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Comment by dbancajas | Hacker News Reader

off topic but can you share your rise to 300-400k/year? Do you just bill more than your previous contract? i.e. 125/hr last 6 months, so at renewal time you jump to 150-175/hr? Did you work 2 or more jobs at the same time? It seems like 300-400K/yr remote work in a low COL would be the dream setup for most of HN, but to each his own. What's the take home on your salary after expenses/taxes?

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Likely billable rate of $100-$150 at 2000 hrs per yr. Earlier on during the iOS dev crunch of 2010-2012 billable rates were hitting the $200+ mark. From 2013-2016 those rates dropped down to $150, in the past 4 years those rates plummetted to $80 and now lately even $40. Unless you're working on extending some native API or have expertise in the newer ARKits and HealthKits or you're adding value elsewhere in terms of PM or design or marketing it's harder to justify the magical $100 rate.

I never ever bill hourly. 90% of the work I do is value-based pricing, with a weekly or monthly rate once in a blue moon. My effective hourly rates are much, much higher than anyone would pay me strict hourly.

Also, I'm not sure where you're finding clients, but the market for senior iOS dev definitely is nowhere near $40 / hr. If you're competing with offshore devs on Upwork or people who do "web, iOS, Android, and anything else development!!" then yeah, maybe. But there are tons of clients out there who need senior talent with deep iOS expertise and professionalism and pay north of $100 / hr, or much more if you price based on value.

Would you mind giving an example of the type of value based pricing you're talking about? What kind of metrics do you use to determine the value you provide to the client? Is it as simple as "this feature has increased sales by X%"?

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