what's your salary?

[Chris Corbyn]

I think in London, the rate is close to 25+pounds per hour and can increase depending on experience.

That'd put web developers in London on approx £50k. That might have been true during the dot.com bubble, but these days high twenties is more normal.

I think that really depends upon what level you're working at. An entry-level web developer (PHP/HTML) might earn something like £15-18K in the UK. Some companies will pay more though. There's more than one side to the industry too.... you can be a designer, you can write (X)HTML, or you can be a programmer.

If you excel in a particular field or you soley handle a part of the project then you should expect more. Once you gain experience in the field and really impress people I'd expect to look for £30K+.

Granted, you can earn a lot more doing it freelance but the work fluctuates and the market is fairly saturated so I wouldn't call it "stable".

The dot com boom was definitely a time to make big-bucks if you new what you were doing... it's not so easy now.

[onion2k]

Exactly. I'm on a little over £30k (middle thirties if you include my quarterly bonus), but I've got 5 years commerical experience, close to ten years web development experience, and the company I work for is based in the north east (Newcastle). In London I would hope to add another 25% onto that. But I am, being all modest and humble about it, really awesome at PHP, good at SQL, plus I know Photoshop, some Flash, Perl and ASP on top of that.

£50k is possible, but only if you're exceptional.

[neophyte]

Wow, I had no idea contracts took that long to write. I figured it was a simple 1-2 page outline of the site. Well anyways - do you guys all have graphic design skills to backup your php skills or how does it work? Do you work with a web designer?

I am a web designer. My schooling is pring design. But my work experience is web design. I do both. But I've never done freelance coding. Well, except once I implemented PHPMailer on a contact for on the web. (Big deal!).

[alvinphp]

Wow, I had no idea contracts took that long to write. I figured it was a simple 1-2 page outline of the site. Well anyways - do you guys all have graphic design skills to backup your php skills or how does it work? Do you work with a web designer?

The contract part is such and important piece and one that is screwed up the most resulting in a failed application. Either the contractor or client needs to know how to build a contract or you are in deep doo doo. If both know what is up then you make beautiful music together.