
Ask HN: is it possible to earn a living US wage at oDesk? - oneiroscopist
I wonder - is it possible to earn a living wage by freelancing at sites like oDesk or eLance? And I mean US living wage, not Eastern European living wage, for example.
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scottyallen
I put myself through college about 6 years ago contracting. I found most of my
clients through similar sites (Rentacoder and scriptlance). I was making about
$30k a year working part time during the school year, and mostly full time in
the summers. Not a spectacular wage when you compare it to full time Silicon
Valley wages, but I'd definitely call it a "living wage" for the US.

The key to being successful on these sites is to view them as a way to meet
and get to know longterm clients. It's much easier to charge higher rates once
someone has gotten to know you and the quality of your work. I often did one
or two projects through the site on a fixed rate while we got to know each
other, and then would work directly with them on an hourly basis after that.

~~~
csomar
If I'm not being mistaken, you are the one who answered my question two years
ago on StackOverFlow ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/763883/options-for-
a-deve...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/763883/options-for-a-developer))

It was a long road. I have had lot of non-related issues and difficulties but
I almost got there. I made $10K doing it last year and I may make 3 or 4 times
that number this year.

You are one of the persons who changed my life, although it was a simple
response. Thank you.

~~~
GFischer
Thanks for linking and for sharing as well :) .

I'm in Uruguay, we have a decent developer culture here, but I want to go the
freelance route as well (I'm sick of my current job - it's safe and pays a
reasonable local wage but is Dilbert-esque).

My programming skills are similar to what you had at the beginning. Did you
blog about what you went through?

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csomar
No. I'm not sure if I'm the best person to talk about it. But if I can give
you an advice, it's: Go and do it. I didn't know that my skills at that time
weren't high enough, so I went and I did it. I learned everything
(programming, marketing, writing, handling clients, running a business...) in
the road. And yes, I was alone. There are no developer/freelance culture in my
small city.

~~~
GFischer
Thanks :) . I will do it (and hopefully blog about it if I'm not too tired !).

My goal is to quit my job on April (I get a small bonus at the end of March
which, coupled with some little savings, will help me through the first few
months), but to start my first freelance job in January to test the waters.

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scottyallen
I think starting freelancing before you quit is very wise. One of the things
about switching from full-time employment to freelancing is that it often
takes much longer to get paid, and cash flow is much less steady. It also
takes a while to build up enough of a pipeline of work that you stay busy all
the time. This all boils down to it being nice to have a paycheck while you're
ramping up.

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jasonkester
Here's a link to the responses I gave last couple times this came up:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619439>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1195524>

Short answer: Yes. Just be sure to differentiate on quality rather than price.
Your fellow oDeskers are racing to the bottom on price. Let them. Casually
walk to the top on quality and you'll find yourself all alone with a nice
stack of work from good clients.

~~~
oneiroscopist
Thanks, good points

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goodweeds
Over the past 7 years using the different sites I've turned down 20 projects
that I've been asked to bid on, and have only taken one when I was really in
dire straits. You could probably make more on odesk than at mcdonalds, but
you'll make 5-8x as much by building up a network on linkedin, and by posting
your resume to craigslist once per week. I set my contracting rate on a
sliding scale from $250/hour down to $125/hour based on commitment, project,
and how much I like the guy I'm talking with. I manage to bill out 750-1250
hours per year depending on how much I care to work versus how much I desire
to travel. I couldn't fathom managing to bill out at more than $35/hour on
oDesk, and even then I would be considered expensive.

oDesk/elance/etc is where cheapskates who don't know what they want or how to
ask for it go to get what they pay for from guys in India and Romania who
don't know how to accomplish the work they're being paid to do.

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rdouble
What do you actually do, for $250 an hour?

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goodweeds
Primarily devops consulting. $250/hour is what I'll charge for emergency work
from unknown entities, poorly managed entities, or for piece work from
customers who aren't likely to be a significant source of project work. For
small projects I don't bill hourly, but rather I'll decide that a piece of
work is about 4 hours of my time, and that I'm uninterested in doing it for
less than $1k.

~~~
rdouble
Thanks.

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tptacek
If you're smart enough to ask this question, why are you thinking of ways to
shoehorn a business into oDesk? It's a seller's market for dev talent in 2011
and probably for all of 2012. The ability to solve business problems using
software development skills is not a commodity. It isn't sold by bidding
prices down. No, the opposite of that.

This is one of those places where a reasonable amount of extra effort yields a
disproportionate amount of benefit. You don't make linearly more money
positioning yourself as a real consultancy; you make much more money.

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chc
I don't think anybody's actually saying, "I'm looking for a place where I can
sell my services at a lower price."

Here's what happens: No matter how you position yourself, billing $500 an hour
to the zero prospective customers you (the general "you") have right now is
still not very profitable. Most developers have about as much idea of how to
find customers as they do about how to perform open-heart surgery. Connecting
developers and clients is the one area where oDesk shines — and since it's the
same area where engineers are weak, many can't help but consider it.

~~~
tptacek
For a freelancer, not being able to find customers is a scarlet-fever-grade
problem, and oDesk is an aspirin-grade solution.

I'm not going to berate anyone for using oDesk, especially if they've found an
oDesk groove that works for them. But I'd strongly encourage freelancers ---
especially prospective freelancers --- to put lots and _lots_ of effort into
figuring out how they're going to do customer acquisition _outside of sites
like oDesk_.

Whatever you may think about how convenient oDesk is, you are at the nadir of
your professional competitive positioning on sites like that, and will
probably (and avoidably) get your worst possible bill rate as a result.

I'd generally like HN'ers to be better at freelancing (it's the best way to
start a new company, and it's the direction the industry is moving long-term),
and so I'm prickly about things like oDesk which make it harder, not easier,
to be a going freelance concern.

~~~
mattm
This is something I struggle with. Do you have any suggestions for how to do
customer acquisition remotely?

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ambertch
Depends where. You probably can't live in Manhattan working as an oDesker, but
you could easily make enough to make a good living if you're in the midwest.

Your strategy though would be to build up a resume with oDesk. You're probably
going to hit a limit though - I mean I've worked with $20/hr Eastern European
developers that would be $100k developers in the Bay Area/NYC so it will come
down to: what is your reputation and how much can you command.

After you build up a portfolio, you're going to have to use it as a spring
board to get a fulltime job or fulltime onsite contracting for like $40/hour,
etc. at a company.

From there you can basically build a "normal" software career and get the
industry contacts, start networking as a programmer and if you decide can go
back to remote contracting for a better-than-living-wage.

This isn't the path I took, but I know a lot of developers who have took this
path, worked their way up the ladder throughout the 90's/2000's around the US,
then 'retired' to a good life with their family in say Kansas/Nebraska (insert
midwestern state) doing contracting work and getting to enjoy life the way
they want (life Silicon Valley/NYC isn't for everyone).

REMEMBER, software as a career is going to be mostly networking and people
skills in the long run - good luck!

~~~
oneiroscopist
thanks!

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patio11
I know a gentleman who swears by oDesk, mostly as a billing/mediation platform
for custom Twilio apps. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but he
charges enough to make it viable.

~~~
oneiroscopist
Why won't you deal with it? Bad experience? On the customer or developer side?

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patio11
Short version: it adds nothing I need, positioning myself against the
competition there would be certifiably insane, and the type of clients I most
successfully work with would avoid me like the plague if I proposed working
through oDesk.

~~~
oneiroscopist
Thanks, Patio. I gather you were on the workforce side, correct?

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venturebros
I make around $1k a month just off of Elance. The key to success in
freelancing is finding a niche.

The downside to freelancing is once you're in that niche it's hard to crawl
out of it. I have been doing solely WordPress stuff on sites like Elance,etc.
for the past 9months I have reached a point of boredom yet I can't get
anything outside of that because everything in my portfolio is WordPress. So
now I am screwed.

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gwhy
Not to throw the thread off track, but have some q's for you. Would you mind
dropping me a mail? Your e-mail isn't listed. gy92663 at gmail. Thanks!

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endtime
"US living wage" isn't very useful. A living wage in Manhattan is an integer
multiple of a living wage in Montana.

~~~
oneiroscopist
What term would you suggest?

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endtime
I'd suggest being more specific than "US". Either name a part of the country,
or, better yet, just name an income.

~~~
oneiroscopist
Fair enough. I'd say 80K for a 50 hour week (since freelancers are expected to
buy their own health insurance, do not get any paid time off, so 80K is a very
modest wage for a developer in those circumstances)

I realize a college student/single guy does not need all that much, but for a
29+, with a family, I think that's the minimum (again, with all the self-
employment taxes, insurance etc).

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bks
I have a ruby on rails outsourcer that gets paid $5000 USD per month for 60
hours of work. I referencing my earlier post - I think specializations and
showing competence in your chosen language / API / platform or type of work
you do is key.

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cobrabyte
I've used oDesk to hire several contractors. Currently, I have a Chinese C++
developer working for me who is bringing in close to $5k per month from my
project alone.

I know I could get by on $60k per year but it really depends on what
constitutes a 'living wage.' :)

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zavulon
It's definitely very possible. There are US-based contractors who successfully
charge $40-50/hour and get lots of business. The competition is steep though,
I wouldn't recommend this as a way to get business if you're based in US.

