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Comment by erdos4d | Hacker News Reader

Please learn how to actually make money off web development and let me know how you do it. I've noticed a huge disconnect between what people think a web dev can/should make and what I've been able to get from it.

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100% self-taught here. I change $150/hr for full stack Rails work and none of my clients have batted an eye at that. I’m thinking about raising my rates, actually.

If you know what you’re doing, I can assure you, making money is not going to be one if your problems.

Wow, I must be a complete idiot with this stuff because I can't get people to give me even 150 bucks for a full website right now. How do you actually get these 150/hr clients? Please don't tell me I need to work in Silicon Valley for some years and get the "contacts", cause I don't want to live in the US anymore. Tell you what, here's my site: https://www.andeswebdesign.com, if you like it, just send me all your work and I'll do the whole site for you for an hour of your pay. I also have a PhD in computational and applied mathematics if you want to put some real deal data science pipeline in it! I've never made a cent off of that PhD either, so maybe you're the guy who breaks it all open for me.

Probably because websites are commodities at this point. I'd never charge people to build a website. Just point them to Wordpress/Squarespace/etc.

You definitely don't need to work in Silicon Valley.

I think you don't want the kind of client who wants a website for $150. Good clients will be turned off by the low price. I'd try going for a less bargain basement look and pricing structure.

I live with my wife and son in Ecuador and 150 is actually pretty competitive here. Our main competition charges 200 I think. But I agree with you that it is very low for the US/EU market.

I assumed you might be looking for clients in the US. If that's the case I do think it pays to price yourself up rather than down.

I think your contact form is broken, or I just sent you like 8 messages trying this in a few different browsers.

I don't doubt it, we just redid everything last night. Please give it a shot later, I'll go fix it.

EDIT: it's redeploying right now. Please send me a email at erdos4d at gmail if you are actually trying to get in touch with me for business and not just testing the form. Thanks.

No pain, no gain, they told me.

I have been trying to do this, and my biggest problem seems to be actually finding clients. After exhausting my social circle asking for work, it seems really hard to land a client. I am not even able to get anyone on the phone, and all emails are ignored.

Any suggestions?

I might be talking shit, but one solution would be to make the clients find you instead of you finding clients. Make them want you, see you, look for you. You can do this by being active in the relevant social circles/platforms while being respected by your fellow programmers. It's hard to learn how to market yourself, but if you do it well you can easily have clients reach you.

Yes! Build something. Contribute to open source, do some charity work, personal project you care about, teach a class at a local code school/college, make a tutorial video, etc. When you have a track record of good work, people will find you.

Could you expand on how long you've been doing it/how much experience you have, and how you go about finding clients? :)

I learned to program for a startup that I founded about 8 years ago. Once people saw what I could do, they asked me to help on their projects.

It's all been word of mouth. I don't advertise, or even have a website for my consulting business. I'm generous with my time and volunteer to teach classes, give talks, meet with anyone who's learning and wants to chat, etc. So, I'm sure that helped.

It looks like you're in Ecuador, and that makes it a lot tougher.

1. Are you an agency or a solo developer? If it's just you or you and a friend or two, you might get a better response building up your personal brand rather than representing yourself as an agency.

2. I can't judge your technical chops, but I can see that you have room to grow in UI design. I like this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DesignCourse, but there are tons of design resources available.

3. You might need to focus more on sales. Is there a small business you like that doesn't have an online store? Call them, email them, go visit them in person- try to make a sale. You could offer the work in exchange for products at first- once they are happily selling online, they will tell other business owners, and you can get more referrals and raise your prices.

Thank you for your feedback, it is very appreciated. Some answers:

1) I work with my wife at this, so we are a team, though web development is new to us. I got a PhD (math), used to be a backend, and then a data scientist for awhile, but I do not know how to sell these things at all, so we tried web dev, since it seems some people do apparently live off it. I've tried marketing myself as a freelancer in the past and have made literally zero cash from it, so we gave up on that and rebranded as a web dev shop. The rewards seem the exact same, though I can pretend to be a CEO now:)

2) We will check this channel out, thank you. I don't think either of us is strong on design, so this is a valid criticism. It is a goal of ours to improve in this dimension.

3) Neither of us has any contacts who want to buy any software, so we agree with you on the importance of cold selling. We are starting up this process now, and trying to run some ads, but Ecuador has only a 30% online presence anyway, so yeah...

Please keep us in mind if you need anything though, our entire family lives on 300 dollars a month, so I'm quite sure we can undercut virtually any competitor's deal. Thanks:)

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