Thirdkoopa

Area 6. I don't know how nobody has taken that yet.

The biggest mistake a dev can make is concealing their budget from the person they're entrusting with their audio vision.  Unfortunately, a lot of devs "shop around."  Treat yourself with some respect but be objective and sincere about what price will yield your best results.
You can't deliver a killer soundtrack if you're on your third week of revisions for a single minute loop and you're now realizing that you're getting paid about 3 bucks an hour to write it.
Think about your skill level, be honest in your evaluation of how well produced/professionally produced your music is (as honest as possible) and come up with an optimistic fee, be open to negotiation and maintain a firm minimum.  If you have no credits, then money is probably not your primary objective for the work, that's important to evaluate as well.  I definitely charged low when I was starting out, never charged as low as $100/min, but low.  I had my minimums and sometimes that meant it didn't work out.  Sometimes that meant the dude who was charging $50/min got the job, but they almost always SOUND like it too.  I knew a guy who was trapped in $50/min, couldn't seem to work his way out, kept getting gigs by low-balling and then he grew a customer base of cheap devs looking for the bottom line.

He was not happy with the work he did and he had to do a high volume to maintain a steady income, so he burnt up all his creative juices just trying to churn out 40-60 minutes a month just to pay the bills.
Most importantly: NEVER, EVER POST YOUR RATES ANYWHERE--JUST DON'T DO IT.

All rate discussions should be kept private in undisclosed email conversations with your client.  The client will want you to disclose a rate immediately, but you cannot honestly estimate a rate if you do not know what kind of music you'll be writing, what the scope or duration of the project is, whether your client is expecting any live musicians, what KIND of production they're expecting from you, etc., etc., etc.

It's not about holding something back from the dev, it's about being honest about what rate will yield your best results.

I'm game. I heard compo's are like, the best way to improve thanks to you lovely people at the PAX West panel, so I'll give it a shot.