, to write. Last week I had a very short one that took me 1 hour, so I made $100 an hour. I thought that was pretty great!

I have had another client who would pay me $40 for a 1000 word article on a specific topic. I loved working for him and would write anything he wanted written for the price.

In the working world, back in the late 1990's I made about 50K a year and remember thinking; "I just made $5 for getting coffee and going to the bathroom..."

I wish I could break into the copy-writing arena. I have written some long-form sales copy in the past that converted well, but I haven't figured out where to get clients that want to pay what the writing is worth....

I also wish I knew how to acquire clients with small businesses and websites that are a disaster and need help writing their website content. It seems weird to e-mail them blindly with a message that their current content is horrid and I would be happy to fix it for them... Getting paid for the work would be the biggest issue....

[Gardening Grandma]

After I retired, I was hired by a private contractor. I was paid $800/day. I generally worked 10 hrs on the days I worked, but only worked 6-10 days a month. It was a sweet deal, but only lasted a year. (The work was running training classes for new hires in the business I had retired from. I really enjoyed the work)

[LlamaLlamaDuck]

Doing wedding music - $150 for a couple of songs on Saturday afternoons.

[schildi]

Interesting topic.
I don't know exactly, but back when being a student at the university, I had a short term part time business going with a friend. We did that for two months, and each of us ended up with a net income of about $30K. We spent maybe 2-3 hours a day on that. To be conservative, make it 3 hours. So that would be a total of 180 hours (incl. weekends), making it about $170 per hour. That was net income, and almost 20 years ago. At that time, that was a pretty decent hourly rate for a 19 year old! Back then, we paid other students $10 per hour to do the manual labor for us, it was a good experience.
Of course, it did not take me very long to spend all of it: bought a nice (two year old) car, some good skiing and wind surfing gear, and a few nice vacations ....

[bookcrazychick]

I'm self employed and charge 60/hr. When I worked for someone else, probably about 22/hr. Lowest I have ever been paid? 3.35 which was what minimum wage was when I entered the work force.

[justwhoever]

Most I've ever made was $11.25 an hour. Least I've ever made min. wage at $5.25/hr.

Both at the same company. We were paid on a piece rate. If we didn't get what they told us to get...it was min wage. No mind that we couldn't work because we had no pieces. It's still our fault. lol I sure as hell don't miss that place.

[cronewitch]

I charged $50 in 1993 for formatting financial statements at home. This was before email, internet or modems at home so I had them mail me data on a large floppy disk and I would mail them the formats on a floppy. It was fun and paid really well, I was the best in the country at that software. I used it at 3 CPA firms formatting every client at all of them and worked software support and was the only support rep that did them for 4.5 years. I couldn't work on them when I worked for the company but when I left nobody could really help enough so the support people referred them to me. I went back to supporting the software so couldn't keep working for the clients at home.

[cronewitch]

Lowest I was ever paid was 50 cents a day when I was 7 picking green beans. The next lowest was babysitting for 25 cents an hour. Lowest adult job was 1.25 hour in a factory in 1966.

[Apple]

I think the best hourly rate I've ever made was when I had to work on a holiday so I got triple time. It was a few years ago and I was making around $33 an hour at the time so it would have been $99 an hour for my 10 hour shift. I haven't had the chance to work a holiday since then (but I'd do it if it wasn't a "major" one).

[TrixAre4Kids]

$77.25/hour for holiday pay in 2010.

[stats45]

The most I've ever made per hour is around $200 - $300, but it is a bit misleading.

I was a teaching assistant for a class a few summers ago, and the class was only six weeks. The class was almost entirely maintained by the head instructor and all of the grading was automated. The only work I had in the class was to answer student emails. I never spent more than three hours per week doing that, and I was paid $3,500 for the six weeks. I did that twice over the summer in addition to working another job and taking a few classes.

[sesfw]

$14.35 per hour in 2001. I was a calibration/repair tech for a small company in AZ.
Least amount was $1.20 minimum wage in 1965 Christmas season for a retailer.

[Deleted]

There was a conferance I was asked to present at. I got a per diem for presenting and at the time I had a full time and part time job that also required me to be at that conferance. I remembering working out that I got paid $250/hour for being there.

[debtheaven]

Per hour, 72 USD at one of my current teaching jobs.

But as Stats45 said, that figure is "misleading". For every hour I teach, I also do research and prep work. I write up and grade my students' exams too. All of this is "included" in that generous hourly rate. So "on paper" I earn $72 per hour, but "in reality", I earn (significantly) less.

[Deleted]

I get paid $127.50 to do four hours of Saturday School. All I have to do is supervise students . . . no teaching. So I get a lot of paper grading done. It isn't necessarily a lot of $$$, but I'm getting paid to do something I have to do anyway . . . . There are four of us who "like" to do it so we usually get it assigned once a month.

[stats45]

In my situation, I didn't have to do any preparatory work or grading, so I didn't have 'hidden' hours. I would not have received the position, however, had I not helped the professor with some of her work as a research assistant earlier that year, though I was paid for that as well at the time.

Thankfully, there are now incentives at my school for professors to not overstate needs for teaching help in classes so that doctoral students are ridiculously well-compensated for not much work at all. That said, there is just so much money floating around universities, it makes me nauseous at times.

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

$75 per hour as a consultant/contract programmer. This was 11 years ago.

[debtheaven]

Stats believe me I am NOT complaining! I have several teaching jobs and this is BY FAR my favorite, and not only because of the hourly salary. My dept head has already told me that he intends to rehire me for next Sept, for more hours.

Also, this was my first college teaching job, so I'm sure I put in a LOT of extra hours this year. I'm guessing they will "pay off" in future years though.

[stats45]

I understand debtheaven. I only meant to say that the position I had was ridiculously easy.

The prep hours can really pay off if you teach the course again.

[debtheaven]

The prep hours can really pay off if you teach the course again.

That is definitely my goal!

[dragonfly7]

For a regular job, $12.50 an hour. The most? Dad once paid me $25 to vacuum and wipe down the farm truck, which took about an hour.


"The prep hours can really pay off if you teach the course again."

DH is certainly looking forward to that. He just started his first teaching job two weeks ago.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

LOL! When I was in college, I officiated at the local HS swim meets. So for about 2 hours of work, I got paid $50 for each swim meet, or $25/hour and this was back in 1978.

I make more than that now, but for an undergrad looking for a job, it was an easy way to make money to go to school. Too bad swim season didn't go all semester long!

[schildi]

Does this one count?: A few years ago, I was playing the "credit card game". I earned between $3,000 - $4,000 in interest per year for a few years, total effort was probably 4-5 hours max (probably less, really), total for the year. That would come to > $800 per hour, too bad those times are over! And I remember back then people on YM thinking it was not worth it ...

[ummboutthat]

$26.50
we were short staffed back in 2008 and I was covering for 4 positions (including mine) doing 10 to 18 hours overtime per week.
IT WAS GREAT!!

[Elizabeth]

The most I made was $100/hr back in my early 20's as a local model. Of course after the agency took half, and IRS took their share, it wasn't much at all.

[formerexpat]

$1,000 for 3 hours.

I danced at a bachelorette party once for a friend of a friend who asked me to do it. $500 cash up front and the rest in tips. Plus free drinks.

I was a poor college student, what can I say.

[atlast30]

$60/hour from my current profession (includes bonus).

[cytoglycerine]

When I was a teenager, I used to do data entry for my mom (who had a contract from a company to do many different kinds of data entry, and data collection, and from home), and she used to pay me $100 cash to do a job once a week. The job only took about 1 hour to do, so I basically made $100/hr...although I only had the one job to do each week, so I really only made $100/week lol! This was in the mid-late 90s.


As far as official employment pay, the highest hourly rate I've ever made is $17/hr. My highest salary was $44,000 for a 37.5 hour week, which works out to $22.56/hr. I'm not working right now, so I currently make bupkiss lol

Feb 5, 2011 23:05:27 GMT -5 formerexpat said:

$1,000 for 3 hours.

I danced at a bachelorette party once for a friend of a friend who asked me to do it. $500 cash up front and the rest in tips. Plus free drinks.

I was a poor college student, what can I say.

Oooh scandalous! But hot!!

[readsalot]

DH makes just over $30 an hour plus AWESOME benefits. We live just on his income and own our home, vehicles,etc. We are paying as she goes for our DDs University and we have a really good emergency fund.

[Small Biz Owner]

I bill at $300 per hour for emergency call on weekends like I am today. $500 hr for holidays. IT support in the medical field.