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Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

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Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#51

Post by indescions_2017 »

jv22222 wrote: post #31

@thr2178008 Hey there. I'll give you a proven roadmap to six figure freelancing right now. 1) Pick a new up and coming language or framework. Something like elixir or pheonix or something else that is really hot and just starting out. 2) Learn it. As you learn, write a series of really awesome tutorials and articles on your blog about that stack. 3) Help people out on SO and other forums that talk about that tech. Po…

This also works for hot technologies, not just frameworks / languages.

WebRTC has seen phenomenal adoption in the past few years, as businesses can offload media bandwidth from their centralized servers. Making that cost savings case part of your pitch makes for a compelling offering. You can even leverage third-party solutions such as Twilio and even FB Live to build customer service live help desks.

Right now I'd say with AR / VR gaining momentum there is tremendous opportunity for skilled Unity3D / WebGL people. Definitely more involved than learning React, but can also be much more rewarding. I'd even go so far as to bet these skills will be a bigger draw than AI / ML / Data Sciences in the near term. Good Luck!

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#52

Post by richardknop »

chi17 wrote: post #49
richardknop wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also not too accurate as living expenses and taxation differ radically across those countries. Some of those countries you might pay 35-40% tax from your 100k salary, some of them 12% or less.

There are also benefits from living in certain locations that don't factor into living expenses but just affect quality of life. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-f...

Yes and there are a lot of other factors like healthcare, education (if you have kids) etc. For a healthy young single person a country with very low taxes such as Singapore might be the best choice. For somebody older who is married with kids Germany would be better (taxes are high but you get a lot of value back for the money you to in like cheap/free education).

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#55

Post by soneca »

j0rd wrote: post #53

I made a deal with an e-commerce site to take 10% of revenue added, after marketing expenses from new channels I create. Added 300k+ of revenue a month.

Congrats! I think you are the perfect person to give some feedback on a product I want to validate and build. If you have the time, please let me know what you think of this.

The product is a personalized Facebook app created for the ecommerce that aims to increase the number of emails collected for the ecommerce's newsletter and increase traffic from these newsletters by sending Facebook notifications to the users that signed up to the app.

Basically I create a Facebook App and provide the sign-up link to the ecommerce. The ecommerce adds the link next to the "Sign up to our newsletter" CTA they usually have on their website giving the user two options to provide their email: the regular input field and the link to do it via Facebook (this is not a Facebook Login btw). If the client click the link, they are directed to Facebook's authorization page, one more click I have the access to their email and the ability to send them notification (only if the user is accessing Facebook on the web, as FB do not send app notifications to native mobile apps).

I then send the user's email to the ecommerce and send FB notifications everytime they send a newsletter (linking to the web version of the newsletter).

So, what dod you think?

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#56

Post by mcv »

What exactly counts to count as 6-figure? My hourly rate is €80. Working 32 hours per week, 45 weeks per year, my yearly revenue would just be 6 figures. Of course after I deduct some costs and retirement savings, my taxable income is in the high 5 figures.

I'm not doing anything special, other than having 15 years of experience and not being terribly bad at my job. I do notice that to get more than this, I need to make a bit more of a name for myself. Just being a good programmer is probably not enough; it seems I need to bring something special and specific to the table to justify a higher rate.

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#57

Post by mcv »

GhostVII wrote: post #25
King-Aaron wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind me asking what industry you're in, where a junior can make $100k?

Software? An entry level developer position in the bay area can be a fair bit higher than $100k

Silicon Valley is fairly unique, and not remotely comparable to the rest of the world. In most of Europe, a senior dev makes less than that. Freelancers are a bit more likely to make more.

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#58

Post by wikibob »

zimpenfish wrote: post #32
charsifood wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is specifically asking freelancers because 100k as a salary is not exactly rare, it's what I've paid some of my juniors. 100k+ as a freelancer is significantly more rare - requiring either very steady work, a niche skill-set, or great marketing skills.

> 100k+ as a freelancer is significantly more rare What are we meaning by "freelancer" here? I'm taking it (as a UKian) to mean "contractor" and every contractor I know is on £100k+ (which is currently ~$129k).

Can you share a story or two? I'm interested in the UK contracting market. The pay for salaried positions in the UK Is shockingly low.

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#59

Post by pknerd »

jv22222 wrote: post #31

@thr2178008 Hey there. I'll give you a proven roadmap to six figure freelancing right now. 1) Pick a new up and coming language or framework. Something like elixir or pheonix or something else that is really hot and just starting out. 2) Learn it. As you learn, write a series of really awesome tutorials and articles on your blog about that stack. 3) Help people out on SO and other forums that talk about that tech. Po…

The same roadmap will work for even old but required technologies.

I am mostly into scraping and automation tools. Whatever I learnt; for instance Scrapy, Beautifulsoup etc I wrote about it on my blog as well as on medium based publications. It helped me to earn some good contracts and gigs. DO remember I did not follow 3-5 yet otherwise It was going to be more awesome for me.

Re: Ask HN: 6-figure freelancers of HN, what do you do?

#60

Post by nrki »

King-Aaron wrote: post #26
charsifood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial engineering - NYC.

Jeez. I'm a senior front end developer in Western Australia, on 70k. Build Fintech systems... It would be interesting to compare the costs of living etc to see how salaries over there compares to here.

As someone from Perth... you are being severely underpaid.
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