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Shit, that's depressing, I have one main client, and a couple of fill-ins each year, averaging about $30K total, $50K on the high end.

I charge a lump sum per project, never hourly.

So, $30K / (50 weeks per year * 40 hours per week) = $15/hour, wow, that's absurd.

10+ year web developer, front end, back end, I do absolutely everything short of whatever banner/color scheme an artist puts together.

What's worse is that I've been on the JVM for 3 years, developing in Scala, loving it, and making nothing extra in return.

Clients are hosted on my purchased 2X Dell R610 (not cheap) ESXi virtualization servers living in colo, getting crazy performance for $30/month.

Pretty clear I'm horrible at selling myself and/or looking for work. Every client I've had has been via word of mouth (probably something like, hey, this guy is a GREAT deal).

Kudos to those raking it in, impressive to make $150+/hour. Working remotely doing web development I would assume is on the low end of the spectrum re: what one can charge given Wordpress and/or outsourcing options (e.g. India $5/hour).




Lump sum per project is good - and the key for you in the short term would be to take projects very similar to ones you have already done. You have hopefully built up a nice library of projects you can draw on, so if you take a new project that has 90% similar workings to a project you've already done, you could cut that 50 weeks down to 5 weeks - and $30k/5weeks isn't bad at all.


Thanks, I've been telling myself that for awhile -- the problem is I don't look for gigs.

Has been over ten years since I worked a 9 to 5 (where yes, I made more $$), all remote freelance work since I departed the cube.

In the end I enjoy coding and creating to the exclusion of all else -- need to work on the business front, marketing, putting myself out there, etc.




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