Freelancers, how much do you charge? 🤔
Hey Indiehackers,
I’m making a list of freelancing services & their hourly charges so that it will help those who are new to freelancing.
What freelancing service do you offer? and how much do you charge per hour?
Let me know in the comments 👇
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It's not strictly freelance, but I'm charging £4,999 per month for Software Development as Service.
It is super interesting that you sell Software Development as a Service. I was wondering how you make sure that customers are not overloading you with requests, so you can service other customers too?
How do you charge clients? Do you offer them multiple payment options?
I have a hard limit on the number of customers I take on during this phase where I'm working as a solo. Maybe that will change in the future, but I quite like the idea of running it as a solo business forever.
For me, its not about growing it as much as possible, just having a sustainable list of ideal clients to continue to work with.
Interesting! How many subscriptions are you servicing per-month?
I have two subscribers at the moment. I'm planning to keep it going as a solo business for now, with a maximum of 3-5 clients, depending on the context.
Hi Mark, how are you finding clients for your service offering?
Mostly existing contacts and word of mouth so far.
That's amazing Mark! I do like this idea! How do you find this compares to contracting? I often find freelance work spirals, and a simple day rate would be better; however, in this case you seem to have the best of both worlds!
I enjoy contracting but really wanted to fetch myself from earning based on time spent, and try to move to a model where the value output was all that mattered.
So, if you don't produce enough value a customer will cancel the subscription. If you do, no matter how many hours, they will continue it.
It's early day but it's going ok.
I like working in a async way, without lots of meetings and calls and I try to make that clear up front, otherwise they are huge time sinks.
Out of curiosity, what sort of channels did you use to find clients like this?
So far I'm working with companies I've worked with in the past. Ones that I know are open to this kind of model and appreciate the flexibility.
I have a couple of customers thinking about signing up now who have discovered the service via social channels.
Thanks for the insights!
I feel we always somewhat rationalise our output based on time; however, it's great to think you get to avoid meetings and being present for the sake of it!
For me, async and outcome focused is key - I hate turning up at set times - just judge me on output!
Best of luck with it all :)
Nice, looks like Cinch is a Java shop
Mostly specializing in Clojure and Kotlin, but we are not sentimental about the stack.
Great! Clojure is a fascinating programming language. I really enjoy listening to Rich Hickey's talks
SaaS email support service
$400 - $1,500/m
What email services do you provide?
and how many hours do you work?
$160-185/hour fullstack contract work at early stage startups. 20-25hrs/week. One client at a time. I find companies through my network
Great! Which tech?
I do custom, enterprise, software, engineering. By enterprise, I mean most (98%) of my clients (banking, insurance and telecom) are referred by people in my network. The person referring get between 3%-5% commission on the overall value of the project. Here in Canada, it is pretty standard practice.
My current fees fluctuate between $120 - $150 per hour. It depends on the context. I have been known to reduce my fees in exchange for equity for startups. Which is pretty standard as well. It vary from start-up to start-up. In this case, the client gets full R&D + advisory (as I have angel invested and did a couple start-ups of my own) service.
Sometimes, I also do warm intros for founders in my network. That is free and it does require me knowing the founder /team and the market well enough, for 1 - to assess potential reputation risks to myself and 2 - to intro them to the right person(s).
If you are startup a tech company company (no crypto, no ai, unless you can explain with some level of technical details the nature of the problem you are solving). Hit me up transmeta01[at]gmail{.}com
Interesting! I was trying to learn more and your site is down.
Google shut down my GCP account, where I was hosting my site. I never bother to go through the process of reactivating it again. Since, as I mentioned, most of my business comes from referrals, I didn't have the urge to reactivate it. I have built a new site, mainly for SEO purposes, for my upcoming projects. I could finish, writing content, and publish it or pay someone to do it. But for the time being, that is not my biggest priority.
That being said, if you have any question/comments/suggestions, feel free to reach out to me [in/transmeta01] or by email.
$60-$70 for software dev. Mainly react or react native!
How do you generally get paid? I'm trying to figure out the pain points in the payment process for freelancers. Do you offer multiple payment methods?
I usually offer my range (say $50-$70) in the beginning of the conversation, and then once I learn about the project and the needs more (in terms of timing, expectations, etc.) we start the negotiations. Usually it falls somewhere in the middle :)
@mgfahim93 DM me on twitter(https://twitter.com/arbaazio).
Just started doing the Instagram for a business for 12 € / post. It's a good start to build my portfolio. Sometimes I do some design work for companies which I charge 35 € / hour. But am still very new to the freelance business.
I'm a Freelance WP Expert and QA Tester.
I charge $25/hour for WordPress work and $20 to $50 for QA works.
I hope that helps.
Helps
I'm a full time video editor and offer video services to businesses and agencies. I mainly do project rates or retainers ($1500 - $3000) but my current hourly rate would be $50.
iOS Development (7 years of experience), $45/hr
Helping businesses with marketing, $35/hr
I run a SaaS development. I can take care of full ownership of the product that includes following
I give custom quotation based on the requirements.
woah!! interesting. What core technologies do you use?
I built a flexible multi-tenant business application platform called PrestoFox using below mentioned technology stack. I have built 5+ SaaS Products using it.
I use Symfony (PHP) for backend and make use of GraphQL API. For storage I use MySql and Redis DB. An for Frontend I make use of Quasar Framework ( Vue JS).
One can build PWA, Web App, iOS app, Android app, desktop app, browser plugin using single code base.
To know more about the capabilities here : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K7AnRgHtX20hRaQh0-27fBxYRm2RPDeY/view?usp=sharing
€100 to €140 per hour for ML and software engineering. Depends on the client and duration of contract.
How can I learn more about it?
I used to run a one-man content agency with a monthly subscription of $1000, but it was local (EMEA).
At what point did you opt for a monthly subscription? Was it right from the beginning?
After several months, when figured out what I can and cannot include in my subscription. It wasn't solid enough by that time though ) I would say a year of tinkering before turning on a subscription would be better.
I run a design studio and our rates is $150/hour for custom services or $5000/month for design subscriptions.
Subscription services seem to trend.
As someone new to design freelancing, what do you suggest?
It depends on the level of your experience. If you're a novice, then I would recommend gaining experience at a low hourly rate, so that you can stay competitive. People will be willing to pay for subscriptions, once they trust you or have confidence in your experience, that you can deliver what they're looking for.
That is because subscriptions are paid upfront, so they need to feel secure before doing that. Hourly projects are paid after you complete the word, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, and a lot of clients will feel more comfortable doing that. A lot of it is about them feeling that they're getting their money's worth, whichever scenario it is.
Makes sense.
Strong Portfolio then Subscription
Can you share something about your client acquisition strategy ?
I built up a strong portfolio and ranking on Upwork over the years and most of my client leads come from there. I'm currently working on lead generation via LinkedIn but it will take some time. So, nothing genius as of now, but Upwork is one way of doing it.
I learn the market and then come up with the price a little bit lower or just av market price.
Do you use any tools to do that? or Just manual research?
Which websites do you refer to?
For SaaS Marketing?
Yes, for the services you offer.