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Are you making $80,000 gross or net? Either way, honestly, I would say you don't have a niche problem, you have a (potentially) marketing, sales, and rate prob

Are you making $80,000 gross or net? Either way, honestly, I would say you don't have a niche problem, you have a (potentially) marketing, sales, and rate problem. As you point out there is plenty of work as a Full-stack LAMP engineer. It might not be exciting or the new kid on the block but there is plenty of it to go around. The problem is that you either: A) Aren't doing enough business - If you are making $80,000 gross you are only working 800 hours a year. That could be good or bad, but right now I bet it doesn't feel like enough. B) Aren't charging enough - $100 an hour is pretty inexpensive for a consultant of any sort. C) All of the above!! This is the right answer by the way. I will link to one of my favorite comments on this topic for you to read, it was by tptacek, and I keep it bookmarked [1]. But the long and short is, raise your rates, specialize in things your existing customer base needs, find new customers that also need those things, raise your rates, focus on business objectives for your customers, stop billing hourly, raise your rates, generalize, raise your rates. You probably should just keep on raising your rates. So what does this mean for a full-stack LAMP engineer? Are you really good with Wordpress or Magento? Raise your rates and start selling wordpress and magento services. Are you exceptional at tuning MySQL? Raise your rates and start selling high scalability MySQL tuning. Are you an expert in making apps more stable and easier to deploy? ... You get the idea. Don't go away from what you are good at. Dive deeper into it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615

thisisdallas 10y ago
This is a good post, but as far as WordPress goes $100 an hour is almost unheard of.
- trcollinson 10y ago
  Sure it is, if you are a "Wordpress Engineer", you are absolutely right. However, if you are a "Web Based Marketing, Strategy, and E-Commerce Consultancy", suddenly you are making $250+ on Wordpress stuff. I can name off more high end sites built on Wordpress than I would care to where the companies pay huge amounts up front plus on going fees to keep them up and running smoothly.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    This right here is critically important advice and you should listen to it carefully. Calling yourself a "Wordpress Engineer" will help you get work on freelancing sites, but for your bill rate, it's like a boat anchor tied to another boat anchor tied to a that big ass flying rock from Deep Impact. There is no easier way to position yourself away from the money and into cost-center accounting than to put the name of specific technologies into your title or branding. One thing almost every freelancer can do instantaneously to improve their business is to scour their branding, titles, and marketing copy for jargon and tech names. There's a place for that kind of stuff, but it's not the front page of your website, or on your consulting one-sheet. If you're a "Wordpress Engineer", one thing that's very likely is that you have a bunch of clients. They're not paying you, well, anything really, but you do have a bunch of them. So take a few hours some time this week and call a bunch of them and ask what they did with your work, why they commissioned it, what they were hoping to get out of it, and whether that worked out. Two things will happen: * You will probably generate at least one new paying contract. Any time you mass-call a bunch of clients, you will get new contracts. My partner Dave and I twice had to call large groups of our clients to report that we may or may not have accidentally and stupidly destroyed the Internet. Each time, we got new gigs from the exercise. * You will know a lot more about what you should be calling your service offerings, rather than "Wordpress Engineering".
    - fightfortheuser 10y ago
      Good point. It often comes down to labeling. For instance, if you call yourself a freelancer your clients might think "cheap, disposable, commodity", but if you call yourself a consultant and can show that you deliver, then you can charge a premium price.
- fightfortheuser 10y ago
  I've got a fellow freelancer who charges $125 to build Wordpress websites, and he doesn't even make the design. But is good with layouts, and knows how to price by value.
fightfortheuser 10y ago
see reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205611 But now that I've run some more calculations it seems like I'll hit ~$85,000 USD gross this year. And really, you gave great advice.

thisisdallas 10y ago

This is a good post, but as far as WordPress goes $100 an hour is almost unheard of.

trcollinson 10y ago
Sure it is, if you are a "Wordpress Engineer", you are absolutely right. However, if you are a "Web Based Marketing, Strategy, and E-Commerce Consultancy", suddenly you are making $250+ on Wordpress stuff. I can name off more high end sites built on Wordpress than I would care to where the companies pay huge amounts up front plus on going fees to keep them up and running smoothly.
- tptacek 10y ago
  This right here is critically important advice and you should listen to it carefully. Calling yourself a "Wordpress Engineer" will help you get work on freelancing sites, but for your bill rate, it's like a boat anchor tied to another boat anchor tied to a that big ass flying rock from Deep Impact. There is no easier way to position yourself away from the money and into cost-center accounting than to put the name of specific technologies into your title or branding. One thing almost every freelancer can do instantaneously to improve their business is to scour their branding, titles, and marketing copy for jargon and tech names. There's a place for that kind of stuff, but it's not the front page of your website, or on your consulting one-sheet. If you're a "Wordpress Engineer", one thing that's very likely is that you have a bunch of clients. They're not paying you, well, anything really, but you do have a bunch of them. So take a few hours some time this week and call a bunch of them and ask what they did with your work, why they commissioned it, what they were hoping to get out of it, and whether that worked out. Two things will happen: * You will probably generate at least one new paying contract. Any time you mass-call a bunch of clients, you will get new contracts. My partner Dave and I twice had to call large groups of our clients to report that we may or may not have accidentally and stupidly destroyed the Internet. Each time, we got new gigs from the exercise. * You will know a lot more about what you should be calling your service offerings, rather than "Wordpress Engineering".
  - fightfortheuser 10y ago
    Good point. It often comes down to labeling. For instance, if you call yourself a freelancer your clients might think "cheap, disposable, commodity", but if you call yourself a consultant and can show that you deliver, then you can charge a premium price.
fightfortheuser 10y ago
I've got a fellow freelancer who charges $125 to build Wordpress websites, and he doesn't even make the design. But is good with layouts, and knows how to price by value.

fightfortheuser 10y ago

see reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205611 But now that I've run some more calculations it seems like I'll hit ~$85,000 USD gross this year. And really, you gave great advice.