@Renee , it's a tough call. You will find an incredibly wide range of salaries. Everything depends on the location of the contractor and the experience.
As already mentioned here, 3 years of experience is not enough to really pass the Junior/Intermediate threshold. If you need to build things from scratch you may want someone senior, unless you're building a very basic prototype that you can dump later and rebuild.
By the way, higher rate doesn't necessarily bring you quality and experience. You really need to look at someones background to evaluate how much it's relevant. If you have a friend developer with experience asked him/her to check the code of this new candidate and their source code profile, such as github.
If you are willing to work with someone remotely you can do things very economically. You just need to find a right person. Developers can ask for $15 - $50/hour on sites like odesk or freelancer or elancer etc... There are some good people out there, but unfortunately the best are super busy.
Oh, one more thing. Don't settle on a hire because you think it's a good price - only if it's a good fit. Cheap may cost you much more than you think, expensive may not meet your expectations.
I would be happy to chat if you want. Good luck.