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Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

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Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#21

Post by throws12 »

throwawaytree wrote: post #11

I make $7 US dollars an hour designing and developing apps as a full-time employee. I’m paying off a new car, pay rent, and live quite a good life compared to others in my country (third-world country). Compared to other countries salaries, mine is awful. Compared to local salaries, it’s actually about 4x the minimum wage. The cost of living here is quite low (I pay 150$ per month for a single bedroom with bathroom).…

now that you have revealed that you are from a third world country, cheapos in the first world countries will try to outsource work to you, which is very good IMO. But at the same time blaming third world programmers for taking their jobs. Pretty much like blaming China for taking the manufacturing jobs, but first world country people wanting things cheap products from Amazon.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#22

Post by stingraycharles »

mthomasb wrote: post #9

Hey all, Matt from Bonsai (YC W16) here. We provide contracts, proposals, invoices, and other tools to freelancers, mostly developers and designers. We used our anonymized data to break out what freelancers earn with different experience levels, skill sets, locations, etc: https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates

Why is Europe excluded ?

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#23

Post by k__ »

defarobot wrote: post #2

I'm 1/3 of a three person dev. shop — does that count? We charge 250/person/hr and have been doing 40+ hr weeks for the last few years. We'll also make some margin if we need to sub out occasionally as client needs increase. This stability is really shaky though as all this work was from a single client.

How do consulting shops charge so much?

I mean, yes they got higher overhead than a single dev, but that's their own problem and not the problem of the client, so what's the difference fro a single dev here?

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#24

Post by rismay »

asow92 wrote: post #12

I work a full time iOS gig and do freelancing on the side. Typically I bring in an extra 10-20k per year at around $100 per hour depending on the job.

Sounds awesome. I'm an iOS developer and hoping to go the same route. Where are you based out of?

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#26

Post by bsvalley »

App freelancing (in the US) has been killed by cheap hourly rates thanks to globalization. As a client, why would I pay $100/h for a local Dev versus $10/h for a dev located in India or anywhere else where the cost of living is much lower?

As a full time "app" developer I make $200K/y in the US. I tried freelancing on the side but it's pretty worthless. We're talking pennies by hour spent coding.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#27

Post by throwawaycash »

I make about 0-300k/year fixing apps that others either weren't able to finish or where they architected themselves into scaling issues. Aside from that, I am a part time programming consultant who makes about 80k a year (I have a chronic illness so I spend a lot of time not working, and it's helpful for me to work in intense bursts with rests in between. It's difficult for me to have normal full time employment in the US because of the chronic illness.)

It averages out to about $250k/year on 30/h/week

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#28

Post by bintreethrow »

I have 3 API services, 2 desktop apps & 3 iOS+Android apps that I have developed over the course of 7 years after my CS engineering degree in a third world country, pretty much like the @throwawaytree here. My earnings are at average rounded converted to 6000 USD/month less server/misc. costs. I live with my parents(no rent) in a village in this state in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala . I am 29. I think I have enough savings for a lifetime and most of the revenues are on auto pilot.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#29

Post by seibelj »

aerovistae wrote: post #6
seibelj wrote: post #3

I know a guy making $10-15k a month from his apps. He's a full time employee now, but when he had kids, he stayed home, taught himself android, and made apps for 5 years while his wife worked full time. Now they are in maintenance mode and print cash.

What apps did he make? How did he make money off of them?

I don't want to reveal anything that might jeopardize his apps with competition (and therefore hurt his family's income). He made games (more like word games and puzzles than real-time) and monetized them with ads. One trick he did was to rebrand his existing games with different titles, graphics, etc. to create his own competition, so sometimes he owns multiple apps in the top results for the same game category. Very impressive.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#30

Post by throwawaycash »

bsvalley wrote: post #26

App freelancing (in the US) has been killed by cheap hourly rates thanks to globalization. As a client, why would I pay $100/h for a local Dev versus $10/h for a dev located in India or anywhere else where the cost of living is much lower? As a full time "app" developer I make $200K/y in the US. I tried freelancing on the side but it's pretty worthless. We're talking pennies by hour spent coding.

the money is in fixing broken apps delivered by cheap devs.
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