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Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?
In my personal freelancing experience, I need a certain amount of money before I feel it's worth using my spare time to work for someone else. I'm curious as to what that level is for HNers. How much do you bring in on an average freelance job?
- cyphorous 16y agoI rarely work on a freelance project :)
- si2 16y agoscooby dooby doo
- thetrumanshow 16y agoMy last 3 side-projects (while working fulltime at BigCo): $750, $750, $2700 Over time, I have become less and less interested in these kinds of side-projects as I have become more focused on owning the upside of my own products. But, its occasionally nice to get paid for my late-night coding adventures.
- matthodan 16y agoDo you have projects that generate cash flow? If so, how did you decide on those projects and how long did it take for you to see a meaningful amount of cash flow?
- thetrumanshow 16y agoJust a trickle of cashflow, and it took ~2 years of generating enough traffic from various sources (other projects) to drive the trickle that I have now. For a ballpark, if the current growth is sustained, the trickle should be enough to buy a car in just over a year. The concepts for the things I am building now were distilled from several other failed ventures. The choices were based on the projected market sizes.
- zackb 16y agoHow do you go about doing estimation? When you are asked for a bid and have loose requirements what are some good practices for estimating?
- jtregunna 16y agoBest way I've found is to start out on hourly gigs, until you have a sense of how long certain tasks take you. With experience, you get better at estimating your time. EDIT: Oh and when you start out, if you're estimating time, double it.
- jarin 16y agoAnd then add half again.
- trotsky 16y agothat's the secret, 3x. Also, start out on hourly gigs - and then always stay with hourly gigs (time & materials). If you fixed price work you end up having to piss off clients with anal scope management (or you take a bath).
- JabavuAdams 16y agoA number between e and pi.
- alexg0 16y agoand then switch to next higher time unit (without changing the number)
- gcheong 16y agoWould be interesting to see what the average time spent is on projects at each income level.
- mooftard 16y ago"What is your anual income from freelance work versus your anual income from your day job?" There, fixed it for you. That is the real question and the only one that means anything. We all know about how much time we have in a year and a year of averages flattens the peaks and valleys pretty well. Anything else is meaningless.
- eekfuh 16y agoIt would be even more interesting if we could factor in location as well. I live in Utah and $125 hourly is decent, but in SV it is probably rock bottom.
- alalonde 16y agoI'm in Utah too -- $125/hour is more than decent considering our cost of living.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mooftard 16y ago$ per job? That is meaningless. Are you asking yourself, "do freelance jobs exist where I will make at least $5,000 no matter how long the project takes?" If you're asking that I have a bridge... for you to build for me.
- Contractor69 16y agoThe high and low ends vary greatly. I've done little one hour wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am gigs and then I've done projects that run 4-6 months and bring in 5 figures. On average I'd say about $5000. The most I ever brought in on a single project was $24,000. BTW those projects were all done using the .NET Framework. Take THAT, Expensify!
- kirubakaran 16y agoJust trying to make sense of the data points here... Your username and the description of your one hour gig leads me to believe that your projects need more than just programming skills. Do you work in San Fernando valley?
- Contractor69 16y agoI work in the Detroit area actually. The handful of one hour contract jobs I've done have been pure maintenance coding (i.e. bug fixes on existing applications, reports modifications, etc.)
- kirubakaran 16y agoThanks. Sorry, my whole comment was a juvenile joke implying pr0n industry. It fell flat.
- Contractor69 16y agoWow. Went right over my head. Is San Fernando known for pr0n? The Detroit equivalent would be 8 Mile.
- kirubakaran 16y agoYep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fernando_Valley#Adult_entertainment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fernando_Valley#Adult_enter... "... nearly 90% of all legally distributed pornographic films made in the United States are either filmed in or produced by studios based in the San Fernando Valley"
- bigohms 16y agoMost efforts are at $5-10K for our market segment per project and a yearly of $1500 and up
- eekfuh 16y agoI rarely do anything below $5k (at $125 per hour with discounts on bigger projects or past clients that treated me well). Since this all side stuff, after my 9-5 job, I'm very picky on what I take in, since I like to work on products that I have 'real' input in.
- elliottcarlson 16y agoSadly this can be a very skewed number as it will differ per project type, length of project and locality. I would be more interested in hearing what people charge on an hourly basis - but alas this same issue would occur there. Without a literal "How much would you charge to do X (and where do you live)?" type question it is hard to come up with a number that could be used for comparison.
- derefr 16y agoYou can use a different unit to remove the cost-of-living variation: "how many months of rent do you charge for an aggregate month of gigs?"
- elliottcarlson 16y agoThough in heavily dense areas that have different commutable neighborhoods this can still be off. In NYC you have commuters from New Jersey, Connecticut, the various Borroughs and even upstate NY or Pennsylvania. Each of these will have a vast difference in average rents within their community - for example, my rent in Staten Island for a comparable place within any of the other Burroughs will be a lot lower because I am willing to trade in commute time for it, even though my salary will be comparable to other developers within NYC.
- fsipie 16y agoTwo simple iPhone apps at £500 and £900. One freebie one which brings in £15/month. Need to charge more!
- kaisdavis 16y agoThis is the advice I offer to all of my freelancing friends and repeat to myself every morning: "Whatever I'm charging, I should double it." There's a limit on that school of thought, but if have the option of 2 freelancing contacts at X, or 1 at 2x, I prefer to focus on one client at a higher price point. I figured out my starting freelance rate by taking my per-hour salary from my day job and doubling it. Then, whenever I had too many clients at that price level (generally 2+ back-to-back) I increased my rate by 50% to 100%. This has worked great for me through multiple iterations. As my portfolio, contacts, and experience grows, so does my rate. I'm left earning a good amount for my freelance work, and have the luxury of turning down work that isn't paying enough or is too much of a hassle to coordinate.
- Malcx 16y agoCan you contact me (email in profile) or add a contact yourself?
- keithwarren 16y agoI have been on my own for over a decade and tend not to take a job that is less than 6 weeks work. All .NET work for customers at all different market segments and the rate varies from 110-195/hr.
- Loic 16y agoWorking in the chemical engineering area. Hard science + all the cool technologies you can read on HN => Fun + money. Usually a contract starts at $15k (2 weeks) and goes up to 2 months of work on average. I always advice people to go the hard science way if they like computer science, because there is a really big big lack of people being good at both. I should write about it.
- dkersten 16y agoIf you ever get a chance, please do, I'd be interested in hearing about it. I've thought about going into a hard science industry but never did anything about it because 1) I'm not really qualified in the science side, my skills/experience/qualifications are in computer science and 2) I don't really know how to get started.
- jules 16y agoYou could get started by watching MIT physics and mathematics opencourseware courses (including video lectures) to see if it suits you.
- jergason 16y agoThere are opportunities to pick it up. I have worked in bioinformatics labs and have learned tons of biology and chemistry just through osmosis. Also, they always need more people that program well.
- billpaetzke 16y agoI should write about it. Please do.
- hariis 16y agoHow do you go about finding such projects in hard science? Is there a gigs board or is it through networking mainly?
- mohsen 16y agothat brings up a question for me. when you say $15K/2weeks, is that for a task that can be accomplished by a single person (2x40h), or do you have to break the job up amongst other people?
- neave 16y agoI mostly work on a day rate, not a per-project rate. Can you create a poll for average day rates?
- patio11 16y agoOne lesson I learned this year as a newbie consultant: there is a heck of a lot of dynamic range in that top bucket. It's like software: even if everyone you know pays $5 or $10 or $30 for software, don't necessarily let that set your expectations, because software can get arbitrarily expensive.
- mdolon 16y agoI found that I had been undercharging for the past few years when quoting projects. While my hourly rate had been fine (around $75 for design, $100 for programming), my estimation of how many hours a project would take was always way off. I guess the assumption I made was "no one would pay a lot of money for a website," and so I typically got tedious lower-end clients that were much more work than they were worth. The last few projects I've gotten average to about $7k each and are about 1-2 months in duration. The highest I've gotten is $10k for a 2 month design and development gig, working very casually over that time (enough time to work on other projects freely). I'm now learning that people are willing to pay for high quality work and consistent/reliable communication.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoWe really need to dimensionalize this information. For example, what is the hours invested to any one project, and what is the skill level of work involved?
- MatthewDP 16y agoI usually charge $75-$100 an hour for .NET development (in the midwest).
- Sargis 16y agoHow do you know your skills are good enough to take on a $XXXX project? I've never done freelance work, but I would love to start doing some work after school and earn a few bucks along the way.
- patio11 16y agoOne way: have you ever delivered something which someone would pay $X,000 for? If so, then you are good enough to deliver something someone would pay $X,000 for. I think many people get hung up on skill though. Clients pay for many, many things. Skill is only one of those things, and it doesn't dominate, either. Clients can also pay for: criticality of work urgency of work guaranteed availability hard-to-find expertise communication skills perceived attentiveness to needs lower perceived risk corporate politics measurable results warm fuzzy feeling Of these, if you could only have one, I'd probably go with the ability to give clients the warm fuzzy feeling. You will never go hungry if clients get the warm fuzzy feeling from working with you. Hat tip to tptacek, who taught me the importance of some of the above.
- juddlyon 16y agoThis is totally in line with my experience (own a web design/dev shop). We talk about the "warm fuzzy feeling" in terms of making other people look good. - make your clients look good to their stakeholders - make someone look good to their manager - make an exec look good to their board - make the firm subcontracting to you look good to the end-client - make your teammates/collaborators look good (and help them save face when they screw up)
- mdolon 16y agoAlso, ask someone else how much they'd pay for your work. I found that since I make websites myself, I tend to value the work a lot less because it seems easier to me. In reality, the work is very valuable to people who are not capable of doing it themselves, so they're usually willing to pay more for it than you are. And as usual patio11 is spot on in regards to those qualities, having strength in those areas can give you a powerful edge in winning over clients.
- 16y ago
- GrooveStomp 16y agoOne gig so far at about $1500. A nice average, but not indicative of a trend.
- pitdesi 16y agoI'd be curious to know if there are any design freelancers that do infographics, and what they charge... We've had trouble finding great infographic designers that don't take a lot of time to manage, and I'm wondering if we should be paying more. If interested in that or doing UI/UX stuff, check us out http://feefighters.com http://feefighters.com and drop me a note EDIT - looks like people are interested! job posting for fulltime UI/UX here : http://feefighters.com/jobs/ui-designer-developer/ http://feefighters.com/jobs/ui-designer-developer/ and Freelance infographic posting here: http://www.genuinejobs.com/jobs_detail.php?id=5606 http://www.genuinejobs.com/jobs_detail.php?id=5606 (but just drop an email to josh@feefighters.com instead of responding to this one)
- mdolon 16y agoWill send you an e-mail but wanted to post this here as others might find it useful as well. I charge $75 per hour for UI/UX design work, meaning wireframe mockups, full-fledged Photoshop mockups and XHTML/CSS/JS conversion. It may be low considered to some standards (San Fran) but I'd rather increase my rate slowly while building a bigger clientele base than risk charging too much and not having enough work. For those curious about the workflow, I use: * Google Docs to create a spreadsheet with all project research/notes that is shared with client * MockFlow to handle wireframe mockups, as it also allows me to easily share them with the client AND is cheap (I think $70 per year?) * Photoshop and Illustrator to create the main mockups for each of the major pages/sections of the site I also tend to shy away from logo design, as for me it is not worth the time and effort for the pay - instead I suggest to my clients that they use a service like 99Designs or Brandstack.
- jrwoodruff 16y agoI actually am an information graphics guy - classically trained in the hard-scrabble world of print journalism, but I'm now refining my interaction design skills at an enterprise UX organization. I just sent you an E-mail via Hacker News Users :)
- helpmehelpyou 16y agoWhere/how do you find these freelance gigs?
- mdolon 16y agoI'd say 85%+ of the better paying gigs I've gotten have been through existing connections and people I've known. For instance, a college friend started a new business and needed a site - he contacted and ended up hiring me. His partner then referred me to his friend, who also hired me for a project. Word of mouth can be pivotal in building a business so my first suggestion would be to explore your own social circle. (give your friends business cards!)
- danenania 16y agoSame story here. Partner and I did a fairly complex micro-lending platform for a non-profit as our first major gig. Some of the work was pro-bono, some $35/hour range. We did well, gave them what they needed, and now we're booked with clients for the next six months from referrals and others who wanted to work with us based on that site. We've moved comfortably into the $60-80 range with pretty clear indications that we can keep pushing it higher.
- aymeric 16y agoMy blog helped me but mainly connections and returning clients. I do Facebook application development.
- beej71 16y agoI have a biz partner that finds them because he has the connections. Though we did get one gig because someone found something I'd written on my tech blog.
- veyron 16y agoRule of thumb is to estimate hours and a reasonable rate given the scope and time of the arrangement. It's hard to pin down an absolute number, but in terms of rate I dont consider it unless its at least $200/hr
- kayoone 16y agoFreelancers hired by BigCos (so not working from home) usually get paid by the hour/day and can easily take home 10k+ a month. Most of the time theres lots of travelling involved though.
- MichaelL 16y agoSome people seem to get it backwards. They think they are their own client. WRONG!! It does not matter one bit what I or others charge. What matters is WHO IS YOUR IDEAL CLIENT? If you know that, you know what VALUE you bring to them and you can charge whatever you want to solve a real problem. Otherwise you are trading time for money. AKA - Job. Does Rolls Royce consult Honda as to what to charge for their products? No. Two different markets with two different clients and two very different ways of solving a clients/customer's problems.
- frankwiles 16y agoCouldn't agree more on value vs time. It doesn't matter at all how long I slave over the hot laptop, it's the value I bring to the client! One hour of optimization that saves $5000 a year in server costs is a steal at $2000/hr over 2-3 years.
- nekoZonbi 16y agoI work 100% remotely, from not a first world country, and my hourly rate has been escalating with each project. Currently at around 40$/hour. But instead of cashing in, I am rather investing time into improving more, and preparing some interesting personal projects that define myself. I love great challenges, and want to eventually get into something really interesting. Or maybe I will go by myself, and launch a startup that I has been thinking about for some time.
- fady 16y agoDoes this not all depend what kind of job it is? Front-end, backend, modules, etc...
- jerryblack 16y agoI have looked at sites like odesk or elance and those just suck for US freelancers as they do not pay shit. No one can outbid some russian company charging $3 per hour. Where do you go to find projects?
- paydro 16y agoI'm curious about this as well. I've posted my skills on craigslist and sent stuff out to my friends, but I always receive requests from people who can only pay very little. Either that, or I'm not doing a very good job of advertising myself - which is a definite possibility.
- leon_ 16y agoReminds me how once a customer came to me and needed his elance-made-in-russia-iphone-app fixed because it "mysteriously" crashed since apple "broke it" with the new iOS version. (ASAP!) I took a look at the code and ... you know what happens in japan with that nuclear plant right now? Yeah, the app was the fukushima of code. It only hold together because of luck. Luck didn't last till iOS 4 where Apple seemingly changed something about how cocoa touch retains objects internally and the app exploded. Objects were randomly released and the programmers didn't care about any conventions. They returned objects with retain counts of 1 from a static lib and then released them somewhere later in another static lib. Not a single autorelease was used. At least there was extensive doxygen generated documentation ... in russian (no joke). You get what you pay for. And yes you can't compete with the people offering their services on odesk/elance. And you don't want to work for cheap asses that post "need augmented reality app for max $200" jobs.
- hallmark 16y agoI'm sure you could have eloquently described the code without comparing it to Fukushima. It is an ongoing crisis, part of a larger natural disaster, with many people still actively grieving.
- saturn 16y agoIt is a ridiculous analogy anyway. Fukushima failed, yes, but only after a magnitude 9 earthquake, followed by a devastating tsunami, overwhelmed its myriad safety systems. I don't know how any right-minded person could ever form the impression it was only "held together by luck".
- pdenya 16y agoWorking as a software engineer I sometimes do work for less than 2k but I consider this more of a favor. Typical work is 5-20k but any major projects (anything that takes more than 4 weeks of free time) are 55-75k.
- jules 16y agoWouldn't it be more interesting to know $/hour?
- ChuckMcM 16y agoMy Dad is an engraver, he's good at it, he was complaining to me that he had more work than he could handle. I suggested he raise his price then. He responded with the typical "I couldn't in good conscience charge that for something that takes me only a few hours to do!" And then we had a long discussion about how the market sets the rate, not you, and if you hold your rate under market it will overwhelm you because you're leaving money on the table, if you don't have enough work to keep you busy then you're over market. The key here is the market sets the rate, you don't. Once we established that it was pretty easy to see how letting his rate float up would help with his workload, he would not only be less overloaded but he would be collecting more of the market value of his work. Since in his case (he's nominally retired) not working at all was just fine, he had a lot of freedom in over shooting the market and then coming back. I recognize that its not as useful for someone who is wondering where rent money will come from.
- findm 16y agoThis is so true and the funny thing about it is that it makes sense logically yet it runs so contrary to our natural inclinations or at least mine and I'm sure many others. Economics you so crazy.
- sc00ter 16y agoThat's the basic thesis of Earn1K - the "I will teach you to be rich" course. I won't link here, as it's commercial, but the blog is worth a look even if you're not a paying customer.
- chops 16y agoI won't link here, as it's commercial What's wrong with linking a commercial product or course? This is a discussion about making money on a website with a strong slant towards making money by starting and running businesses.
- scoot 16y agohttp://www.google.co.uk/#q=i+will+teach+you+too+be+rich http://www.google.co.uk/#q=i+will+teach+you+too+be+rich
- jcfiala 16y agoI'm not sure how to answer that - I do my work hourly, usually. For that, I'm usually at $85/hour, although I discount it for projects that will take several months where I don't have to look around for the next job. I probably would have started increasing that rate, except now I've got a fulltime job and aren't contracting after this month.
- Montresor 16y agoMy first major paid freelance project was worth about $6K of development time. I charged $400 because it was for a friend of a friend, and mostly because I just didn't know any better. I learned a hell of a lot though, not just about coding but also what I could do different in the future not to land myself in such a crap situation. Eventually, though, that $400 paid dividends: the project was noticed by a company that offered me a full-time position, which I love and meets all my needs and wants financially. Moral of my story: sometime crap pays off.
- leon_ 16y agoI guess most of us started with too low prices. Me too, and I was cursing that shitty job. Until some time later I realized that it was worth it - I learned a lot from my first job. Not only about pricing too low but also about handling difficult clients. I'm glad my first job(s) were shitty so I could grow a thick skin early in my career.
- WimLeers 16y agoIt makes more sense to ask about the hourly average per freelancing gig. After all, the duration of freelance gigs may vary widely depending on the size of the gig.
- leon_ 16y ago$0 - $500 is for the elance/odesk people I guess?
- guymahieu 16y agoSadly this poll does not say much... what the heck is an 'average' freelance job? How complex is it (can anyone do it)? How much time or how many people does it take to complete? How harsh are the deadlines? .... Daily rates used in estimations may be more relevant in this case...
- tereno 16y agoI would love to hear how you guys got your gigs? I'm looking to do something on the side but haven't been able to find anything concrete.
- jsvaughan 16y agoIt does depend what you do, and how you do it, but the results suggest that your scale needs to go a lot higher; typical London contract rates for say Java development are about $700 a day, tend to last 3 / 6 months, e.g. $42-84k. Probably 2/3rds of that if you are a js dev, or 2x that if you know your investment banking and grid computing.
- jsvaughan 16y agoactually 2x a bit of an exaggeration, more like 1.5x
- aforty 16y agoIs there a good site you guys prefer when looking for freelance work? I've never done side projects for cash but it sounds fun and I could use the cash.
- scorpion032 16y agoMost useful software will need to be built in 6 to 8 weeks. - The first iteration. 10k+ should therefore get the maximum votes. More informational poll would have included 8-12 12-16 16-20 k.
- mooneater 16y agoLooks like you should use logarithmic buckets and make them go higher.
- theturtle32 16y agoMy freelance gigs tend to be as a subcontractor building out Film marketing websites and games. It generally involves a significant amount of interactivity either in Flash or HTML5/JS/CSS3, and since I know that Film marketing budgets are usually relatively robust, I feel no qualms starting my bids at about $8000 for 3 weeks worth of part-time work (nights and weekends). Usually the projects are more like 6 weeks, so I often charge around $12-14k, and my clients rarely counter. Additionally, this is usually 80%-90% coding. The firm that hires me is usually responsible for all the design comps and photoshop files.
- symptic 16y agoAs a student, entrepreneur, and frequent payer of bills, I tend to take on small gigs under $200 whenever my time allows. This way I can get in and get out quickly, not have to devote too much mental energy to the client, and be able to block myself out from clients while I am working on my own project or studying. For me this yields the highest dollar per minute spent working and allows for the least amount of stress. Because I work quickly and have accustomed myself to this system, most clients are pleasantly surprised when they receive a product on the same day the project was requested at a higher quality than most other designers they've worked with.
- russell 16y agoNearly every gig has been over $50K with the most being $250k for 12 months. Most of my work has been in Silicon Valley with a couple of telecommuting stints in LA and Chicago (which lasted for a decade). Most gigs have been with companies where software is the product or an integral part of the offering, so price was not really an issue. Almost always I bill hourly because the work involves existing system where a fix is 5 lines of code. but finding where the 5 lines go may take two days of work. I got two significant jobs off of Craigslist, but most have come from people that I have worked with.
- Deorte 16y agoCould we get the outcome of the poll please? Thanks!
- bquinn 16y agoumm... see that bit under the vote which says "xxx points"? That's how many many voted for that item!
- krisrak 16y agoI usually charge $10,000 per gig, 4-6 hour work. If you are good at something charge more, others may do the same for $500, you can either charge 10 customers at $500, or charge $10000, believe me 6 out of the same 10 will pay u $10000.
- yoonminn 16y ago>I usually charge $10,000 per gig, 4-6 hour work that's $1600/ hour. Are you kidding me ?
- krisrak 16y agoits not about /hour charge, its about the work. The work is getting done, it may take 2 hours or 6 hours. People will pay you, if you are really good at some type of development. Have a portfolio to show. Sartups are heavily funded and want to spend money, they will get tax deduction for paying freelancers, so target startups and show your work, you will get paid high bucks, startups want the work done now and are ready to pay the VC money and they know they will be getting results as expected from a guy how charges ridiculously high rate.
- dools 16y agoThis poll seems to be doin it rong. I couldn't put a single figure on it and say "I won't get out of bed for less than this" because so long as my hourly rate is satisfactory, I'll do 30 minutes work and bill someone for it. I work out my hourly rate like this: There are about 219 work days in a year after leave and entitlements. As a freelancer I'll probably stay billable 3/5 of those and on average I can hope for 6 effective billable hours per day, so there are about 788 billable hours per year. I then think of my target yearly salary and divide by number of billable hours per year. I actually have some indirect overheads, too so I add a margin on that, but if you're straight up freelance you may not need to. That's your base rate. So long as your timesheeting, invoicing and accounting systems aren't drastically inefficient (ie. you can raise, issue and track an invoice in under 5 minutes) you can work for 30 minutes, charge for half an hour, issue the invoice and be done with it. If I get a longer contract, I usually reduce the hourly rate commensurately by increasing the ratio of billable to non-billable hours I'm expecting in that year as a result.
- mattdeboard 16y agoSo long as your timesheeting, invoicing and accounting systems aren't drastically inefficient (ie. you can raise, issue and track an invoice in under 5 minutes)... What systems do you recommend? Excel spreadsheet for tracking + invoice template is really inefficient for me.
- dools 16y agoI wrote an invoicing system years ago that is still limping along (although I'm looking for a complete online accounting package that has a timesheeting API because ... ) I do all my timesheeting through an IRC bot which works really well. The bot reads tasks from my task system (I just create pages in my CMS and expose them through the API) so I type things like: askl start client: job name where client and job can be partial matches. When I make an entry it goes into the timesheet and I can either use that to generate my invoices directly (in the case of billable hours) or use it to offset a loss against a sales invocie (in the case of a fixed price quote).
- 16y ago
- kaffeinecoma 16y agoI quit my job this year and have been making a reasonable living via Elance and oDesk. Mostly GWT/Google App Engine projects, but starting to dip into Android as well. On oDesk I was lucky enough to meet a great client almost immediately. I got an ongoing project with him for ~30 hours/week. I think I'm grossly undercharging him, but it's a steady gig that leaves me able to pick up other projects on the side. For fixed price projects I generally don't even bother considering anything under $5K. I try to stand out by bidding high rates (by Elance standards). So far it's working fairly well. I hope to develop enough happy customers so that eventually I'll be able to move off of those sites and just get clients by word of mouth.
- kellishaver 16y agoI tend to intentionally take smaller projects, because I find the variety more interesting than working on the same thing for months on end, so it's rare that I get single projects over about $8k (most of them are in the $4-6 range), but that's because I'm not going after bigger ones.
- thirdusername 16y agoMore often than not: $0. :D I mean they are supposed to pay me in the $200-1600 range, but actually getting clients to fork up money for a completed job is difficult, to the point where I'm ready to give up and get a regular job. I don't generally do jobs for less than $200 though. It takes times to do research, switch environmental and your head around, but clients sometimes think I'm a typist and should only be paid for time on the keyboard.
- jamii 16y agoYou really need a better class of client. A couple of things that I have learned: 1) you are more likely to get paid by big companies because the person writing the cheque isn't spending their own money, 2) you are more likely to get paid by people you meet face-to-face because its easier to be an asshole over the internet, 3) bizarrely you are more likely to get paid if you charge more because it weeds out all the penny pinchers. The last one is really important. Just by charging more you put yourself in a different market, one which is generally more professional.
- freedrull 16y agoDon't you ask for milestone payments?
- pgroves 16y agoI hate to be Debbie Downer, but discussions like this where people post what they charge their customers can get dangerously close to violating price fixing laws, especially if the purpose is for sellers to get justification to raise their rates. Ford isn't allowed to call up GM and ask how much they're going to charge for a pickup truck next year, and if they do they aren't allowed to raise their launch price because they think they can get away with it. Of course, when the prices are published things change (like if a supermarket sees that another supermarket raised their price for milk), but this type of a forum with sellers chatting about what to charge seems like a grey area. IANAL, but please be cautious.
- mattdeboard 16y agoPrice fixing laws where? This is site caters to an international audience, dollars can be converted to any currency and we're not all part of one industry.
- edcrfv 16y agoI graduated out of school in 2010 May. I have been trying doing a lot of freelance gigs that range around $500 - $2000 (5 such gigs) Plus a lot of small stuff ranging from $50 - $100 (2 each every fortnight) I pick up work from ODesk, and some other sites like ScriptLance and also know some clients via private contacts. I'm looking to move into per hour billing from fixed price. Anybody made that exact transition yet? And how do you talk to your existing clients when you want to make the switch?
- dytrivedi 16y agoI was very much into freelancing until I joined my full time job since last 3 months. I started out with $10/hour (in India) and was up to $50/hour which made me some decent money. I usually charged hourly as estimates are fragile (even after a lot of experience). It used to come to around $30000/year (considering some 600 hours of work yearly). Adjusting lifestyle, that is equivalent or more, compared to $100K in the US. Work areas - Front End Dev., JS, iOS Apps. Me - http://about.me/dytrivedi http://about.me/dytrivedi http://advancewith.us/stuff/Resume.pdf http://advancewith.us/stuff/Resume.pdf PS: Clients pay for quality work/code. Don't hesitate to raise rates if you think you're worth. Can be determined by demand.
- lhnz 16y agoHow do all of you guys find clients for web development jobs. I've heard that some of the freelancing sites are kind of cheap and I'm also worried that without design skills it would be difficult to create a decent web application.
- th 16y agoMy last two freelance jobs involved two freelancers: one developer and one designer (who might also be a front end developer). This allowed a considerable amount of parallelization, but it can get messy if the split between the workload is not well-defined. I've always been on the development end of the workload and finding work hasn't been hard so far.