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  • $109959 in one year
    • Expenses:
      • Taxes: $15807
      • Travel: $13,825 - Conferences and client travel (reimbursed)
      • Contractors: $9,880
      • Operations: $7,683 - Office rent $600/mo., test hardware/device, hosting, version control, bug tracking
    • Gross Profit: $71912

Nonbillable tasks:

  • emails, calls, quotes, estimates, invoices, software/IT issues, open-source development, product development, conferences, travel

Delay between billable hours and money in the bank - 3-4 months.

Hourly rates:

  • $150 / hr
  • $120 / hr
  • $100 / hr
      Full Time Salary Freelance Salary
    Jr Developer $75K / yr $85K
    Developer $90K / yr $140K
    Sr. Developer $110K / yr $180K
    Architect $150K / yr $220K

August 2010 - Top full-time Flash engineers can now command more than $150,000 a year in salary, says Stuart Liroff, a headhunter at GreeneSearch recruiting firm. That compares with $50,000 to $80,000 a year three years ago, several entrepreneurs say.

  • The supply of such engineers is low, few have artistic and computer science background. Many Flash engineers have artistic element experience, but frew are trained in power and battery management
  • It can take 2-3 months to fill a Flash engineer position, compared to one month for other positions.
  • It takes a java programmer about 6 months to pickup Flash.
  • Depends your skill set, in California a decent Flash developer will probably look at $50 to $75 per hour on a 1099 contract, a very good developer can hit $80 to $100 per hour, in the financial industry in NYC (which has very specific requirement and expectation in term of programming skills from a computer science standpoint) you can hit $100 to $130 per hour.

Day rate is for 10 hours

  • Average day rates can range from $600 - $1000 a day

Advice on fixed rate contracts:

  • Finally I just want to touch on fixed bid projects quickly. This is for people who like to bet on zero in roulette. Some clients will ask for a fixed bid on a project and if you accept you are on the line for delivering on time in the hours you allotted for the project. I have walked away from fixed bid projects making more than my normal hourly and have seen other people get sucked into a never ending project because they did not protect themselves correctly in the contract. The key is to actually work as fast as you can and have a clear idea of what it will take to get the job done. I only take on fixed bid projects when I know I have roughly 60-80% of the code already written for the project. I have gotten jobs like this more times then you would expect, it also helps that I have an extensive library of code I’ve built over the years. As for the other 40%-20% of work, I do it as quickly as possible in hopes of trying to double or triple my normal hourly rate. Taking on projects like this and finishing them in a fraction of the time will really help increase your annual income and can even help push a developer over the $200k a year figure. Also this only works well when you can work remote because if you are expected to work on site and finish early, you can’t work on other side projects to make that extra money. source

Average project: 165 hours, costing $21,000

  • Introudctions through third party recommendations
  • Open source projects, and conferences - dont find many clients, they mainly result introductions to other developers

Costs:

  • NYC $4K per month
    • $15 a day for dinner basically gets you “cheap Chinese” or dinner from a pizzeria. Over the long term, you probably don’t want to eat like that every night. The reality is that a good dinner will probably start around $25
    • One bedroom apartment $500K /mo.
    • 350 sq ft is $1200/mo. in 2010
    • Garage rental is $200-$400 a month - street parking can take an hour

Freelance Rules (source)

  • 1. Always make sure your lawyer looks over any contract you sign with a client.
  • 2. Make sure changes in scope and additional work are covered in your contract.
  • 3. Use the one third payment rule: ? up front, ? in the middle and ? at the end.
  • 4. Don’t deliver any critical source code or files unless you have final payment or know you will get it within 15 to 30 days. Payment due dates should be explicitly stated in your contract.
  • 5. Do not fight with difficult clients, have your lawyer or business manager handle it. You don’t ever want to be the bad guy.
  • 6. Use your head, never take on a job if you have a bad feeling about it. Also, do research from your network on what a place is like to work for before you take the job.

Sources:

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