Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

119 pointscsomar113 comments

There has been lots of polls about freelancers/consultants hourly rates; but I think they miss a point. You can have a high hourly rate but work little hours; or the other way.Here are the rules:

1. This poll concerns any freelaner/consultant/contract that is working on a hourly/daily/weekly rate (or fixed rate).

2. Income after subtracting business related costs (like Office rent, work related hardware...)

3. Passive income should be excluded.<p>4. Your yearly profits before Taxes.

View on HN

I turned over ~$80k in my first year freelancing. This year will be substantially higher.

Battling against imposter syndrome and finding out how much your worth to a company/business is one of the hardest things about freelancing. I still today believe I'm undercharging for my skill set. Especially when I compare my ability/experience to those I'm working with who are earning a similar amount of money.

At the same time, money really isn't everything. I've worked many more days this year than I did the last, and that's come with certain sacrifices. No longer going for Monday afternoon walks with my sister and niece is something that I really miss now.

The trick is, as far as I'm concerned, not to compare what you're earning to others, and be happy with your own work/life/financial balance.

"Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy." --Charlie Munger

I don't think he's complaining about someone getting richer faster. He's complaining about someone who has less skills and getting paid more.

Complaining is the wrong word. I'm aware more than ever now that what I earn is entirely in my hands and my ability to sell myself.

Having the confidence in you're own ability in order to sell yourself for more money is what I was talking about.

If others are earning more than me with an ability I deem to be less than mine, then I need to learn the skill they are better than me at. Being able to sell themselves.

What is imposter syndrome?

"I'm not good enough to be doing this; other people doing this know what they're doing whereas I'm just winging it; I'm going to be found out as a fraud soon".

Also: "I can't charge more than this because the people who make more than this are obviously more competent."

>At the same time, money really isn't everything.

What about your time? When I was 'freelancing' I couldn't resist piling on hours. I might have stuck with it longer if I could've resisted that temptation (to work all of the time).

Raise you rates and cull some of that work. I know, it's easier to say than do.

You're showing your bias with the ranges you've chosen. Capping the poll at "$200k+" is effectively a statement that you don't believe in the existence of consultants who charge north of $100/hr and work close to 2000 hours per year.

A fair chunk of your initial datapoints are challenging that assumption.

I don't see how it implies that he doesn't believe people make more than that; it just means he isn't interested in finer distinctions above that threshold.

One could say the same for the $20k minimum: there are certainly people who make $5k or $12k also, but he's grouped them together into essentially "make very little money", just like he's grouped $200k+ into essentially "make a lot of money".

As _delirium[1] mentioned, I can't detail every range (there are more people making $20k or less).

At the moment, people making $200k or more are 15% only.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464829

It's still your second largest group. At the time I wrote the above, it was 70% of your respondents.

Stick a >$300k on there, and I wouldn't be surprised if a big slice of that group shifts right over to it.

Incidentally, in response to _delirium, we really need to stop thinking of $200k as "a lot of money". That's an achievable wage for a good developer. Describing it in terms normally reserved for fantasy rather than reality is not particularly helpful.

Why do we "need" to start doing something that's false? $200k+ is a lot of money. It's a top-5% household income in the U.S. (and that's including dual-earning households). You can live a very good life just about everywhere with it. I live a very good life in an expensive city on less! Heck, it's a very good income even if you limit yourself only to technologists in the Valley, a rather rarified social milieu: most Googlers make less.

Sure, you can make more than that, but in a general discussion about freelancing, it's not all that interesting to break down fine gradations of the upper-middle-class, which can be usefully bundled into the category of "people who are very successful at consulting/freelancing". Heck, I'd probably put the cutoff at $150k+ if I were designing a poll, since above that threshold you are no longer trying to make it as a full-time consultant who can support a good lifestyle.

I do think it could be interesting to break out the truly wealthy, adding a separate category for $1m+. But there isn't really any interesting difference between $200k and $300k.

its 50% and long term in terms of retirement and savings an extra 100k makes a hell of a difference.

Sure, it's more money, but it's more or less the same social class and economic position. It's enough to be teetering on the top end of upper-middle-class (compared to engineers making $100k-$150k salaries), but not enough to be truly wealthy, like people who cash out large IPO shares, or consultants/lawyers/etc. raking in 7 figures.

Class is not the same as how rich you are :-) there are plenty of poor DAR WASPs who will look down on these immigrant billionaires (some of whom are sons of Abraham nudge nudge)

Bill G would be seen as "one of us" Larry Ellison much less's so.

The difference between $150k and $200k is often home ownership. Personally that's a pretty big difference to me. I'd like to see numbers about consultants who can support a family of 4 and a mortgage on the peninsula.

The point is that if you earn enough to live comfortably, buy land, and support three dependents, you are making a lot of money by any standard.

I did. Two hours later, only one person upvoted it and around 20 person upvoted the $200k+.

It's important to have equal bin sizes as they are called. When you produce a visual representation of the data, unequal bin sizes produces visual bias.

I know an ex CTO (in the mobile space) who has charged several thousand dollars for an hours work.

I am very curious what exactly they did. In general, performance optimization?

I think it was very high level strategy type for 4g I think.

Without taking location into consideration, this is probably not going to be a very useful poll, I suspect.

Location is more important for typical employment as opposed to freelancing. As a freelancer, you should be able to break out of that "location" ceiling by working remotely. The stronger your brand (well know dev shops have no problem getting international work) and network, the less important your location is to the client. Also, depending on the situation, you could always fly in to work on site. However, it is easier to land jobs from X city if you live there.

I think he was referring to the cost of living aspect. 80K/yr is in the top bracket in many Asian countries but average to decent in US or in many European countries.

First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k.

It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes.

My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).

My highest monthly income: EUR 9185 (this month).

In my experience it's the transition periods where you really have to be careful (unless you have a substantial savings buffer). Switching between contracts with different invoicing cycles; holidays.

I'm still enjoying it. Hoping to break EUR 100K next year.

Beware of having only a single long term contract, please diversify. If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled. You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.

This 100x.

I had four solid long-term contracts lined up as of a few months ago, scheduled so that I could make adequate progress on them without overloading myself, with the overlap set up so that I'd be protected if any one of them fell through.

So far, two of them have fallen through (in the non-paying fashion) and one of them is in the process of actively falling apart. I ended up sinking a ton of energy into trying to salvage each one and trying to protect clients from themselves, but ultimately it's not possible. So now I'm potentially left with one paying project... if that one falls through I'm screwed.

Maybe in some fields you can be looking for work and have some good contracts in your lap a week later? For me, jacquesm's '3 months or so' is on the money; some of my better-paying contracts take even longer than that to get to the point where I can actually start doing work and billing for it.

have you ever considered the reason your deals/clients fall through because you're not dedicating enough time and energy to each one? i've had significant experience working with freelance developers and it's very obvious which ones are working with multiple clients and which one is working with only 1 or 2.

If a freelancer works just with 1 customer they should simply be hired.

A good strategy: 1 background job that is long running and has a reasonably low price tag because it can be pre-empted, one high priority, short bursts of work that are paid top rate and maintenance on a number of old clients that still bring in a part of the income.

That way everybody gets value for their money and the freelancer gets a good mixture of income. You're mistaken if you think that having a freelancer with only 1 or 2 customers is good for you, in the long term you'll need to rebuild your relationship with new people because your old ones will go out of business when you don't need them for a while.

Not to mention that if you have only one client, you may actually legally be the employee of your client, which is a big liability for your client!

I think there are even situations where having a contract explicitly stating you are not an employee may not be legally binding if you have only one client.

In none of these cases did the client ask for more time/energy and not get it; I gave more time and energy than would have been necessary with a properly run project. Just bad clients, bad contracts. They happen, and my point is that it would have been hopelessly irresponsible for me to invest all my hopes in just one or two.

To give you an idea of what I mean, the one that's in the process of falling apart took over six months of negotiation, periodic prodding, and concessions to get them to actually provide me fully signed documents so I could start work. The whole time they were telling me how excited they were about the project and how important it was to them. Clients like this all seem to exist somewhere on a spectrum, and you have to figure out whether they're just a 'less profitable' client because you'll have to put more work in (and set your hourly rate accordingly), or whether they're a fundamentally problematic client that will just never work out. This client turned out to be the latter, even if I am billing hours now.

I suspect once you've been freelancing long enough you can just say no to any client that seems like they could be a problem. For me, it's been a little over two years and the influx of work is not remotely enough to justify that (even if I get way more offers than I used to, and they're better offers)

Very important!

Though I'm not a freelancer myself I know a guy who was making fairly good money off one client. He knew he should diversify but it was always "I'll look next month for other clients because I'm too busy right now".

Some time ago that said client stopped giving work to him. Now he jobs part time at the gas station to make rent and gets only small contracts because he couldn't build a client network while working for his only client.

And seemingly didn't save enough either. "fairly good money" means different things to different people, but keep your living expenses as low as possible. If, for example, your living expenses require a minimum of, say, $8k/month, you probably are going to struggle starting freelancing without $50k in the bank already (and sadly, few people actually have this amount of ready cash available to start make such a move).

How do you structure your work with several clients? Do you work for a few weeks for one client, then a few more for another, etc?

The other way around this is to simply not pay yourself everything your company is earning.

If you have a long contract you can make up a big enough buffer in your business account so you can go months without any business income and still pay yourself a decent salary.

Other bonus is giving yourself a massive dividend now and again :}

It depends on the length of your contract and your confidence in the client. I've had several clients/projects that have lasted longer than a year and since I always bill at least 2-3x what my expected cost of living is I am easily giving enough runway to find my next client. In 2011 for instance I took the year off to focus on personal projects and wait for the right new client to come along. I have now been with that same client for 2 years at 40+/hrs a week.

It depends on your market and the depth of your network. Some markets are so hot that you can land one gig after another. Certain types of clients may require a lot of lead time, which lengthens your cash-flow cycles. Sometimes you come across client work where the client can wait for X months. Sometimes the client needs the job done yesterday. Each situation can be beneficial depending on your own situation.

> If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled.

Is this not the case with smaller projects too, though? I always tend to look for a new project towards the end of the last one, and that has worked out so far.

> You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.

I actually found the opposite: trying to maintain 2 projects at the same time was a nightmare.

>> My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).

I've been freelancing full-time for 5 years and January is always the hardest for me too. Basically the last two weeks of December and first two in January are impossible (people aren't available to speak to you, pay you, or give you new work).

I try to get more jobs that I can usually handle at the end of Nov/start of Dec, take my usual 50% up front, but give longer than usual deadlines. That way I can spread the jobs out throughout the dry spell at the end of the year but I'm also financially secure as the extra jobs+50% will cover me.

It might not work for everyone but I tend to prefer working on small 1 month projects so it works for me.

I'm a ruby contractor working in London, charging £400 per day, but I know others that are charging £500. Having such a high day rate means that I can afford to work part time as to have enough time to work on side projects too. I earned just shy of £50k last year, not all the time was part time so this year will probably be less.

Any tips you can share on how you achieved that position?

I was doing Perl. I assume it's pretty similar: go to jobserve.com, type in Ruby contractor, hit enter.

Then, £400 a day is pretty standard for London? I frequently get offers under that value, hence my belief that this kind of pay doesn't come through normal channels.

Edit: Wrote this before coffee. Thought we were talking hourly rates. Nevermind.

Depends what you do. If you work in the City you should reasonably expect £600 and up. No other sector in London pays as well.

Ruby is quite commoditised now. Take a look at, say, Scala on jobserve.com and you'll see rates are double Ruby. The only way you'll make big money as a Ruby consultant is by differentiating yourself somehow. Better go write a book. All that said, I would be very hesitant about accepting work below £400 a day. A good rule of thumb for consulting is you'll work 100 days a year. At that rate you are making about the same as a mid-level FT employee.

Also note the OP said he was a contractor. There is a fuzzy but real distinction between contractors and consultants. A contractor is typically treated like a FT employee, without the permanent job. This means working from the client's office, longer jobs (usually 6 months - 1 year), and no simultaneous engagements. Contractors typically get paid less than consultants, but there is more work going.

> Also note the OP said he was a contractor. There is a fuzzy but real distinction between contractors and consultants. A contractor is typically treated like a FT employee, without the permanent job.

Yeah bang on - I'm treated as a full-time employee, just no sick pay, national insurance (state pension), redundancy, paternity leave, etc. Sacrificing these benefits pays around 50% more, but you have to file your own tax.

The biggest problem I had was last year when I caught a bug and was out for a week, cost me £2000 - something you often take for granted in a permanent job.

Is it possible to find a contract for a dev that has no permit to work in UK? For instance, I'm skilled in Scala&Python and can easily visit UK as a tourist/businessman. What's the way to this market?(Scala User Group meetups, anything other)?

I'd be in violation of your visa/visa waiver. I have to pay UK corporation tax, something you won't be able to do with a National Insurance number (right to work in the UK) or working on a work visa or something.

I have American friends that have come and worked in the UK, but all for companies, none have setup themselves, so not sure if it's possible.

It shouldnt be a violation if I'll visit UK only to get new contracts and work on them remotely. I also have my own LLC in EU, so I can act on its behalf making taxation for customer easier.

The question is how to reach the market?

Work from home, and you'll be sorted, even if you're coming in from week to week. Tax laws target _where the work is done_. Then you're just coming to visit a client.

Yeah I worked straight out of Uni for a few different companies, starting on £24k, but ramping up quite quickly to my last permanent job, which paid £40k (in Liverpool, not London). I then saved up a few months rent and just made the leap, setting up the business and accounts were easy, and earning roughly the same as I was before, but now just working half the time.

Edit: Oh for actually getting the contracts? I usually find them via ruby friends, or LRUG - the London Ruby User Group - a healthy supply of companies & contractors scour it to quench a never ending demand, it seems.

Aren't rents in London for even a modest place in a nice part of the city north of £500 a week though? Seems rather touch and go if you're only doing that part time.

I live outside of London and commute in via a high-speed rail link - take me about an hour to get into the office. The rents are about half the price and the 'quality of life' is about the same, especially since friends in London are still quite close.

I used to live in London, was paying £1050 a month for a shitty one bedroom apartment miles away from the center - had no spare money and took just as long to commute!

My GF and I pay 1150 a month for a 3-bed house in Bow. Commute by scooter to Camden is about 12 minutes without traffic, 18 minutes with.

Rush hour public transport takes about an hour. Unless you have a serious podcast addiction or an enormous reading list, it's not worth it. Two wheels - motorized or not - are the way to go in London.

Last year I charged $64/hour to do embedded software development. I made around $75k, but i only worked about half the time (75k/64 = 1172 hours). I lived in Chicago and my client was 3 hours away in Fort Wayne, IN.

Good money, low overhead working in the attic (pun intended!), and worked on site about half the time (stayed with a friend who lived there).

That dried up earlier this year and I was getting tired of Chicago, so I applied to a bunch of full-time jobs in California and took a 110k/year embedded software job in San Diego. I miss contracting and working on my own hours, but this larger salary, awesome benefits, and stable income are nice too. Though I just started working on a hardware start-up on the side. I'm hoping this will get big.

Goldscott, I would like to compare notes with you. Would you send me an email? Regards, Jim

Your survey implicitly assumes that all consultants are looking to maximize their income. When I was consulting, I was trying to get by with the least amount of consulting work that I could manage so I could spend the rest of my time on more interesting things.

As a devops contractor I earn north of 500gbp/day and I have a 1 year contract.

Imagining I take a week or two off this year then that works out to about 200k usd

How to achieve this? Find a gap in the market, upskill in it, don't be shy about asking for more money than you think the client will offer you (if they're desperate, they will pay)

How does that work out after tax ? I imagine 200k USD would attract a ton of tax. Is there a more tax efficient way to structure it ?

You do it as a company pay your self minimum wage and take the rest as dividends is the basic idea.

really, as dividends ? I need to figure out how to do this.

does your (own) company also pay social security ?

That's pretty much correct. Dividends are tax free (at least in the UK) and you can structure things so your corporation tax is minimised (maximising various allowances, taking a cut of VAT you charge, buying lots of equipment, etc etc).

You just need a decent accountant who understands how to play this game...

It is a game, and you can very likely get flagged.

Earning $200k, then paying yourself $15k, and then giving yourself 'dividends' of $150k will very likely trigger an audit. Your 'pay' needs to be considered 'reasonable' for the type of work you do.

You might very well do this for a few years, but if you get audited, you'll get fined for this. Make a better estimate - if someone doing similar work in your region might be earning $75k, so pay yourself in that range, then dividend the rest.

Possibly in your jurisdiction - which is why you've got to do your homework and get proper professional advice. It's pretty much standard practice in the UK contracting/consulting market; it's been legislated against under something called IR35 - but with a switched on client, you can create a relationship that is genuinely a client/supplier one rather than an employer/employee one.

I was speaking from a US perspective, and should have indicated that.

"Pay yourself minimum wage, then you can avoid loads of tax!" is a common piece of advice I hear given, and it can be a pretty big red flag to the IRS (got this from my own CPA as well as other CPAs and other financial/tax people over the last ... too many years to count).

The issue is not so much whether you're an 'employee' or not, but in the US, 'wages' are subject to FICA tax (~13% IIRC), 'dividends' aren't. Making $150k, but paying FICA tax on only $15k, and treating the other $135k as 'dividends' is not kosher, as you're avoiding FICA tax on $135k (not really 100% true, because there's an upper cap on FICA-taxable income at the moment).

It's simply not seen as reasonable for someone who's obviously bringing in $150k to claim they only 'earned' $15k, for example. Furthermore, your future Social Security payments are based in part on how much you've paid in FICA taxes over the years, so someone trying to engage in this will find themselves with reduced SS payments down the road, as well as a probable audit and penalties.

Thanks for the detailed responses. The above comments really cleared some stuff up for me. I'd like to add that the US IRS is known to be one of the most (if not THE most) aggressive departments in the world. They have banks around the world bowing to them and it's pretty hard for US citizens to do any of the kind of tax structuring that folks in other countries can.

Of course, you are right that this is all still a grey area but I'm sure the laws or precedences are clear in some countries.

Dividends = capital gains tax.

Dividends are tax free (at least in the UK)

That's only true up to £32,010 and if you're earning £125k or so and extracting most of that through dividends, the majority of your dividend income should be attracting 22.5% and 27.5% tax after discounting, no?

Here is a histogram, pretty uniform with the exception of ~$20k. Used the spark [1] utility to generate this, if anyone was interested.

  █▅▇▆▄▄▅▁
  | | |
  | | +- $120-$150k
  | +- $50k-$80k
  +- $20k

[1] https://github.com/holman/spark

I was wondering when I was going to see one of these on this thread. Is there any way to implement it in JS so that you could have a self-updating one on future HN polls?(I know I should go look into it myself but trying to get some prepwork done and reading HN every half hour or so is procrastination enough). Also what's with the negative value on the 5th category?

Rate/income without consideration of location (in the world) isn't very useful. SF rates will be much higher than Dallas rates, for example. Same goes with NYC vs Seattle, London vs Amsterdam, etc.

This misses a couple of factors. a) Not every one is based in US, so they charge viewing their currency rate diff. Hence 15k USD per annum might be a good income for some one in a remote country. b) Not every one is a full time free lancer. For instance i only work free lance, when i have time, got a really interesting project or am in need of money apart from a full time day job. Some times i have like 15 hours worked in six months, some times more. I don't see any way to even point out those things here. Won't these drastically impact the data?

P.S. yes - another missed factor is years of experience - No? If you get mostly people right out of college (or even in college for that matter) making similar to those on full time jobs after many years, that is an interesting one too. No?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $20k or less

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $20-$50k

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $50k-$80k

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $80-$120k

XXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $120-$150k

XXXXXXXXXXXX -- $150k-$200k

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX -- $200k or more

XXXX -- $300k or more

Jack shit.

You can't compare income from FL between 1st and 3rd world countries. I know for a fact that some of countries don't have other choice but to do FL business over various semi-shady sites like Freelancer, Elance, oDesk, Guru, etc, where it is incredibly hard to generate >$20k/year income.

I worked on oDesk from Mumbai for a while making ~50k/year. It was surreal.

could I ask what kind of services/technologies you were offering?

With this kind of income you can make a very decent living in India.

$50k in India won't get you far in Mumbai, especially if you are married and have kids

Have you lived there? It's not that expensive. Primary costs would be rentals. And they fall exponentially as you move away from Nariman Point (city center)

Depends on your lifestyle. You can live comfortably with a small amount, but if you have personal preferences (like having a smartphone, Macbook air, skiing in winter, and a good car) the location won't really matter much.

That's a little more than 2.5 lakhs a month. There is no part of India where you can't live comfortably in that much money.

Bear in mind that living in Mumbai doesn't mean living in Pali Hill. The suburbs are significantly cheaper.

and if you don't have to commute it's relatively attractive not to live in the city centre.

That is great money for India.

Well, it is hard but not "incredibly" hard. Not all clients there are bottom feeders, even though the majority probably are. Even then, it still definitely beats being an employee on a fixed salary in most "developed" countries. Someone told me that the average programmer in Poland makes 800 EUR/month. That doesn't sound spectacular either ;-)

In Portugal the minimum wage is currently 485€ per month, before taxes.

With a degree one usually one starts at around 1000€ per month and grows from there.

You have to be already quite senior to even dream of the 2000€ barrier, in a few selected companies.

However with the current economical situation, many people are quite happy if they happen to just get something.

That's funny. Up there in Lithuania 1000eur is average salary for non-senior developers. Senior developers may easily get 2000eur in a good company. Or they're not that senior. 3000eur/mo is not unheard of for really good seniors.

The main (uneducated) public is in the same spot though, with minimum wage of 290euros.

Good time for IT guys.

Strangely, this is not so different from Belarus as you would imagine.

850 EUR is average salary in Poland (before taxation). Programmers would usually get more, at least in big cities.

Programmers can make a lot more: starting at 1500 EUR (as junior developer) up to 4 000 EUR (minority of senior developers). That's also before taxation

Living expenses are presumably different though. So it's a bit hard to just compare salary directly.

They aren't anymore. I've lived both in Poland and countries in western EU, Netherlands be one example, and honestly everyday product prices are very similar. The major difference is housing although Poland is very similar to Berlin housing wise, now compare the average salaries...

Costs of living haven't been that much different for a decade or so. The only reason most businesses pay poor salaries to Polish workers is - because they can (high level of unemployment + low percentage of workers organised in trade unions + low minimum wage). Living expenses don't differ much between Warsaw and Berlin.

Programmers' wages are an exception, because - unlike most of the population - they have way out from the local labour market.

Berlin is a bit of a special case though. Living expenses are very low compared to other "rich" EU countries.

Even compared to other big cities in Germany; you won't find Berlin rental prices in Munich or Frankfurt.

What is the reason for such low living expenses in Berlin?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin_population2.svg

Right, world commodities such as oil only differ by government taxes or subsidies. And of course, oil is the lifeblood of any industrialized nation.

Anything imported (which is probably a lot for most nations) is going to be about the same. In the Philippines, a lot of cheap stuff gets imported from China that you may not even be able to find in the U.S. because it's total crap. So, that can opener might be cheap, but it won't last more than three cans.

Land prices is another big modifier. In the Philippines, rent is generally cheap even if the land is expensive. There might be a lot of demand for buying your land, but a business isn't going to pay you much for rent if it's having to work off margins from selling cheap products in an economy where most people are making less than $6 per day. The same goes for residential. Jack up your rent and the only people who can afford it are the top few percent and foreigners.

Where you save a ton in developing countries is on labor, which affects the prices of everything just like oil does. And then of course you have savings from services provided to you directly such as medical.

The difference is rent, and the net amount in your bank account. In SF rent will set you back ridiculous amounts, but only 50% of your pay if you're a developer at most. The same is true in London, and in Germany.

The difference is in SF 50% of your pay buys 20 ipads. In Germany, 50% pays for 4 of them.

"2nd world" (Eastern Europe) freelancer here - it really depends what things you work on, even on Elance, oDesk etc. It's not that hard to generate >20k, of course if you know what you're doing. oDesk clients brought me >40k this year, most jobs north of 5k (I do mobile apps). There's of course a lot of crap job postings there, but once you get a minimal reputation, you don't even look at those "make website for a peanut" contests. Of course rates are well below those that American developers usually get, but really not <20k year, at least when you work full-time.

There should be a smaller poll option to distinguish between people who just started/for whom freelancing is not a major source of income and those that are doing it as their main source of income. For example anyone making under 4 or 5 k is probably not a "freelancer" exclusively.

I think I notice a selection bias here. Anyone north of 50k won't ever bother looking at this thread.

If it's true that anyone north of $50k won't bother looking at this thread, then 60% of the respondents so far are lying. ;-)

Well, I spoke early to be honest, however I don't think bias is the same thing as lying.

What about people who run consultancies? I bill out for 12 people's time.

Always love talking shop with fellow consultancy owners. If you're game, drop me an email and introduce yourself!

I run a smaller consultancy, currently 5 people. I'd love to chat too.

$20/hour on ISP. in latin america. this is stupidly cheap, sportsbook companies pay more but will try to screw with you. i dont know how you guys earn more. maybe im on the wrong stupid country

indeed. we are on the wrong country :P.

indeed you are in the right country, but working for the "wrong" country. Try to get US customers.

If anyone reading this is an experienced freelancer in the bay area who does web/rails and has some db experience, send me an email

for contractors the day rate is the key metric not yearly income as you will want to manipulate that to optimize your tax situation.

Interesting range.

I would love to see a distribution among different technologies, such as .NET, Rails, iOS, Android, etc...

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