How Much Money I Make As A Freelancer
If however you already have your freelance business up and running maybe you’re struggling to get clients. I highly recommend checking this link. I do offer courses that help people get clients.
So how many times have you built such and such Web site for a client? The reason why that is so important is that if you’re freelancing and you’re offering these services that you build Web sites people need to know that you either done it before and they want to see it so they can decide whether or not they want to work with you and also experience is huge. I’ve talked with people that well I have the skill set to be a senior level. But do you have the experience?
Experience is really what matters when it comes to how much you charge and how much I charge. So just so you guys know I have over six years of experience which isn’t a crazy ton. And that goes for all the things that I’ve shared with you. Six years is not a ton but it is more than six months. So I do charge a higher price as a freelancer. I will charge anywhere from 50 to 75 to 100 dollars an hour depending on what it is that I do. The reason why I charge that much is that I take into consideration obviously the experience insurance that I have to pay and all the other things that get deducted as being self-employed like taxes social security all that sort of stuff. Those are things that as a freelancer or as a business owner you need to consider when you are doing your own pricing.
So you guys know that I charge anywhere from 50 to either 100 dollars. I have charged more than that but that’s really really dependent on a project and who is hiring me. OK. So when I first started off as a freelancer I think my very first client I built a Web site and they paid me two hundred dollars for it. And you’re like Holy Okay well that’s super cheap or maybe you’re like oh my gosh that’s a lot of money. First off I was in college when I charge that much. I think I was like 12 bucks an hour. But I also knew that it was a learning experience for myself. So I was learning as I was going so I was essentially being paid to learn. Fast forward you know several years to now. I would charge anywhere from 50 to 75 dollars an hour for a Web site. So I have made you know a few thousand dollars on Web sites to tens of thousands of dollars in Web sites. Why. Because it depends on what that client wants.
So if a client is wanting an e-commerce site Shopify site or a WordPress site where I know I can just buy a template Yes I said to buy a template and alter it. So they can get their website way faster and it already is going to have the functionality that you know it needs for their needs. So if you are somebody that’s like no I roll my own I do custom everything that’s good for you. Three things when it comes to working with clients and you know working with Web sites you can either deliver something that’s good that’s cheap or you can deliver it fast and you usually pick two of those things when working with a client or you have them pick two of those things are either going to be fast and good meaning you can deliver something very very fast and can take all your time and it’s going to have everything they want it’s going to be more expensive or you can do fast and cheap meaning it’s probably going to be like MBP it’s not going to have everything that they want but they’re going to get it in fast you know maybe a week’s worth of time and you’re going to do it for a relatively low cost so that hopefully that makes sense to you when you guys are going through pricing but that’s what I look for and that’s what I explain to all the clients that I work but when it comes to marketing and social media I have I have worked with clients will they will pay me upwards of fifteen hundred a day.
So yes that’s one thousand five hundred dollars a day and that’s for in-person event social media management. I used to work in events before I got into programming I used to run a large mobile conference and I used to do all the social media marketing everything for it. So I have experience when it comes to events social media management and so oftentimes a lot of last years actually people would bring me out to the events to help them run their social media and make sure that they you know have influencers there they have social laws there has a hashtag. People are being monitored you set up bots to monitor all that sort of stuff. So I will charge anywhere from you know fifteen hundred two thousand dollars a day to be onsite doing hands-on social media management for events.
The other aspect of doing social media is just the normal social media of managing somebody’s social codes where you can manage you know one Instagram or you can manage 12 accounts. It really depends on who the client is and what the results they are trying to get and what type of business it is. I have managed anywhere from three profiles up to 10 profiles for one client at a time and by profiles that you know the linked in the Facebook, the YouTube the in-store all those different accounts those are separate accounts that all need to be monitored and I can charge anywhere from 50 to 75 dollars an hour doing that. Or it would be a retainer or cost and my retainers for that type of management have ranged from fifteen hundred dollars up to nine grand a month. Holy crap nine grand a month. What. That sounds insane from managing social media. It may sound say insane to you but if you are dealing with a very very public client meaning they’re a billion-dollar behemoth of a client what you do for them is more impactful than what you’re doing for a mom and pop shop.
Me More people are seeing that content which means you need to have very very very secure safeguards set up while you were doing that social media management and you need to be aware of what’s happening at all times. So oftentimes if you’re dealing with a client like that you are probably going to have more than one person helping you manage because somebody can’t be up 24/7 making sure everything is running properly and people aren’t going off on Twitter about something that your company did. So you need somebody basically around the clock monitoring those things. So yes I have managed social accounts anywhere from fifteen hundred a month up to nine grand a month. And that’s because of the size of the company was really the main difference and also the needs of that company.
So next marketing and so for marketing what I often do for companies is I will be test websites meaning if you are a company that you want more purchases to happen for your product I will help a B test that and let you know OK we need to do this. We need to do this that’s you know very simple things if you come from a go web development background you know about you know heat maps site planning and all those different things that you can set up on a Web site initially but if they had somebody build a site that maybe isn’t aware of that functionality then they would bring somebody like me on to implement you know heat maps A B testing to make sure that you know you deliver one website to one group of people and Next Web site to it. Other groups of people and you see which one generates more results. So I do that type of marketing and then I also do you know e-commerce which is you know e-mailers CEO pay and I do a lot of Google paid and Facebook paid ads for companies and then same thing the price on that varies either from like fifteen hundred to three grand a month nothing more than that because oftentimes I don’t have enough time in the day to allocate a full 40 hours to one specific client but if you are somebody who has experience in you know marketing or you’ve managed yourself for a while like I have you know of the things that you can set up to make sure that you are as efficient and as effective as possible for your client.
I hope that is clear on how much I charge and how much I make as a freelancer. So per month, I can make it anywhere. It’s usually between three I’ve made anywhere between 3 and 12 grand a month freelancing and that’s very dependent on the type of clients I have at the time. I can go. I did you know last year I took a break from freelancing. I finished out one contract and I took a break and I built my freelance school which there is a link in the description free blog. I took a break for a few months to build out that school and so I had had a client that I was making six grand a month from and I did that. You know I finished out that contract so I had you know 18 grand in the bank that I knew I could live off of for the next several months before I needed to get my client.
So when you are doing your pricing you need to be aware of how much it takes for you to live. What are all the things that are coming out? What is what tax bracket are you. What’s the percentage. I always hold at least 30 percent in my business savings every year. What type of insurance do you need? Do you need? I know dental health all those things you need to calculate that sort of pricing and then that’s where you can figure out like what’s the bare minimum hourly rate that you would need to make for that especially if you are just starting off so I hope that clarifies a little bit about pricing how much I price and how much I make as a freelancer. Like I said it varies every single well it can vary every single month a Palin type of contract you have. But for me, my income has been the same for a while but that doesn’t mean that clients don’t come to me and say Hey Brandy you know we need to cut back your hours. We need to only put you at this of this amount a month. Is it still doable?
That just happened to me. I literally had two clients at the start of this year say hey we need to scale back on your hours. Totally fine. And so now I’m making around a little over three grand a month in freelance work. So it varies because last year I was making twelve grand a month for the last half of the year. So it really really really really really depends on the type of clients you have and the type of work that you were doing. So if you guys do have any questions when it comes to pricing and the types of contracts may be that you need to look at let me know in the comments I’ll be sure to answer them. And yeah I hope that gave you like a little bit of clarity around what I make as a freelancer. I’m here to be as transparent as I can be about the type of stuff that I do and the amount of money I make as a freelancer. So you yourself can have an idea of what type of future you’re trying to paint and the level of income you can get.
Happy coding building and creating my friends!
