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Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

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Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#21

Post by csallen »

Alan01252 wrote: post #4

I turned over ~$80k in my first year freelancing. This year will be substantially higher. Battling against imposter syndrome and finding out how much your worth to a company/business is one of the hardest things about freelancing. I still today believe I'm undercharging for my skill set. Especially when I compare my ability/experience to those I'm working with who are earning a similar amount of money. At the same ti…

"Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy." --Charlie Munger

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#22

Post by jacquesm »

davedx wrote: post #20

First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k. It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes. My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).…

Beware of having only a single long term contract, please diversify. If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled. You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#23

Post by troels »

eriksank wrote: post #7
re1ser wrote: post #5

You can't compare income from FL between 1st and 3rd world countries. I know for a fact that some of countries don't have other choice but to do FL business over various semi-shady sites like Freelancer, Elance, oDesk, Guru, etc, where it is incredibly hard to generate >$20k/year income.

Well, it is hard but not "incredibly" hard. Not all clients there are bottom feeders, even though the majority probably are. Even then, it still definitely beats being an employee on a fixed salary in most "developed" countries. Someone told me that the average programmer in Poland makes 800 EUR/month. That doesn't sound spectacular either ;-)

Living expenses are presumably different though. So it's a bit hard to just compare salary directly.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#25

Post by kevingadd »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
davedx wrote: post #20

First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k. It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes. My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).…

Beware of having only a single long term contract, please diversify. If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled. You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.

This 100x.

I had four solid long-term contracts lined up as of a few months ago, scheduled so that I could make adequate progress on them without overloading myself, with the overlap set up so that I'd be protected if any one of them fell through.

So far, two of them have fallen through (in the non-paying fashion) and one of them is in the process of actively falling apart. I ended up sinking a ton of energy into trying to salvage each one and trying to protect clients from themselves, but ultimately it's not possible. So now I'm potentially left with one paying project... if that one falls through I'm screwed.

Maybe in some fields you can be looking for work and have some good contracts in your lap a week later? For me, jacquesm's '3 months or so' is on the money; some of my better-paying contracts take even longer than that to get to the point where I can actually start doing work and billing for it.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#26

Post by k-mcgrady »

davedx wrote: post #20

First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k. It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes. My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).…

>> My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).

I've been freelancing full-time for 5 years and January is always the hardest for me too. Basically the last two weeks of December and first two in January are impossible (people aren't available to speak to you, pay you, or give you new work).

I try to get more jobs that I can usually handle at the end of Nov/start of Dec, take my usual 50% up front, but give longer than usual deadlines. That way I can spread the jobs out throughout the dry spell at the end of the year but I'm also financially secure as the extra jobs+50% will cover me.

It might not work for everyone but I tend to prefer working on small 1 month projects so it works for me.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#27

Post by kybernetyk »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
davedx wrote: post #20

First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k. It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes. My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).…

Beware of having only a single long term contract, please diversify. If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled. You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.

Very important!

Though I'm not a freelancer myself I know a guy who was making fairly good money off one client. He knew he should diversify but it was always "I'll look next month for other clients because I'm too busy right now".

Some time ago that said client stopped giving work to him. Now he jobs part time at the gas station to make rent and gets only small contracts because he couldn't build a client network while working for his only client.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#28

Post by csomar »

csallen wrote: post #21
Alan01252 wrote: post #4

I turned over ~$80k in my first year freelancing. This year will be substantially higher. Battling against imposter syndrome and finding out how much your worth to a company/business is one of the hardest things about freelancing. I still today believe I'm undercharging for my skill set. Especially when I compare my ability/experience to those I'm working with who are earning a similar amount of money. At the same ti…

"Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy." --Charlie Munger

I don't think he's complaining about someone getting richer faster. He's complaining about someone who has less skills and getting paid more.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#29

Post by csomar »

mritun wrote: post #15
jhh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could I ask what kind of services/technologies you were offering? With this kind of income you can make a very decent living in India.

$50k in India won't get you far in Mumbai, especially if you are married and have kids

Depends on your lifestyle. You can live comfortably with a small amount, but if you have personal preferences (like having a smartphone, Macbook air, skiing in winter, and a good car) the location won't really matter much.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#30

Post by lut4rp »

mritun wrote: post #15
jhh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could I ask what kind of services/technologies you were offering? With this kind of income you can make a very decent living in India.

$50k in India won't get you far in Mumbai, especially if you are married and have kids

That's a little more than 2.5 lakhs a month. There is no part of India where you can't live comfortably in that much money.

Bear in mind that living in Mumbai doesn't mean living in Pali Hill. The suburbs are significantly cheaper.

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