Ask HN: Is it realistic to earn £1000/$1600 per week? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it realistic to earn £1000/$1600 per week?

13 pointsdevbert14 comments

The short of it: I want to earn £1000/week (~$1600) as a freelancer.

I'm in the UK (not London) and I've found that the majority of prospective clients consider this too high. I've been mostly a lurker on HN for a few years now so it's entirely possible I'm being unrealistic and spent too much time reading about SV/US rates ($100/hr and so on).

Now I can do front end, HTML, CSS, JS, work with bootstrap or code from scratch, I can also do backend PHP and some JS there too. I've also got a couple of iOS/Android apps under my belt. I understand the front/back end crossover is sought after, but perhaps that's not really the case? Perhaps it's the mention of PHP?

To head off some possible responses: I am trying to expand my skillset as I do know a lot of people here frown upon PHP to put it mildly, for example trying to pick up on Python and Angular, but I can't spare too much time when the rent is 2 weeks late and Christmas is approaching fast - and I seriously doubt anyone would pay me to learn as I go!

So I am being unrealistic? Do I need to lower my expectations - and if so, how low would I go?

It is entirely possible to earn that much (and more) in London, outside of London - assuming you're not in a complete backwater that much should be possible.

I'd say rather than worrying about what technology you know, spend a bit of time focusing on the business side - how you find and attract clients, how you negotiate, what business areas you target etc. It is likely that the clients you are dealing with have unrealistic expectations of what engineering costs.

Rates for PHP start around £250 per day up to around £350 per day. Good Javascript developers (and I mean good - client and server side with decent framework backgrounds) can earn upwards of £450 per day.

However your best bet is to look here http://www.jobstats.co.uk/ and do some searches.

From a return on investment point of view you are probably better focusing on Java and .Net, however if you are creative then focus more on CSS jobs.

The most important thing is to stick with technologies that are popular and to ALWAYS be learning.

Good luck!

Where do those javascript developers work to get that type of money?

Yeah, of course you can do it and no you don't need to lower your expectations - £1000 is easily doable for nearly any city/conurbation. If you need money now (which your post implies), get yourself onto Jobserve and start chasing all those PHP/JS contracts. Some devs hate recruitment agencies, but they can be a contractors best friend for cash flow; hard to do less than £250 per day in the UK, great for getting cash.

Also, while its hard to swallow long term esp. if you have a family, there is always the option of relocating for a couple of months.

I'm not a freelancer, but I have hired freelancers. You didn't say where you are based, but in London a normal day rate is anywhere between £350 - £550.

If you're a good PHP dev then don't talk that down—your client doesn't care what's cool at the moment. They're more interested in getting something that works and delivered on time.

If I wanted to be a freelancer that earned £1000 per week, I'd start by just telling people my day rate is £200 per day. Then use whatever personal connections, friends of friends, to find work and use that to build a early network of clients. The freelancers I've hired in the past are generally through personal recommendations so think about people who come into contact with your target market and approach them to see if they're willing to put a good word in for you.

If you're looking to be trained then you're likely to have more fun getting a permanent job where they're willing to invest money to train you.

Obviously, this is unlikely to happen over night so may not be the solution to your current problem.

Good luck.

Currently doing GBP450/day full stack (node and frontend JS) for A Well Known Tech Company on a short term contract for a major project.

I previously worked for the other Well Known Tech Company, and from what I can tell all these places, even if they're filled with Genius Programmers, use contract agencies to make marketing apps.

$1,600 USD is very realistic.

I work full time, but also spend ~12 hours a week on freelancing, and am making ~$2,000 every 2 weeks from this.

If I went full-time I could make more, I think, and so could you.

I focus almost exclusively on PHP, but also offer Vagrant/Puppet services that go well together with my PHP projects.

So if you're working 12 hours a week as a freelancer, how do you propose this to your customer? "I can do the work over the course of a week, whilst doing 3 hours a day", or something?

Exactly. I make it extremely clear that my time is limited, and that my available time is during off-business hours during the weekdays, and on Sat/Sun.

Awesome, glad I'm not going about this the wrong way.

I'm doing a lot of work at the moment; overtime and freelancing. Juggling time is always hard.

How do you find your clients? Are you using services like Elance or Odesk?

Thanks for the responses - looks like it may be possible after all :)

I had dealt with a few recruiters for contract jobs before but they all seemed to offer "perfect" positions which then vanished to be replaced with less enticing ones. I had sort of assumed they were making stuff up to get me on a list, but it might be worth investigating again. This time I'll see what research I can do to make sure they are half decent recruiters!

Appreciate the comments and hopefully I can do something with this advice.

I am guessing here but you are probably suffering from product-market misfit here. Most probably your clients' needs could be served with a Wordpress install, a few plug ins and a shiny theme on top. They would happily pay £300 for that and you can still make a decentish profit.

You are providing a service at a tick higher level than that, which they don't really need. I guess you see where I am going with this; you need to find clients that actually need your skills.

Yeah, this is perfectly reasonable and chances are you can make more than this. If you're struggling with this amount, you either need to tell a better story that justifies your value or find better prospective clients. Remember, people aren't hiring a coder, they're hiring someone that can make their business better/make them money/put out a fire/something else that's valuable to them emotionally.

Also, is there a reason you don't move to London if your earning potential would increase there?

Btw, as an aside: PythonDeveloper if you see this, you're hellbanned.

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