

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

The short of it: I want to earn £1000&#x2F;week (~$1600) as a freelancer.<p>I&#x27;m in the UK (not London) and I&#x27;ve found that the majority of prospective clients consider this too high. I&#x27;ve been mostly a lurker on HN for a few years now so it&#x27;s entirely possible I&#x27;m being unrealistic and spent too much time reading about SV&#x2F;US rates ($100&#x2F;hr and so on).<p>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&#x27;ve also got a couple of iOS&#x2F;Android apps under my belt. I understand the front&#x2F;back end crossover is sought after, but perhaps that&#x27;s not really the case? Perhaps it&#x27;s the mention of PHP?<p>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&#x27;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!<p>So I am being unrealistic? Do I need to lower my expectations - and if so, how low would I go?
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NickPollard
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.

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awjr
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/](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!

~~~
js7
Where do those javascript developers work to get that type of money?

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majc2
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.

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beech
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.

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nailer
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.

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jtreminio
$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.

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jbrooksuk
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?

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jtreminio
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.

~~~
jbrooksuk
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.

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devbert
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.

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hcho
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.

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kintamanimatt
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.

