How I made $121k in a year as a freelance web dev
Edit: Here's a follow-up post that shows all the emails and strategy I used to close one of these deals:
Hey IH, I've always loved what Baremetrics and lots of other companies are doing with their Open Startups initiative (https://baremetrics.com/open-startups).
I've often found myself wishing the same generosity could be said for freelancers and small creative/development studios and agencies– but sadly, it cannot. I think this 'shroud of secrecy' we hold over our rates, contract values, etc is damaging and, as a whole, is holding us down. This mentality keeps us in the dark and is only cheating us when it comes to having any sort of leverage in rate/contract negotiations with clients.
In the spirit of transparency, I've attached images (slightly redacted, sorry) of three basic quotes that turned into three of my biggest contracts of the year. I hope they give some insight on my rates and how I break down larger projects.
On top of that, I wanted to share a few pointers of how I got to this point in my freelance career:
Niche down
This is a common one here on IH. It applies to freelancing as well. I have found myself mainly in the Real Estate industry when it comes to web work. This is where 90% of my projects come from. Try to choose a niche you're interested in.. and make sure it's an industry that has money to spend. Bonus points: Find a niche where the web solution you create for them can be repeatable from client to client (more on that another day).
Create a portfolio of work you want to work on
Create a portfolio of projects that resemble the type of work you want to work on. Better yet, only show work within the niche you've chosen. Don't have client-work in your niche yet? That's perfectly fine, use spec-work to fill that portfolio up. This may be preferred because chances are, future clients won't care it's spec-work.. and it probably looks better than your previous client work anyway.
Charge enough so that you feel slightly embarrassed when you tell the client your rate/pricing
If you don't feel this slight sense of shame/embarrassment, you're not charging enough.
Thanks for reading!
There's a lot to be gained in our industry if more of us started providing insight into the nitty gritty details of rates/pricing/contracts and the strategies used to close bigger deals and make more money.
I hope you all find this helpful in some way!
Oooh, this makes me think that there should be an 'indie hackers' for 'freelancers'. Does such thing exist?
@rosiesherry The only thing I can think of is Brennan Dunne's Double Your Freelancing community? There could be some opportunity here!
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Why building your own side project when you can just be a happy freelancer :)
Yes! While it's not passive income, freelancing is a great way to uncover opportunities for SaaS businesses! The more projects you deep-dive into, the more problems you'll encounter without solutions.
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It's also refreshing to not have to think about all other aspects of the business. You hand your work over and that's it. You don't have to worry about long-term strategy, hiring, payroll, legal, support, etc.. It's a great way to warm up before starting your own business, which in my experience is more fulfilling in the end.
Yes, but you'll have to keep working. And own nothing at the end of the day.
As a software engineer, I've always been intrigued by the idea of freelancing. I had a few questions if you wouldn't mind answering!
Do you primarily build Wordpress websites? I'm guessing clients need a CMS once their project is done.
When you take on a project, is it usually a one-off project like you make a website for them, it takes a few weeks maybe, and done? Or do you finish a website and are still under contract to make changes, etc?
Hey Ishan!
I've worked with Wordpress, but lean toward using a modern stack these days. I usually use Gridsome or Nuxt.js with Contentful as the CMS. By using either Gridsome or Nuxt I'm able to tap into pre-built components/plugins to speed up my development greatly.
The entire time I'm engaging with a client on a project, I'm mentioning ideas for future widgets, pages or completely separate apps that could be valuable to them in the future. I'll usually even prepare simple quotes (like I provided above) and send it to them just so they have it as a reminder.
If you impress on the first site, it's only a matter of time until they come back for more.
I love this idea! I've tried freelancing in the past, and have always undercharged on projects by about $5000 haha. As a software developer, I was never great when it came to providing project quotes. I enjoyed the building process and was happy just to have a project that I could help with. Then, after 20-40 hours of working on a project, I would get super depressed thinking I was only making $500 for this complex website.
It's really helpful to be able to see some of the other services you include in the quote. One thing that I've always struggled with is determining a good rate to charge for "ongoing maintenance". Any advice there? Most of my projects were Wordpress based, so pretty self-service, but that made it even harder to charge them a monthly fee when some months they required no changes and others they required large changes.
Hey Dan, the disparity in hours required per month will always fluctuate- Wordpress or not. I'd recommend putting a few retainer packages together 1-2 weeks before the project ends and before you go live:
This way they make the call and because of the way the pricing is set up, you're really wanting them to go for #2. Hope that helps!
Yea, this makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
This is really inspiring. Totally agree that the freelance world is unorganized and closed. The whole space can use a bit of openness.
@maheshj Mahesh! Thanks for your feedback. I agree. Here's a tweet I put out today with even more openness! https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-twitter-thread-helping-freelancers-made-it-to-the-top-of-r-webdev-2203cd2f5d
Awesome, but the link doesn't seem to be working. Takes me to the homepage. @csallen.
Sorry, just fixed it!
Thanks for sharing. I looked into this in the past and I could not figure out how to find clients. How did you go about that?
I'm also interested in how you go about finding clients :)
@tr33house, @jeina thanks for reading! I'm planning to go over this in detail over the next several days on my Twitter account. Basically, I'll be building a list of prospects (names, emails, phone numbers) in a particular niche using direct sales techniques to build leads.
I'm not a freelancer, but I think this is brilliant!
Really good tips Steve!
I find it really hard to find a good niche to work in though?
I mean I like anime/crossfit and tech, but where do you even start, these niches have dedicated services and supplier is my thinking?
Would you have any advice for me?
Chris, it may be a bit easier than you think. Pretty much any successful business needs a website these days. The trick is, it can't just be any old website. Find a way to add a component to it that provides a ton of value (which you can charge more for).
Here's an example (that I know a few devs making a killing in right now):
Niche: Brick and Mortar (Ma & Pa) Specialty Running Stores
Their needs: A performant website that gives them a way to show current shoe inventory and allow a customer to purchase and pick up shoes in-store (or curbside during the Coronavirus pandemic).
The solution: Create a simple brochure website with a page that pulls in their shoe inventory via their POS API (most running shops use the same 1-3 POS's).
This is something you could charge 5 figures for ($10k-15k) and is very repeatable from one client to the next (meaning you could reuse code and possibly SaaS it out one day!)
This is great advice!
Please, Can you expand a little bit on the solution, specifically what do you mean in context of POS API's, I have little experience in developing websites for eCommerce solutions. an brief explanation would be helpful.
Interesting will definitely have a think about what niche I want to be in.
Must agree it all makes sense to focus on one niche so you can be the absolute expert in that area.
I'm curious, a couple of quick questions;
Cheers
Great insights
Hi Steve, good post! I definitely don't charge enough to feel slightly embarrassed but next project I will. Grats on the success and thanks for the transparency.
This is great, thank you for sharing!
Wondering, how do you factor it into your quote when there are some uncertainties? (For example, a functionality may longer to develop than you quoted?)
Awesome post. I'm going to build this "Open Freelancing" idea this week! I've always been a big fan of the Open Startup concept and would love to see it in freelancing. I'm thinking basic profile that allow freelancers to share their rates, revenue, tools they use, and maybe answer basic questions from other users. Stay tuned!
I'm curious @stenuto how do you go about getting clients? We're building https://betterlance.co/leads to help freelancers get a steady stream of new leads. How do you fill your pipeline?
Thanks for the insight Steve. If you don’t mind me asking, from the quotes you posted, did the client come back to negotiate on a lower price? How have you handled it when that happens? Do you usually give a slight discount?
Peter, thanks for reading. The bigger quote ($27k) had already been negotiated at that point. You'll see I have it partitioned into app 'features'. On a previous quote I sent them (~$32k), they had asked to remove a couple smaller features I had pitched.
On bigger projects, I recommend quoting a project out feature-by-feature. This way, clients fully understand that by negotiating the price down, they will also need to reduce the scope of work.
Gotcha, so your rates are pretty much set and non-negotiable. And if they can't afford it they have to scale down on feature requests. What I mean is like for example your $27K quote, let's say the client asked can we just make it an even $100/hr rate instead of $125/hr for all the heavy lifting work? I've seen things like that quite often and it is part of the business / negotiating process.
Good advice!
I used to do a lot of freelance work on Upwork, but found the fees were pretty big and the take-home wasn't as good as it should be. It was harder to find 'good' clients (not just higher paying ones)
So I moved on to running my own agency with ~3 other people. Which went pretty well until I got burned by a client over payment terms. I guess I was too trusting.
Now I do 100% of my freelance work with Toptal.com. Rates are good, but more importantly, everyone I work with is fantastic. The clients and colleagues alike.
The onboarding process is quite tough, but totally worth it IMO.
Patrick, that's awesome. Good for you! I've heard great things about TopTal!
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