Can anyone advise me on hourly rates for outsourced programmers?

Gary,

Hourly wages for programmers can vary immensely and can be anything from $5/hr (don't even waste your time) to well over $100/hr. But generally speaking, I've found that you can get decent overseas coders for around $15-$20/hr if you're patient and know how to pick the good ones.

That being said, I strongly recommend hiring on a *per-project* basis, not on an hourly basis (unless you really trust the person you're hiring). Otherwise, you'll just get taken advantage of.

Do your homework and thoroughly check out past feedback, samples, portfolios, etc from potential prospects.

You mentioned that you need several tasks done nonstop, but don't EVER give someone you've never worked with before several jobs right at the start. Pick 2 or 3 of your best prospects and give them each a small (insignificant) job, to see how they do with it. That way you can gauge their skill, professionalism, and timeliness, and you'll be in a better position to decide who to give the bigger, more important jobs to.

Personally speaking I've had the best luck on Guru.com, but truth is all of the major freelancing sites have good and bad coders. Just be prepared to spend some time going through a few (or several!) flakes before you find a good one.

Good luck!

I do ASP.NET programming and I charge $100/hr or more per for onsite consulting to corporate clients, often to clean up a mess made by them hiring the cheapest Indian programmer they could find.

I've found that decent ASP.NET programmers in India can be hired for around $35/hr to $45/hr. Any less and you'll be lucky to get the work done right. If you can do your project using LAMP you can cut about $10 or so off that rate, maybe even more. ASP.NET tends to be in demand by corporations more than individuals and small businesses and that pushes up the price.