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« on: July 12, 2006, 04:20:04 pm »
I would recommend looking into your local market for general "design" and "illustration" rates rather than focusing in on one specific aspect unless you've already established yourself as a pixel artist. If you're in Los Angeles, New York, San Fran, London you are probably going to have access to larger clients that can afford to pay $20-30/hour. I've only had a few paid pixel art gigs (mostly for Flash games), but they've mostly been for big companies that didn't fight me on $20/$30. Look at job postings for your market (Monster, classifieds, etc) and break it down by hour.
A Los Angeles designer's salary range is between $45-65/K (based on my ancedotal evidence). If you break that down per hour $21.63 to $31.25 per hour for a year of 40 hour work weeks. Realistically you would probably want to add 20% to those numbers for freelance work to cover your expenses so $25-$40/hour would be more realistic. With the age of the Internet all the "local" stuff gets blown out of the water, but it's still not a bad idea to study what a client's city is offering for salary/freelance.
Don't forget that networking and self-promotion is as important as your talent. I consider myself a pretty decent programmer, but I make more than people who are more talented because I've worked hard at connecting with people. Which reminds me... if you have a steady income coming in (even working in some other industry) you can take your time building your client list and possibly take some cheaper jobs to get your foot in the door. If you do work outside your chosen industry be careful not to let your full time gig wipe out your passion -- it can creep up slowly and it's hard to get back on that horse (believe me).