5 ms·

Sigh... I'd settle for someone giving me $100 per hour.

debacle 14y ago
It's not that hard. What do you know how to do? How do you currently market yourself? Who do you market yourself to? What are you really good at? 100 an hour seems like a lot to most of the contractors I talk to, but it's actually probably less than the average for a contract programmer.
cdavid 14y ago
If you mean in general, a consistent job at 100 $ /hour is completely different from being paid 100 $ / hour for consulting. The former is rather hard, the latter is indeed rather low. The end of Patrick's article gives one of the main reason why (scaling consulting is hard). I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well).
- elmuchoprez 14y ago
  I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well). I see this quite a bit as well. People can "luck into" something that gets hot and ride that wave into decent money in the short term. But a decent programming background is what keeps that ship floating because you always have to stay on top of the next thing if you want to keep that up, and it's hard to keep up with everything and even evaluate new stuff without some fundamentals.
  - Jach 14y ago
    On the other hand, if you can pull in $200/hr consistently (i.e. your yearly income isn't far from $400k before taxes) for at least half a decade, you can save up enough to retire early with a modest standard of living. But as has been said, consistency is harder for these things. What open source projects have you seen people make good chunks of change from just knowing how to work them? http://www.pentaho.com/ http://www.pentaho.com/ is one I've seen. Also people who know the AWS stack can make a good chunk of change migrating someone's software to the Cloud.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - elmuchoprez 14y ago
      Well, I would take some issue with the idea that a typical $200/hour consultant is billing $200/hour for 40 hours a week and taking that much home (taxes not withstanding). A lot of time gets eaten up in client relations, contract negotiations, skill development, etc... none of which is typically billed for. I've seen agency types bill $200 or higher an hour and log 2000+ hours in a year, but the agency is taking a huge chunk of that money. For me, Magento (e-commerce) is the open source system that I lucked into. I got involved with it about 4 yeas ago which gives me a significant jump on the majority of devs I encounter. Besides being slightly ahead of the game, Magento has a reasonable learning curve that scares off a lot of the wordpress-eque devs and lots of more competent devs seem to thumb their nose at e-commerce, so the market isn't flooding.
      - thisisdallas 14y ago
        Just out of curiosity, are you offering to set up online stores using Magento or to convert a businesses established online store to Magento? Or are you doing something completely different? Basically, I guess what I am trying to ask is how do you market your Magento skills to make a profit?
        elmuchoprez 14y ago
        Freelance stuff comes my way through a few different channels: - I do some agency consulting; basically helping them define scope and capability during the contract phase. They're strong on general dev know-how, but don't do enough Magento work to have consistent deep knowledge. These are basically just agency contacts I've built over time and they know to call me. - I have a number of clients come to me looking to "fix" existing Magento installs that were started by a dev who mostly had WordPress brochure site experience. Lots of people get in over their heads with Magento. This stuff mostly comes to me by word of mouth anymore. - When I get real bored I'll sometimes do a blanket post to Criagslist saying that I'm excepting new work. You have to put a high hourly rate though because Craigslist is such a bottom-feeder breeding ground that you want to scare off idiots. It also helps (in some ways) that I have a full time job as a Magento dev for a decent size network of sites. It pretty much keeps me sharp on a daily basis, which gives me an advantage over general dev shops who might only do a handful of Magento projects per year. EDIT: Contacts at a hosting company are another good source. LOTS of people need their Magento sites upgraded and due to heavy customization and general compatibility issues, lot's of these managed hosting solutions don't really want to do it from their end, so they can send clients who need upgrades your way.
TallboyOne 14y ago
If you don't have a large variety of jobs to pick and choose from, you're not doing it right. I'm going to rant here a moment... The secret to getting more work than you can handle (and charging $100/hr, which is not difficult)... DONT SUCK. I swear to god, 95% of people out there suck, your competition. Send emails to your phone, and answer them right away when you're out and about, even on weekends or when you're out having a drink. If you're busy, just say you got their email and will get back to them when youre in the office. Try to answer < 15 minutes. The amount of replies I hear that say "wow you are so responsive and get back so fast, I love it" is a lot more than you would expect. These are my repeat clients. These are your people and you should take care of them. It's SO easy too, and so many people wait days to reply. That doesn't mean you need to always be working either, or that you need to suddenly be at the mercy of your email, it just means be responsive to inquiries. VERY responsive. As far as working, dont leave loose ends. This usually means fixing up those little nagging issues that they probably won't notice. Leave them with something stellar, and go the extra mile even if it means only 5 minutes of work extra fixing something they never asked you to fix or paid you for. It takes 5 minutes, and makes a tremendous impression on them. I'm making this statistic up, but based on what I see it's gotta be over 90% of people don't do just a few simple things. They take a while to reply, deliver sub-par product, don't communicate well... it has nothing to do with their actual site or product they're delivering, just how they handle themselves, then they whine about not having work. (flurpitude, I'm not referring to you as whining, just people in general). PS: it seems counter intuitive (I'm going to get a lot MORE bs work and bs replies), but it actually seems to eliminate them entirely. People respect your time and your skill, and they dont' waste your time with stupid questions or emails. They're also willing to pay top dollar for your services without giving you a hard time or anything.
- jasonswett 14y ago
  You might be right about that. I'd like to offer another perspective, though: if you get into the habit of quickly replying to all emails, I think your clients will develop an expectation that you'll always quickly reply to emails, which it's not always possible or desirable to do, at least for me. Also, if you immediately attend to every email that hits your inbox, that means you probably won't have contiguous chunks of real productivity in your workdays. I usually wait a good couple hours to reply to any email, even if I'm not particularly busy when I receive the message. This a) sets an expectation for responsiveness that I can live up to, b) allows me to have contiguous chunks of productivity (I often close email entirely, which my clients know), and c) demonstrates to my clients that a certain level of discipline: I'm not jumping on every email, tweet, etc. that comes my way right when I see it (not that I think that's what TallboyOne is suggesting - he's talking about work-related emails). None of this is meant to be a criticism of anything TallboyOne has said. What works for him might work better for some people than what works for me.
id_ris 14y ago
Good luck finding someone to 'give' you even $1 an hour.

It's not that hard. What do you know how to do? How do you currently market yourself? Who do you market yourself to? What are you really good at? 100 an hour seems like a lot to most of the contractors I talk to, but it's actually probably less than the average for a contract programmer.

cdavid 14y ago

If you mean in general, a consistent job at 100 $ /hour is completely different from being paid 100 $ / hour for consulting. The former is rather hard, the latter is indeed rather low. The end of Patrick's article gives one of the main reason why (scaling consulting is hard). I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well).

elmuchoprez 14y ago
I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well). I see this quite a bit as well. People can "luck into" something that gets hot and ride that wave into decent money in the short term. But a decent programming background is what keeps that ship floating because you always have to stay on top of the next thing if you want to keep that up, and it's hard to keep up with everything and even evaluate new stuff without some fundamentals.
- Jach 14y ago
  On the other hand, if you can pull in $200/hr consistently (i.e. your yearly income isn't far from $400k before taxes) for at least half a decade, you can save up enough to retire early with a modest standard of living. But as has been said, consistency is harder for these things. What open source projects have you seen people make good chunks of change from just knowing how to work them? http://www.pentaho.com/ http://www.pentaho.com/ is one I've seen. Also people who know the AWS stack can make a good chunk of change migrating someone's software to the Cloud.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - elmuchoprez 14y ago
    Well, I would take some issue with the idea that a typical $200/hour consultant is billing $200/hour for 40 hours a week and taking that much home (taxes not withstanding). A lot of time gets eaten up in client relations, contract negotiations, skill development, etc... none of which is typically billed for. I've seen agency types bill $200 or higher an hour and log 2000+ hours in a year, but the agency is taking a huge chunk of that money. For me, Magento (e-commerce) is the open source system that I lucked into. I got involved with it about 4 yeas ago which gives me a significant jump on the majority of devs I encounter. Besides being slightly ahead of the game, Magento has a reasonable learning curve that scares off a lot of the wordpress-eque devs and lots of more competent devs seem to thumb their nose at e-commerce, so the market isn't flooding.
    - thisisdallas 14y ago
      Just out of curiosity, are you offering to set up online stores using Magento or to convert a businesses established online store to Magento? Or are you doing something completely different? Basically, I guess what I am trying to ask is how do you market your Magento skills to make a profit?
      - elmuchoprez 14y ago
        Freelance stuff comes my way through a few different channels: - I do some agency consulting; basically helping them define scope and capability during the contract phase. They're strong on general dev know-how, but don't do enough Magento work to have consistent deep knowledge. These are basically just agency contacts I've built over time and they know to call me. - I have a number of clients come to me looking to "fix" existing Magento installs that were started by a dev who mostly had WordPress brochure site experience. Lots of people get in over their heads with Magento. This stuff mostly comes to me by word of mouth anymore. - When I get real bored I'll sometimes do a blanket post to Criagslist saying that I'm excepting new work. You have to put a high hourly rate though because Craigslist is such a bottom-feeder breeding ground that you want to scare off idiots. It also helps (in some ways) that I have a full time job as a Magento dev for a decent size network of sites. It pretty much keeps me sharp on a daily basis, which gives me an advantage over general dev shops who might only do a handful of Magento projects per year. EDIT: Contacts at a hosting company are another good source. LOTS of people need their Magento sites upgraded and due to heavy customization and general compatibility issues, lot's of these managed hosting solutions don't really want to do it from their end, so they can send clients who need upgrades your way.

TallboyOne 14y ago

If you don't have a large variety of jobs to pick and choose from, you're not doing it right. I'm going to rant here a moment... The secret to getting more work than you can handle (and charging $100/hr, which is not difficult)... DONT SUCK. I swear to god, 95% of people out there suck, your competition. Send emails to your phone, and answer them right away when you're out and about, even on weekends or when you're out having a drink. If you're busy, just say you got their email and will get back to them when youre in the office. Try to answer < 15 minutes. The amount of replies I hear that say "wow you are so responsive and get back so fast, I love it" is a lot more than you would expect. These are my repeat clients. These are your people and you should take care of them. It's SO easy too, and so many people wait days to reply. That doesn't mean you need to always be working either, or that you need to suddenly be at the mercy of your email, it just means be responsive to inquiries. VERY responsive. As far as working, dont leave loose ends. This usually means fixing up those little nagging issues that they probably won't notice. Leave them with something stellar, and go the extra mile even if it means only 5 minutes of work extra fixing something they never asked you to fix or paid you for. It takes 5 minutes, and makes a tremendous impression on them. I'm making this statistic up, but based on what I see it's gotta be over 90% of people don't do just a few simple things. They take a while to reply, deliver sub-par product, don't communicate well... it has nothing to do with their actual site or product they're delivering, just how they handle themselves, then they whine about not having work. (flurpitude, I'm not referring to you as whining, just people in general). PS: it seems counter intuitive (I'm going to get a lot MORE bs work and bs replies), but it actually seems to eliminate them entirely. People respect your time and your skill, and they dont' waste your time with stupid questions or emails. They're also willing to pay top dollar for your services without giving you a hard time or anything.

jasonswett 14y ago
You might be right about that. I'd like to offer another perspective, though: if you get into the habit of quickly replying to all emails, I think your clients will develop an expectation that you'll always quickly reply to emails, which it's not always possible or desirable to do, at least for me. Also, if you immediately attend to every email that hits your inbox, that means you probably won't have contiguous chunks of real productivity in your workdays. I usually wait a good couple hours to reply to any email, even if I'm not particularly busy when I receive the message. This a) sets an expectation for responsiveness that I can live up to, b) allows me to have contiguous chunks of productivity (I often close email entirely, which my clients know), and c) demonstrates to my clients that a certain level of discipline: I'm not jumping on every email, tweet, etc. that comes my way right when I see it (not that I think that's what TallboyOne is suggesting - he's talking about work-related emails). None of this is meant to be a criticism of anything TallboyOne has said. What works for him might work better for some people than what works for me.

id_ris 14y ago

Good luck finding someone to 'give' you even $1 an hour.