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> getting paid for every hour I worked (I billed by the hour) As someone who is (overly?) honest/careful; this could be a con. Also, if you're able to, bill by the day.
Billing by the day is not the best for everyone: billing by the hour can give you the flexibility to work incomplete days or switch between clients during the day.
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Yeah. I have a dedicated outbound sales person who pings their network for referrals every few weeks. Their job is to weed out noise + educate + convert hourly to project based billing Went into a lot of detail on Reddit a couple years back here https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ommiww/commen...
> convert hourly to project based billing I can see how that helps in increasing revenue, but it also makes the work less agile, requires longer negotiations and adds risks. So it's probably not for everyone. Some others have found a way to bill similar amounts but on short projects billed by the day/week. That sounds preferable to me, but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.
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> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. This is great for people whose own pace is reasonable and matched to their compensation. If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out. Conversely, if you’re paying 90th…
How do you know that people are lazy by nature and not because their job sucks? Of course they have zero incentive to get anything done, they get paid regardless of how well the project gets done. Maybe if they had the guts to leave a paycheck for browsing Reddit and started their own business they would have success too. When I work on my projects I have way more stamina than when I'm doing client work. I kind of ha…
The two aren't mutually exclusive. I personally wouldn't say humans are lazy, but simply: people avoid doing things they find unenjoyable, but if they must do something unenjoyable they'll find ways to minimize their time spent doing it.
> Of course they have zero incentive to get anything done, they get paid regardless of how well the project gets done.
This makes it sound like freelancers get more work done, not because it's more enjoyable, but because they must to get paid.
> Maybe if they had the guts to leave a paycheck for browsing Reddit and started their own business they would have success too.
For some people, getting paid to browse reddit is one definition of success.
> When I work on my projects I have way more stamina than when I'm doing client work. I kind of have to resist the urge to kill myself all the time instead of doing that boring job and I keep reminding me I'll be able to build a villa with the money.
Huh... After reading this I need to rethink what you are even arguing. I assumed it was that freelancers put in more hours because the nature of their work is more fulfilling. But you're really just saying, yeah humans are lazy to the point of wanting death over client work, but at least with freelance I can frontload the actual number of miserable hours worked, instead of spreading them over 30 years.
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
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> convert hourly to project based billing I can see how that helps in increasing revenue, but it also makes the work less agile, requires longer negotiations and adds risks. So it's probably not for everyone. Some others have found a way to bill similar amounts but on short projects billed by the day/week. That sounds preferable to me, but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.
I do it mostly for legal purposes.
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It's not clear if that's revenue or profit. Due to that intentional ambiguity I had to presume the latter.
Maybe, but how big can the expenses have been? I've worked as a freelance solo dev (sadly for far less than $500k/year) and the difference between my revenue and profit was close to zero. Expenses included accountancy costs and the occasional new laptop or whatever bit of hardware I could justifiably call a business expense, but it was a tiny fraction of my revenue.
But if you assume as I do that your time is the most valuable thing you have, then there’s no way to generate profits when all you sell is your time.
You can generate cash, sure. But profits as in selling something for more than it cost you, never. You can never get that time back, and it’s worth more than anything.
I would guess many will disagree with this perspective.
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Unless you’re ridiculously well paid I think you’re considerably underestimating what many independent contractors end up earning. I can only speak about my anecdotal network but everyone that I know who went the independent contractor road is making around a million or more a year. They didn’t start out like that, and I’m not sure how easy the road would be in the current economy, but the people who started out 10-1…
What industry is this where all of the ICs you know are making a million or more?
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
I’d love to know how you did this.
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> convert hourly to project based billing I can see how that helps in increasing revenue, but it also makes the work less agile, requires longer negotiations and adds risks. So it's probably not for everyone. Some others have found a way to bill similar amounts but on short projects billed by the day/week. That sounds preferable to me, but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.
I do it mostly for legal purposes.