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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?

#31

Post by gargarplex »

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).…

My friend Jay El-Kaake and I wrote two books on freelance consulting. We would be happy to send you both copies for free. It is a shame, for a variety of reasons, that someone intelligent and competent is earning $7 USD hourly. Email zack@codefor.cash

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

#32

Post by amingilani »

I don't want to share my exact rate, but I easily make a month what a Silicon Valley engineer at a seed startup can.. and since I live in a developing country it's an order of magnitude more than most people my age.

If you're a brilliant engineer and are looking to work for a freelance app developer, I recommend Toptal[1].

While I now work at Toptal, I first joined the company through their freelance network, got a project with one of their clients, and eventually was onboarded onto the company itself. My experience with them started as someone that "wanted to work for international clients out of Pakistan" and it was brilliant. I whole-heartedly recommend joining Toptal for freelancers looking to get something going on the side. You can choose your own rate, so you can go as low as $10, or go as crazy as, jeez, I dunno, $500.. although the higher you are, the more difficult it is to land a client.

[1]: Toptal Referral link: https://www.toptal.com/#contract-just-respected-software-arc...

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

#33

Post by yev »

stingraycharles wrote: post #22
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 ?

They might not have enough data for Europe.

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

#34

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

k__ wrote: post #23
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?

The single dev isn't charging enough?

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

#35

Post by zackify »

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.

Because overseas code quality is, many times, atrocious. Communicating can be harder since there is a huge timezone difference. Just a couple reasons.

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

#36

Post by jasonswett »

For the last few years I've made a little over $100K/year. This is mostly from doing staff-aug-style Ruby on Rails programming at $100/hr.

This year I've transitioned into a mix of coding and training. From training I've earned between $5,000/week and $13,000/week.

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

#37

Post by mthomasb »

stingraycharles wrote: post #22
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 ?

When we first launched we didn't have enough data for Europe, but we do now and will update it soon with rates for most European countries and a few others.

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

#39

Post by bkovacev »

jasonswett wrote: post #36

For the last few years I've made a little over $100K/year. This is mostly from doing staff-aug-style Ruby on Rails programming at $100/hr. This year I've transitioned into a mix of coding and training. From training I've earned between $5,000/week and $13,000/week.

How did you switch into training?

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

#40

Post by cronjobma »

jasonswett wrote: post #36

For the last few years I've made a little over $100K/year. This is mostly from doing staff-aug-style Ruby on Rails programming at $100/hr. This year I've transitioned into a mix of coding and training. From training I've earned between $5,000/week and $13,000/week.

How does 'training' look like. You give in-person workshops? Sell online courses?
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