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100% self-taught here. I change $150/hr for full stack Rails work and none of my clients have batted an eye at that. I’m thinking about raising my rates, actual
by chrischattin 6y ago
100% self-taught here. I change $150/hr for full stack Rails work and none of my clients have batted an eye at that. I’m thinking about raising my rates, actually.
If you know what you’re doing, I can assure you, making money is not going to be one if your problems.
- erklik 6y agoI have been trying to do this, and my biggest problem seems to be actually finding clients. After exhausting my social circle asking for work, it seems really hard to land a client. I am not even able to get anyone on the phone, and all emails are ignored. Any suggestions?
- XCSme 6y agoI might be talking shit, but one solution would be to make the clients find you instead of you finding clients. Make them want you, see you, look for you. You can do this by being active in the relevant social circles/platforms while being respected by your fellow programmers. It's hard to learn how to market yourself, but if you do it well you can easily have clients reach you.
- chrischattin 6y agoYes! Build something. Contribute to open source, do some charity work, personal project you care about, teach a class at a local code school/college, make a tutorial video, etc. When you have a track record of good work, people will find you.
- erdos4d 6y agoWow, I must be a complete idiot with this stuff because I can't get people to give me even 150 bucks for a full website right now. How do you actually get these 150/hr clients? Please don't tell me I need to work in Silicon Valley for some years and get the "contacts", cause I don't want to live in the US anymore. Tell you what, here's my site: https://www.andeswebdesign.com https://www.andeswebdesign.com, if you like it, just send me all your work and I'll do the whole site for you for an hour of your pay. I also have a PhD in computational and applied mathematics if you want to put some real deal data science pipeline in it! I've never made a cent off of that PhD either, so maybe you're the guy who breaks it all open for me.
- 6DM 6y agoI think your contact form is broken, or I just sent you like 8 messages trying this in a few different browsers.
- erdos4d 6y agoI don't doubt it, we just redid everything last night. Please give it a shot later, I'll go fix it. EDIT: it's redeploying right now. Please send me a email at erdos4d at gmail if you are actually trying to get in touch with me for business and not just testing the form. Thanks.
- techbio 6y agoNo pain, no gain, they told me.
- chrischattin 6y agoProbably because websites are commodities at this point. I'd never charge people to build a website. Just point them to Wordpress/Squarespace/etc. You definitely don't need to work in Silicon Valley.
- paublyrne 6y agoI think you don't want the kind of client who wants a website for $150. Good clients will be turned off by the low price. I'd try going for a less bargain basement look and pricing structure.
- erdos4d 6y agoI live with my wife and son in Ecuador and 150 is actually pretty competitive here. Our main competition charges 200 I think. But I agree with you that it is very low for the US/EU market.
- paublyrne 6y agoI assumed you might be looking for clients in the US. If that's the case I do think it pays to price yourself up rather than down.
- TheRealSteel 6y agoCould you expand on how long you've been doing it/how much experience you have, and how you go about finding clients? :)
- chrischattin 6y agoI learned to program for a startup that I founded about 8 years ago. Once people saw what I could do, they asked me to help on their projects. It's all been word of mouth. I don't advertise, or even have a website for my consulting business. I'm generous with my time and volunteer to teach classes, give talks, meet with anyone who's learning and wants to chat, etc. So, I'm sure that helped.