

Ask HN: Where to get $4-5k per week django gigs? - throwaway011001

I became a very competent Django developer in the last two years because I wanted to earn $10-20k per month to save up enough to bootstrap a web business.<p>I've been working all the time for clients but they all have low budgets and are cheap. How can I break into the $100-$150 per hour Django market?
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hedonist
In your position, I would consider getting past my resistance to fixed time
frames. Yes, people can pile on extra requirements but there are ways to
manage this -- first by strong communication, and then just mentally figuring
in some buffer time (1.5x up to 4x like some people have said) in drawing your
original estimate. Also, you can start iterating in smaller-scale projects and
iterate gradually up from there. You can also ask for intermediate payments
once certain milestones are completed.

Thing is, fixed-budget projects have a lot of psychological advantages for
people making these kinds of decisions, in addition to just providing very
pragmatic ass coverage on their part. And in the end, if the money (and stress
/ time) tradeoffs work out for you, that should be all that matters.

Also, once you're above the $50 an hour range it's better to bill daily or
weekly anyway. There was a nice long thread about this issue a couple of weeks
ago, I believe.

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greatmints
I would recommend selling more value and not just the technology. What value
do you bring to the table for a company to warrant them investing $150/hour
for your work?

There are others with possibly more completed projects, clients, time under
their belt with more developers, if they are a company, what value do you
offer that they cannot provide for less?

Go for bigger clients with bigger budgets, government projects would be a good
place to start. Just make sure you have your business setup correctly along
with a website, list of services and value you are providing using Django and
that you meet a companies prerequisites (Incorporated, LLC, insured, mailing
address, phone number, business bank account, etc.).

Ask yourself what value can you bring to the company that will make them want
to pay you the higher rate. Once you answer that question and can back it up
you will get the rates you are looking for.

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shire
what is your hourly pay at the moment? and how did you become a Django ninja?
want to follow the same route lol

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throwaway011001
Just recently I have put a hard floor at $50 per hour, but its hard to get
people to accept $50 per hour when I can't give an exact time frame for all of
their wants to be met.

They try to push for a flat rate, but I won't anymore because I have been
burned many times by this.

It's not as easy a road as I thought it would be. My flat rate projects always
ended up taking longer because of client demands and so my hourly actual pay
went way down.

I got good with Django by building things and doing a lot of googling whenever
I ran into problems or needed to do something new.

I had a basic computer programming background before this though.

~~~
meric
I've had good experiences with something like "$90 first 30 hours, $60
thereafter". You have incentive to finish work fast because you want to start
new projects to get the higher hourly rate, at the same time, the tail hourly
rate means they won't be changing requirements too much.

When you must estimate a timeframe, make a honest estimate, and multiply it by
4.

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orangethirty
Tell me about your marketing.

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kp27
patio11, read his comments/blog

