5 ms·

Here are my main tips: Pick a niche. This is key. You may be the best programmer in the world, but people won't know whom to pick. You might be the best game p

Here are my main tips: Pick a niche. This is key. You may be the best programmer in the world, but people won't know whom to pick. You might be the best game programmer, but there are many others. However, if you pitch yourself as the expert in getting html games to perform smoothly with poor connectivity, then people with that problem know exactly whom to pick. For this to be effective: Don't pick too broad a niche. You can pick the niche based on data -- which if your skills is most in demand, pays the most, has the most wanted posts and so on. Make sure your whole profile is geared to promoting your prowess in the niche. Did I mention, pick a niche? Once you have a niche, you can expand to adjacent niches. Oh, and don't underprice yourself. The price is a signal of quality so only go as low (if you must) as the market average but no lower for your niche.

pan69 9y ago
Any tips on how to find your market average?
- muzani 9y ago
  Global rates for software developers are roughly about $25-$100 an hour. $100/hour is more for people with specialist experience in the US time zone. There are people willing to go cheaper than $25/hour, but you'll be a blur among people who are willing to work fo $4/hour. But usually there are local rates as well based on your country. These are somewhat pegged to the international rates past a certain level of quality. These can be lower than international rates. Sometimes you can squeeze an even higher price out of a local contract because you'd add the benefit of more strongly understanding the problem, better communication in terms of time zone, language, and face to face interaction. Plus there's some security in meeting a person face to face.
  - odonnellryan 9y ago
    It is not uncommon to charge $125-150/hr for high-end work on something as basic as configuring Wordpress sites. However, high-end means the focus gets drastically shifted from programming to figuring out what the client wants. That said, you can charge 250-500 as a freelancer for a few hours of consultation. Your rates should largely depend on: 1) How many hours the client intends on spending with you 2) Urgency of work (and thus how much bandwidth you need to give to it) 3) Client's ROI If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client: even if they are only paying people $50/hr to create these reports. You can't charge 100,000k, otherwise the client will not have a great ROI. However, such a solution should take you somewhere around 100-400 hours to complete. That works out to $125/hr in the worst-case, giving the client a good ROI after the first six months, and should give you a solid 4-6 months of work. If they need it sooner you need to charge them more, because you'll spend less time on business development. This is a perfect world hypothetical of course ... in reality many other things come into play that will only work to drive your rates down.
    - djellybeans 9y ago
      How do you maintain good conversion rates for charging as much as how you stated (such as your Wordpress example)? You run the risk of getting no offers. I think the difficult part about charging $125-150/hr, if you have never charged that much, is finding the clients that are used to paying those kinds of prices. You'll have to figure out how to convert talks into sales better before you can charge those prices. For instance, the person who would want a site for $50/hr is probably not going to pay $125/hr. You could try with that person, but that would be pushing your luck. In this case they're not the right client for you.
      - odonnellryan 9y ago
        It comes down to not wanting to do WP work, so I charge a lot when someone wants it. Sometimes I give it away ... for a client that is giving me a lot of business. However, you can charge what is 150/hr for WP work if you have a good reputation and do good work. Literally EVERYONE who has any kind of money runs a charity, or is involved in a business or seven that needs a new homepage ... This won't work if you're trying to cold call and get clients, you're right. I started out at 50-70/hr programming. Some of my contracts now are only ~90/hr.
      - muzani 9y ago
        Also, it's about how long the projects take. Sometimes $150/hr for Wordpress might just be done in a couple hours, with a template and an upload.
    - hanniabu 9y ago
      > If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client... How do you get this information? Do you ask them how much time is spent on this task per person and their average hourly rate? Or do you go about finding this info out another way? Do you usually prepare a confidentiality agreement to discuss this? How do you bring it up without coming off so blunt?(as in not making it seem like you're using these numbers to figure out how much you can charge them)
muzani 9y ago
+1 to not underpricing yourself. At the lower prices, you will get a lot of low quality clients. If the problem is big enough, they're willing to pay.

pan69 9y ago

Any tips on how to find your market average?

muzani 9y ago
Global rates for software developers are roughly about $25-$100 an hour. $100/hour is more for people with specialist experience in the US time zone. There are people willing to go cheaper than $25/hour, but you'll be a blur among people who are willing to work fo $4/hour. But usually there are local rates as well based on your country. These are somewhat pegged to the international rates past a certain level of quality. These can be lower than international rates. Sometimes you can squeeze an even higher price out of a local contract because you'd add the benefit of more strongly understanding the problem, better communication in terms of time zone, language, and face to face interaction. Plus there's some security in meeting a person face to face.
- odonnellryan 9y ago
  It is not uncommon to charge $125-150/hr for high-end work on something as basic as configuring Wordpress sites. However, high-end means the focus gets drastically shifted from programming to figuring out what the client wants. That said, you can charge 250-500 as a freelancer for a few hours of consultation. Your rates should largely depend on: 1) How many hours the client intends on spending with you 2) Urgency of work (and thus how much bandwidth you need to give to it) 3) Client's ROI If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client: even if they are only paying people $50/hr to create these reports. You can't charge 100,000k, otherwise the client will not have a great ROI. However, such a solution should take you somewhere around 100-400 hours to complete. That works out to $125/hr in the worst-case, giving the client a good ROI after the first six months, and should give you a solid 4-6 months of work. If they need it sooner you need to charge them more, because you'll spend less time on business development. This is a perfect world hypothetical of course ... in reality many other things come into play that will only work to drive your rates down.
  - djellybeans 9y ago
    How do you maintain good conversion rates for charging as much as how you stated (such as your Wordpress example)? You run the risk of getting no offers. I think the difficult part about charging $125-150/hr, if you have never charged that much, is finding the clients that are used to paying those kinds of prices. You'll have to figure out how to convert talks into sales better before you can charge those prices. For instance, the person who would want a site for $50/hr is probably not going to pay $125/hr. You could try with that person, but that would be pushing your luck. In this case they're not the right client for you.
    - odonnellryan 9y ago
      It comes down to not wanting to do WP work, so I charge a lot when someone wants it. Sometimes I give it away ... for a client that is giving me a lot of business. However, you can charge what is 150/hr for WP work if you have a good reputation and do good work. Literally EVERYONE who has any kind of money runs a charity, or is involved in a business or seven that needs a new homepage ... This won't work if you're trying to cold call and get clients, you're right. I started out at 50-70/hr programming. Some of my contracts now are only ~90/hr.
    - muzani 9y ago
      Also, it's about how long the projects take. Sometimes $150/hr for Wordpress might just be done in a couple hours, with a template and an upload.
  - hanniabu 9y ago
    > If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client... How do you get this information? Do you ask them how much time is spent on this task per person and their average hourly rate? Or do you go about finding this info out another way? Do you usually prepare a confidentiality agreement to discuss this? How do you bring it up without coming off so blunt?(as in not making it seem like you're using these numbers to figure out how much you can charge them)

muzani 9y ago

+1 to not underpricing yourself. At the lower prices, you will get a lot of low quality clients. If the problem is big enough, they're willing to pay.