
Ask HN: How do you survive as a freelance web developer? - ge96
I suppose it would help if you had a buffer&#x2F;savings. At best I&#x27;d have a month or two, and my needs to survive isn&#x27;t much in fact at the moment being employed I would be lucky to make 20K a year.<p>I freelance but I&#x27;m afraid of charging by the hour thinking that I am not good enough to be worth their money.<p>I also realize that freelancing is ultimately not the answer to bring financially independent. You need to build automated services or products for passive income.<p>I hate my job&#x2F;life. In 3 weeks I&#x27;ll be unemployed again. I&#x27;ve been trying to get a web dev position but no luck. I should add that I am not &quot;current&#x2F;up to date&quot; with the various technologies such as Angular&#x2F;Node&#x2F;Gulp&#x2F;Git&#x2F;Laravel-Symfony, etc...<p>I know the scratch code and learn to develop on LAMP. I realize the time and collaborative benefits of frameworks&#x2F;libraries.<p>I don&#x27;t know I need to whip myself more and work harder, be a self-starter as they say. It&#x27;s the fear. Will I make it? What if...
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Daviey
Depends what part of the market you want to target, but if you don't have
strong web development skills... i might suggest the lower end.

Honestly, even turning around simplistic wordpress sites... without any js/css
work, you should be able to bring in >$20K USD (assume you are talking in
USD)..

If you really go after the lower end for worst case (but most of these you
should at least double).

    
    
      - 1 site per week for $500, based on 48 weeks per year $24,000 (might be a lofty goal).
      - Add in hosting / support.. $100 USD per month (exponential growth as you add more clients)
      - minimum $50 charge to make changes outside of basic support.
    

This largely depends on your networking skills and contracts... but it is
doable. The money in this sector of the market isn't about technical
competence, but sales skills.

Be careful over-committing, and be firm with the requirements to stop it
ballooning.. and be ready to add the charge as needed.

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dylanhassinger
very hard to make it work. need a way to automate new leads - a
blog/newsletter/vlog can all help here. but must also have the heads down time
to do the code. and the management skills to maintain taxes (i am still paying
off a tax bill from years ago).

i recommend putting all efforts into finding a jr web dev role (try both local
and remote) until you can save up enough money to freelance with peace of
mind.

either way, blog blog blog. its your safety net. lots of good advice on this
site: [http://robcubbon.com/habit-hamster-wheel/](http://robcubbon.com/habit-
hamster-wheel/)

