Your salary expectations are awful high for a telecommute position. Next time you could consider letting them warm up to you before throwing that out. Also, how can you have expertise in "a bunch of other stuff"? The point of expertise is focus.
Maybe the 40/50 are reading your email. How do you know they are not deciding up front that you're not the right fit?
I don't know where this assumption is coming from, The author is a senior ROR developer, which is very hot in the market, almost as hot as JavaScript, I earned 220k last year, all remote, doing hot technologies. Given his ROR experience $115k is a bargain whether remote or on-site. I am beginning to suspect a lot of people are underselling themselves in the market given the responses to the compensation amount.
Long term contract, I just passed over a perm gig for $140k + benefits and options which would be close to the same in terms of total compensation. I mainly do very large JavaScript apps with Dojo and jQuery, I also do iPhone and Android development. Ruby and ROR are similar in compensation to those technologies.
kls's numbers are pretty normal compensation for these skills. The people saying it is numbers that are around half that are simply not in tune with market reality. The comments that $115 is too high are almost as bizarre as the comments that there are tech companies in 2011 incapable of dealing with remote workers, or realizing that that is what most successful companies are doing.
Why would you think that salary has to be lower for telecommuting position ? Premise is it will be same quality of work as on site so should be same and company saves on office, space equipment etc..
Maybe the 40/50 are reading your email. How do you know they are not deciding up front that you're not the right fit?