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Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

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Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#11

Post by mooftard »

gcheong wrote: post #5

Would be interesting to see what the average time spent is on projects at each income level.

"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.

Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#12

Post by zackb »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #4

My 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.

How do you go about doing estimation? When you are asked for a bid and have loose requirements what are some good practices for estimating?

Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#14

Post by elliottcarlson »

Sadly 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.

Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#16

Post by jtregunna »

zackb wrote: post #12
thetrumanshow wrote: post #4

My 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.

How do you go about doing estimation? When you are asked for a bid and have loose requirements what are some good practices for estimating?

Best 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.

Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#18

Post by Loic »

Working 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.

Re: Poll: How much do you average per freelancing gig?

#19

Post by thetrumanshow »

zackb wrote: post #12
thetrumanshow wrote: post #4

My 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.

How do you go about doing estimation? When you are asked for a bid and have loose requirements what are some good practices for estimating?

I am so incredibly horrible at estimation that I bid more with emotion.

If I find the project very interesting and I can fall in love with building it, the client is going to get a good deal. Boring or otherwise tedious projects engender some stone-cold, take-it-or-leave-it negotiation. I mean, this is my free time.

Edit: Nevermind that extra bit, however true. :)

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