First off, I think you should probably ignore a lot of the advice in this thread. They're tossing US rates at you which are basically irrelevant.
There's simply no way anyone will pay $100/hr to someone in the Philippines.
That being said, your goal of $15-20/hr is completely doable from the start. Just go on odesk.com or elance.com and start bidding on projects. Start at $15/hr and then gradually increase your rate as you develop a great reputation.
If you'd like to increase your rate substantially (never to US levels, but maybe to $50-60/hr), make 3 investments:
1) Take English classes. Communication skills are absolutely essential for freelance/remote work, and I'd much rather pay $20-30/hr more to someone whose sentences parse readily for me.
2) Learn other languages and some CS fundamentals. Someone who basically just learned Ruby out of 1 book and worked at a mediocre company is never going to be considered at the top of the heap, so do what you can to move up the value chain.
3) Start to build a technical brand/portfolio. If you contribute to some open source projects, that's where you can really start to see higher rates (if you wrote/contributed to an open source project I'm using, I'd happily pay you $150/hr to make some changes).
I've been freelancing on the web for a few years now and I agree about the $100/hr rate being ridiculous, at least for freelancing on the Internet.
Keep these 2 things in mind:
1) Not all clients are from the US on freelancing websites!
2) Clients are on there because they want a cheaper rate!
Now I'm not telling anyone to work for cheap. $50-60/hr is perfectly achievable. Just remember to start low and buildup on sites like oDesk/Elance.
Another route you might try is http://www.toptal.com/. They only hire the very best developers, and their interviews/tests reflect that. It's worth nothing that even they will advise you that $100/hr is a rather expensive rate for someone outside the US.
There's simply no way anyone will pay $100/hr to someone in the Philippines.
That being said, your goal of $15-20/hr is completely doable from the start. Just go on odesk.com or elance.com and start bidding on projects. Start at $15/hr and then gradually increase your rate as you develop a great reputation.
If you'd like to increase your rate substantially (never to US levels, but maybe to $50-60/hr), make 3 investments:
1) Take English classes. Communication skills are absolutely essential for freelance/remote work, and I'd much rather pay $20-30/hr more to someone whose sentences parse readily for me.
2) Learn other languages and some CS fundamentals. Someone who basically just learned Ruby out of 1 book and worked at a mediocre company is never going to be considered at the top of the heap, so do what you can to move up the value chain.
3) Start to build a technical brand/portfolio. If you contribute to some open source projects, that's where you can really start to see higher rates (if you wrote/contributed to an open source project I'm using, I'd happily pay you $150/hr to make some changes).