Comment by bballant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bballant | Hacker News Reader

I've only been freelancing for 6 mo. but I have about 10 years of experience as a software developer in the same market. Right now I'm totally saturated with work and it's come entirely through contacts -- I haven't talked to one recruiter or answered a single ad. So far it's been a blast, but not quite as lucrative (yet) as working full-time for a salary.

In my opinion, the two major reasons I've had success finding good work are:

1. I'm specializing in a popular niche and, backed by my experience, I can claim I'm an expert. This also means I can charge high rates.

2. I've always been a nice person to the people I've worked with and have remained friendly with previous bosses and co-workers. I've developed a reputation as a capable programmer who's easy to get along/work with. (Conan O'Brien, last spring, attributed his success to being passionate about what he does and being a nice guy. I think this is really true.)

I'm still struggling with a couple of things. I basically always get my time estimates way wrong. I have trouble focusing and switching contexts from wheeler-dealer (finding jobs and managing contacts) to h-core coder to my personal life. To that end, I tend to work from my clients' offices quite a bit and I'm considering renting a cube somewhere. Finally, being a nice guy has it's downsides--I almost never get paid promptly and clients often times don't provide as much support as quickly as I need (like when I need to work w/ a client API and I need documentation/time with their engineers to move my work forward).

If you're fully saturated with work and you're not making as much as your salary, you're probably not charging enough.

Freelancing's risk is that projects come and go, so you need higher rates compared to salaried jobs to provide more of a buffer zone for yourself.

On the other end, your clients are saving from not having to provide benefits and having efficient resourcing (both in that they can ramp up the work when needed, and the fact that if you're billing per hour, you're actually doing work as opposed to someone just hanging out at their 9-5 job)

Thanks for the tips. Perhaps I could raise my rates, but I think I lose money more by a) not properly estimating timelines and b) becoming idle while waiting for client feedback/help/etc. As I said, I'm only 6 mo. into it, so I'm still learning how to better handle these things. I'm finding that when I go into a client's office to code, they are more inclined to provide me the resources they need and I feel ok billing them for the hours, even if they've left me idly waiting for their input.

Here's a rule of thumb: your hourly rate is roughly comparable to your yearly income.

Here's why: you'll probably have about 1,000 billable hours in a year (because not all of your work is billable, there will be some dry periods, vacation and sick days are unpaid, etc.). If you charge $90/hr, your income is $90,000.

But this is definitely not equivalent to a $90k salaried job. You are taxed at a higher rate. If you set aside 40% for taxes and 10% for a rainy day, only 50% of your income is spendable. So $90/hr gives you $45,000/yr of spendable money (and you still have to pay for your benefits like health insurance).

So don't be shy about charging more, but do make sure that your customer is getting what they pay for (quality code in a timely fashion with good customer service).

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