6 ms·

Just curious what do you consult on for 350/hr? Is this basic CRUD stuff? Wordpress template etc?

im_down_w_otp 7y ago
$35/hr was writing post-processors for CNC machines. Went up to $75/hr for interactive media work (Flash/Flex). Went up to $150/hr for business systems integration (Netsuite, Salesforce, etc.) Eventually got that up to $300/hr. The astute observer will notice that the rate was inversely proportional to the actual difficulty of the work. This was mostly 10-15 years ago. $350/hr+ was distributed database related consulting, and then started going North from there for increasingly niche and specialized consulting services. Though only on very rare occasion these days. The highest rate I've ever been able to negotiate was $1,000/hr. But, it was also for a very short engagement (~10 hours) for some especially weird knowledge I have about replacing critical mainframe infrastructure with commodity systems. Point being, you might be surprised how much you can charge for the right services to the right customers who have a clear sense of need and appropriately value a solution.
- WildGreenLeave 7y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, how did you find those clients? I assume it was all mouth to mouth advertisement? How did you switch between those types of work? Reason I'm asking is because I recently started freelancing in software/web development (about 6 months ago) and I think I'm doing okay. I love to design and think out all of the odd, interesting or difficult back-end problems and so far all of my clients love my work, and with that I'm slowly increasing my rate, started at 50eu/h ($55/hr) and am currently at 75eu/h ($82). This is all in Europe (The Netherlands) However I feel like I'm a bit stuck, the clients I'm able to find don't want to pay more then $80 and with that the work isn't as challenging as I'd like it to be. At the same time it feels like the clients that do want to pay more aren't looking for me.
  - robinduckett 7y ago
    This is just under what I charge per day for fully remote full-stack JS development and whilst I do need to charge more in future I am happy with my current client and the work is challenging and engaging. As the OP says, if you don't find the work engaging then move on.
    - chirau 7y ago
      you charge just above $80 per day?
  - im_down_w_otp 7y ago
    A combination of word if mouth and eventually targeted business development activities (not sales, but business development). To make it easier to charge more you have to go after customers who are less price sensitive, whose problems are costing them a lot of money, and who are accustom to acquiring outside help for things outside what they consider to be their core business & expertise. In my case this was big enterprises. Nationwide law firms, banking & fin. tech. institutions, international distribution & logistics companies, etc. It took a long time to build up to that point and to get access to those parts of the market. The way it worked for me was, early-on, I'd be doing smaller jobs for big companies. Sometimes with another vendor as an intermediary. So, I might work with Boeing or Lockheed indirectly, but I was fastidious about establishing direct personal relationships. Once I hit the media & marketing world, it was the same pattern. Work through an existing vendor of say Pepsi or Nike, and then make direct personal relationships that could grow later for their adjacent or orthogonal needs. Eventually you have enough contacts and enough of a reputation that you don't need to leverage the credibility of intermediaries anymore. I don't know that such a path would work for everyone for all kinds of work (everything I ever did was kind of esoteric for its time), but that's what worked for me.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > The astute observer will notice that the rate was inversely proportional to the actual difficulty of the work This is gold. It happens far too often.
FpUser 7y ago
I once charged $20,000 for 3 days worth of work. Happened like this: one very huge phone company wanted some very specific self contained component written in Java. They shopped around and did not find anyone willing to do it. My friend was working there and told them that he knows that genius consultant (yours truly). So they called me up and during negotiations I told them that I will do it for $20,000. I was prepared to bargain but they told me that I am very reasonable for that functionality. At no point they asked about exact time frame/hourly rate. They just said that the expect it to take no longer than a month. Came home, fired up my PC and spent 3 very long days coding it. That was all about it. I wish I could nail contracts like this more often ;)
- zerr 7y ago
  Yeah, such projects happen and it always surprises me - why can't such shops find in-house devs (with regular salaries) for such projects?
  - rightbyte 7y ago
    They are probably swamped with processes, fires and Scrum meetings so the developers have no agent to just concentrate and do something.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    I know a lot about Erlang & Elixir, but almost none of my daily work now would lead me to learn what I know. Some things are probably 3 days of work if you know it, and 3 months of work if you don't.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    Sometimes average corporate developer just does not cut it. Like you've got a bunch who know how to take data from a database and feed it to web form. Ask them to do anything else and they would expect you to send them to a training courses. I've met quite a few shops like that. Meanwhile. This project required some imagination and multi-disciplinary knowledge. Sure the company have some geniuses but the company is huge multinational and for one department of their branch it was probably way simpler and cheaper to get someone from outside then shop their other brunch. Big companies are very bureaucratic
jandrewrogers 7y ago
The rate is partly a function of how deep/rare your subject matter expertise is. Companies will not see $1000/hr as unreasonable if you can deliver sufficient value.

$35/hr was writing post-processors for CNC machines. Went up to $75/hr for interactive media work (Flash/Flex). Went up to $150/hr for business systems integration (Netsuite, Salesforce, etc.) Eventually got that up to $300/hr. The astute observer will notice that the rate was inversely proportional to the actual difficulty of the work. This was mostly 10-15 years ago. $350/hr+ was distributed database related consulting, and then started going North from there for increasingly niche and specialized consulting services. Though only on very rare occasion these days. The highest rate I've ever been able to negotiate was $1,000/hr. But, it was also for a very short engagement (~10 hours) for some especially weird knowledge I have about replacing critical mainframe infrastructure with commodity systems. Point being, you might be surprised how much you can charge for the right services to the right customers who have a clear sense of need and appropriately value a solution.

WildGreenLeave 7y ago
If you don't mind me asking, how did you find those clients? I assume it was all mouth to mouth advertisement? How did you switch between those types of work? Reason I'm asking is because I recently started freelancing in software/web development (about 6 months ago) and I think I'm doing okay. I love to design and think out all of the odd, interesting or difficult back-end problems and so far all of my clients love my work, and with that I'm slowly increasing my rate, started at 50eu/h ($55/hr) and am currently at 75eu/h ($82). This is all in Europe (The Netherlands) However I feel like I'm a bit stuck, the clients I'm able to find don't want to pay more then $80 and with that the work isn't as challenging as I'd like it to be. At the same time it feels like the clients that do want to pay more aren't looking for me.
- robinduckett 7y ago
  This is just under what I charge per day for fully remote full-stack JS development and whilst I do need to charge more in future I am happy with my current client and the work is challenging and engaging. As the OP says, if you don't find the work engaging then move on.
  - chirau 7y ago
    you charge just above $80 per day?
- im_down_w_otp 7y ago
  A combination of word if mouth and eventually targeted business development activities (not sales, but business development). To make it easier to charge more you have to go after customers who are less price sensitive, whose problems are costing them a lot of money, and who are accustom to acquiring outside help for things outside what they consider to be their core business & expertise. In my case this was big enterprises. Nationwide law firms, banking & fin. tech. institutions, international distribution & logistics companies, etc. It took a long time to build up to that point and to get access to those parts of the market. The way it worked for me was, early-on, I'd be doing smaller jobs for big companies. Sometimes with another vendor as an intermediary. So, I might work with Boeing or Lockheed indirectly, but I was fastidious about establishing direct personal relationships. Once I hit the media & marketing world, it was the same pattern. Work through an existing vendor of say Pepsi or Nike, and then make direct personal relationships that could grow later for their adjacent or orthogonal needs. Eventually you have enough contacts and enough of a reputation that you don't need to leverage the credibility of intermediaries anymore. I don't know that such a path would work for everyone for all kinds of work (everything I ever did was kind of esoteric for its time), but that's what worked for me.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> The astute observer will notice that the rate was inversely proportional to the actual difficulty of the work This is gold. It happens far too often.

FpUser 7y ago

I once charged $20,000 for 3 days worth of work. Happened like this: one very huge phone company wanted some very specific self contained component written in Java. They shopped around and did not find anyone willing to do it. My friend was working there and told them that he knows that genius consultant (yours truly). So they called me up and during negotiations I told them that I will do it for $20,000. I was prepared to bargain but they told me that I am very reasonable for that functionality. At no point they asked about exact time frame/hourly rate. They just said that the expect it to take no longer than a month. Came home, fired up my PC and spent 3 very long days coding it. That was all about it. I wish I could nail contracts like this more often ;)

zerr 7y ago
Yeah, such projects happen and it always surprises me - why can't such shops find in-house devs (with regular salaries) for such projects?
- rightbyte 7y ago
  They are probably swamped with processes, fires and Scrum meetings so the developers have no agent to just concentrate and do something.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I know a lot about Erlang & Elixir, but almost none of my daily work now would lead me to learn what I know. Some things are probably 3 days of work if you know it, and 3 months of work if you don't.
- FpUser 7y ago
  Sometimes average corporate developer just does not cut it. Like you've got a bunch who know how to take data from a database and feed it to web form. Ask them to do anything else and they would expect you to send them to a training courses. I've met quite a few shops like that. Meanwhile. This project required some imagination and multi-disciplinary knowledge. Sure the company have some geniuses but the company is huge multinational and for one department of their branch it was probably way simpler and cheaper to get someone from outside then shop their other brunch. Big companies are very bureaucratic

jandrewrogers 7y ago

The rate is partly a function of how deep/rare your subject matter expertise is. Companies will not see $1000/hr as unreasonable if you can deliver sufficient value.