Page 1 of 1

The Definition of Exceptional

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 7:07 pm
by Nathaniel
In the What's Your Salary thread, onion2k posted something which I thought was interesting:
onion2k wrote:£50k is possible, but only if you're exceptional.
I'm 16, and I'm sure Web Development will be my career. Freelancing is what I believe I would love. All of you seem to think that $80 an hour is reasonable, and when I assume half of my 40 hour weeks would be billable (that is, not spent negotiating contracts or posting bids on freelance sites or calling businesses with proposals), I come up with a gross of $83,000 a year (Slightly under £50k). That would be for 40 hour work weeks.

If I understand what onion2k means, I will have to be "exceptional" to earn such a salary. I don't have a lot of experience with freelancing yet, since schoolwork eats up too much of my time, but many of you seem to contact local businesses and have work to turn down.

Am I in the clouds to want 20 hours of billable work every week at $80/hour?

What defines a web developer worth that salary?

- Nathaniel

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 7:26 pm
by feyd
the typical developer will likely not be able to bill $80/hr unless they do have a lot of skill. To charge that much or more, a person needs to have very fast response times and/or provide many more services than just programming. A more practical level (these days) will reach around $20-25/hr or $40K-$50K/year.

You should factor in that you will need to set aside 30% of the moneys for taxes alone. I'd suggest saving as much as possible of the remaining funds as well. This is the help ride out gaps in work along with helping to continue to pay for any residuals you may have.

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 12:35 am
by RobertGonzalez
As a private or independent developer you can charge whatever you want per hour. More realistically an independent developer will have better luck charging by the job or project if he/she knows their skill level and ability to meet the clients need. I rarely use an hourly rate in my quotes unless the job is a matter of a few hours.

On a side note, in Northern California in the past few months the PHP ONLY jobs have been showing budgets of between $45K and $75K, although the upper salay ends usually required something way more than just development. This means that the hourly breakdown, before taxes, is about $22.50 to $37.50 per hour. Not bad, but nowhere near what full scale .NET developers are being listed for ($75K to $125K).

Ideally if you can sustain yourself financially with the level of income you have you are better off than a large portion of the country right now. If you can manage to save anything then you are well off. However, I would guess that most developers use their skills to develop applications or a business model that they code themselves to generate income and do not rely solely on their ability to code. I may be wrong here, but it just seems that way to me.

Re: The Definition of Exceptional

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 3:20 am
by onion2k
Nathaniel wrote:What defines a web developer worth that salary?
Experience.

That's all there is to it really. Think about it from the point of view of a customer buying a website .. why would you be willing to pay that much to someone for making you a site when there are much, much cheaper freelancers around? The only reason is that either you'd want the work done fast and well first time around, or that the site is exceptionally complicated. Either way you'll need someone will lots of experience.

The other thing to consider is that when I said £50k is possible I meant that as a salary. If you're freelance you'll have all sorts of things like business travel costs, maybe an office, electricity bills, computer bills, accountants bills, insurance, no paid sick leave, no paid holiday.. all that costs you money. To live a £50k lifestyle when you're freelance you'd probably need to be on about £60k - £65k.

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 4:24 am
by Chris Corbyn
Freelancing can be very stressful if your expect to maintain 40 hrs per week consistently for a full year, there's just too many other freelancers out there taking the work too. Finding work, consitently isn't easy. I gave up on the idea of freelancing and started working for a company since it's just more secure -- nowhere near the £50K mark though :P

I'm thinking about looking for freelance work again for extra cash outside of work though, now that things have started to settle down in my job. *Hint hint*, to anyone who wants to palm off a few tasks lol ;)

Word! :)

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 5:31 pm
by Nathaniel
Thanks for all of the comments. :P
feyd wrote:To charge that much or more, a person needs to have very fast response times and/or provide many more services than just programming.
In other words, one should be able to provide all of the services the client will need for their website, such as the backend, the design itself, graphics work, hosting, and purchasing of the domain name? Are there any services I left out in my list that should be mentioned?
d11wtq wrote:Freelancing can be very stressful if your expect to maintain 40 hrs per week consistently for a full year, there's just too many other freelancers out there taking the work too. Finding work, consitently isn't easy. I gave up on the idea of freelancing and started working for a company since it's just more secure [snip].
I thought that 40 hours per week would be a bit much, but I thought that 20 billable hours would be reasonable. Especially after reading this post by Jcart.

May I ask if you were bidding for work on freelancing sites, sent out proposals to local businesses, or both? I've tried getting work on freelancing sites, and I'd agree with you that asking for 20 hours/week at $80/hour of work from those might be stretching it... or plain ridiculous, in some cases.
Everah wrote:As a private or independent developer you can charge whatever you want per hour. More realistically an independent developer will have better luck charging by the job or project if he/she knows their skill level and ability to meet the clients need. I rarely use an hourly rate in my quotes unless the job is a matter of a few hours.
True, but wouldn't you use what you want/need your hourly rate to be to determine the overall cost of the project?
Everah wrote:Not bad, but nowhere near what full scale .NET developers are being listed for ($75K to $125K).

Whoa - time to learn .NET. Dad bought me Visual C# .net, actually, but I am a PHP addict, and haven't looked at it. :)

Thanks again, guys.

- Nathaniel

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 5:55 pm
by timvw
<off-topic>Might want to check out http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx if you don't want to pay for Visual Studio and experiment with C#.</off-topic>

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 5:55 pm
by RobertGonzalez
Nathaniel wrote:True, but wouldn't you use what you want/need your hourly rate to be to determine the overall cost of the project?
Yes, so I review what I want to make per hour, look at the number of hours I think I can do the job in, pad that a little bit and submit the quote. Sometimes it is acceptable, sometimes not. I am a little flexible, but not much. I have my standards and acceptible limits and if they are not to the clients liking I have no problem allowing the client to seek other options.

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 6:27 pm
by John Cartwright
Nathaniel wrote:May I ask if you were bidding for work on freelancing sites
My person experience with these freelance sites is absolutely horrible, especially if you are new to the website and have little or no credibility. From the sites that I have seen they maintain their own style of "ranks and ratings of sites that have been completed through their website", if you will. Therefor people that have been on the site the longest will most likely be chosen over some one brand new. Secondly, the commission on these sites is rediculos and seriously overcharging for a simple service that they are providing. It makes complete sense for the employer to look for developers on the site, not the other way around (just a big rip-off in my opinion.
Nathaniel wrote:sent out proposals to local businesses
My primary way of getting a businesses attention is face to face, with a business card and mission statement clearly explaining what I can do for THAT particular business and why it would be a wise decision. Believe it or not you will get more call backs than you think if you can pull that off professionally. Go in wearing a suit and tie, just like a job interview and act like you know what your doing (although you should already ;))

What I did is I found a street with a long strip of businesses (small shops to law firms -- whatever), and customized my presentation directly towards how I can benefit that particular business. This on it's own shows great initiative, and they (and yourself) will appreciate the fact that you will be able to conduct business face to face. If possible, have a laptop or atleast a portfolio of previous experience, your qualifications, etc. If not, give them a business card with a link to your portfolio.

Nowadays I get all my clients through recomedations, no longer do I find the clients; they come to me ;)
I cannot stress the fact that presentation is key.

Hope that helps

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 6:33 pm
by feyd
Nathaniel wrote:In other words, one should be able to provide all of the services the client will need for their website, such as the backend, the design itself, graphics work, hosting, and purchasing of the domain name? Are there any services I left out in my list that should be mentioned?
The services may need to go beyond simply web work. Corporate identity, logo design, usability testing, developer oversight, systems testing, security work, whitepapers, etc etc...