Ask HN: What income can I expect as an online freelance full-stack developer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What income can I expect as an online freelance full-stack developer?

24 pointscandlefather15 comments

I've got some years of experience of working in startups, and I'm confident enough to say that I can deliver complex full stack applications at a high quality in good time. I've done full stack development and devops and product work... I'm good with people (clients) and I can follow through.

I'm willing to put in the time and effort needed in marketing myself, applying and looking for jobs, and generally 'managing' myself as a freelancer.

I currently live in Israel, working full time for a startup here, I would earn about 8-9K$ monthly (before taxes of course).

What can I expect to get to as an online freelancer - what's the best case scenario (I manage to keep myself busy with high-paying projects) ? What's the average scenario for someone with my capabilities ?

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I'm not sure how this is answerable.

Best case is essentially unlimited, e.g., $200-500 USD/hr. If you go on a project basis, the hourly rate could end up being very, very high. Or mediocre. Or even low.

Average? We have no idea what your capabilities are, so we can't factor that into the equation. Average is probably closer to $50-125 USD.

Thanks ! I think you gave a great answer ! Where did you get those numbers if you don't mind me asking ?

He pulled them out of his arse, which is exactly how freelance/consulting pricing works.

Yup!

That's how I started billing clients initially; basically making stuff up, estimating project complexity v. time-to-implement, and so on.

Eventually they were reasonably accurate, then I stopped doing it for awhile. I've toyed with the idea of getting back into it again, but I'm a terrible hustler, and don't have the patience for it :(

How do you find clients/work? Were you contracting?

I've always been curious about how freelancers make such a high hourly, because freelance websites are full of people charging $15/hr.

By delivering quality and focusing on clients that don't care about pinching pennies.

But do many of those clients exist on sites like upwork?

To find clients that will pay good rates you're mostly going to have to deal with them directly, which rules out most sites that try to act as a middle-man.

It depends on where you get your clients from. If you use marketplaces like upwork your hourly rate will suffer. Especially at the beginning. From my experience you need to build a strong profile with 25+ reviews from completed jobs.

I'd stay away from these places and look at me personal network first. There might be even clients who do not consider a freelancer on a remote basis initially, but are happy to try.

Assuming a utilisation rate of 80% you need to bill 10-11.5k a month to match your current state of earnings. Let's say you want to work 40 hours a week, then your day rate should be 62,50 USD+

My skills sound similar to yours (full-stack w- devops) and I do freelance development on the side. Before the economy crashed, I had 2 clients. One paying $120/hr USD, the other $60/hr USD.

After the crash, I couldn't find anyone who would pay over $40/hr. Now things are slowly getting better; I have 2 clients paying $40/hr and one paying $60/hr.

I've never done any advertisement, basically these are people saying, "please help me". They have reached out through a friend of a friend looking for someone they could trust.

Since this isn't a make-or-break situation for me financially, we tend to agree on a price that they are comfortable with. These days my starting figure is $60/hr and I go down from there.

To be able to do marketing, advertising, and to be able to build it into a business, I'd probably want to be back in the $100-$120/hr range. With that level, I'd feel comfortable because I'd have the perks of my day job: travel to conferences, hire employees, save for retirement, good health insurance, limitless sugary snacks, etc.

If you are in the United States it works out to about 1/3. but that is on profit, so you can deduct your expenses to lower the total number.

I am not sure about the tax laws in Israel

Sorry I didn't understand - what works to about 1/3 ?

sorry I miss read. The income tax in the US works out to about 1/3

a fellow israeli here. living in spain, though. you can invoice US$50-100 an hour if you're any good

I'm not in Israel, so my answer doesn't contain specific values. I also don't do freelance work online. So...

My "offline" freelancing work quotations are structured like this: Firstly, I have a target of how much I want to make in a month, secondly an idea of how many hours I'm willing to work in a month to reach that target, and finally an indication of the delivery requirements of the project, if any (some quotations ask me to specify by when they could reasonably expect delivery, while others give an idea of when they require delivery). Then, I balance hours vs money vs delivery. So a project that has a delivery of a month (or multiple thereof) and means spending mostly all the monthly hours on that project will attract a rate that means I get out what I intend to for a month. Something that has a shorter delivery requirement with a higher number of hours to be spent (those projects where something needs to be done urgently, for example) the rate is a lot higher since more hours are spent on the project. I also work in a setup cost for each project, which is not billed directly but rather included in a higher hourly rate. I'll typically make more from 4x 1-week projects than 1x 4-week project, but the latter at least getting me to my target. While the former means a nicer "paycheck" at the end of the month, it requires more effort to get right, and it means requiring 4 different projects.

Obviously in practice there's other issues to consider, but such things are picked up over time. For example, projects don't occur one at a time sequentially. Which means sometimes working on 2 or more projects concurrently (your choice completely though whether you accept the extra work and whether you've planned for it). This means when sending the first (and subsequent) quote out, that the 'weights on the scales' have been adjusted accordingly. Then there's the consideration that there might not be work for some period, in which case either the end monetary target needs to be adjusted down for the period without work, or otherwise have an inflated monetary target to begin with, the excess of which caters for those periods (you'll need to determine what is a fair increase and how long it will take to build up a sufficient amount before you can afford to be without work - that length of time is a good indicator of savings needed before starting freelancing). Something else to consider is that a sufficient amount of time will need to be spent on admin work: generating quotes, responding to emails, invoicing, following up with payments, meeting (potential) clients , etc. You'll need to decide how to bill for this time as well.

Aaand I'm almost done with this novel... since you're wanting to do freelancing work online, you'll need to consider most of the above, but importantly, that a) your success rate of landing work is likely going to be a lot lower than what you think, b) the amount of "admin" required increases (responding to and browsing alerts, etc). All factor in on the total you'll make in a month.

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