71–80 of 167 posts
I rarely do anything below $5k (at $125 per hour with discounts on bigger projects or past clients that treated me well). Since this all side stuff, after my 9-5 job, I'm very picky on what I take in, since I like to work on products that I have 'real' input in.
What area? Web Dev?
I have looked at sites like odesk or elance and those just suck for US freelancers as they do not pay shit. No one can outbid some russian company charging $3 per hour. Where do you go to find projects?
I took a look at the code and ... you know what happens in japan with that nuclear plant right now? Yeah, the app was the fukushima of code. It only hold together because of luck. Luck didn't last till iOS 4 where Apple seemingly changed something about how cocoa touch retains objects internally and the app exploded. Objects were randomly released and the programmers didn't care about any conventions. They returned objects with retain counts of 1 from a static lib and then released them somewhere later in another static lib. Not a single autorelease was used.
At least there was extensive doxygen generated documentation ... in russian (no joke).
You get what you pay for. And yes you can't compete with the people offering their services on odesk/elance. And you don't want to work for cheap asses that post "need augmented reality app for max $200" jobs.
I have looked at sites like odesk or elance and those just suck for US freelancers as they do not pay shit. No one can outbid some russian company charging $3 per hour. Where do you go to find projects?
Some tips for this:
* Make sure your friends know what you do - update your Facebook profile, hand out business cards, start a blog, etc.
* Make sure your friends think/know that you are the best developer that they know and that you are the first person they think of when someone says "I'm going to need a website"
* Use LinkedIn - surprisingly enough, I've had old contacts connect with me via LinkedIn, view my profile and hire me for a project
* Exploit whatever niche you're a part of - if you are active in your church, approach them or another local church to see if they need a site. Apply same strategy for a youth group, social club, etc.
It does depend what you do, and how you do it, but the results suggest that your scale needs to go a lot higher; typical London contract rates for say Java development are about $700 a day, tend to last 3 / 6 months, e.g. $42-84k. Probably 2/3rds of that if you are a js dev, or 2x that if you know your investment banking and grid computing.
Would be interesting to see what the average time spent is on projects at each income level.
It would be even more interesting if we could factor in location as well. I live in Utah and $125 hourly is decent, but in SV it is probably rock bottom.
My first major paid freelance project was worth about $6K of development time. I charged $400 because it was for a friend of a friend, and mostly because I just didn't know any better. I learned a hell of a lot though, not just about coding but also what I could do different in the future not to land myself in such a crap situation. Eventually, though, that $400 paid dividends: the project was noticed by a company th…
I'm glad my first job(s) were shitty so I could grow a thick skin early in my career.
My Dad is an engraver, he's good at it, he was complaining to me that he had more work than he could handle. I suggested he raise his price then. He responded with the typical "I couldn't in good conscience charge that for something that takes me only a few hours to do!" And then we had a long discussion about how the market sets the rate, not you, and if you hold your rate under market it will overwhelm you because…
That's the basic thesis of Earn1K - the "I will teach you to be rich" course. I won't link here, as it's commercial, but the blog is worth a look even if you're not a paying customer.
What's wrong with linking a commercial product or course?
This is a discussion about making money on a website with a strong slant towards making money by starting and running businesses.