How to Freelance to Your First Million, It's been done!

[Niheel]

According to India Times, there are groups of freelancers in India making over a millions dollars by providing development and IT services to their counterparts in the US.

The freelancers results were intriguing enough for us to dig a bit deeper and put together a nice fact sheet for opporutnities in freelancing.

Two freelancers featured in the piece were :

• Synapse Communications, the number two provider on eLance. The provider grossed $2M USD in revenue and it was started by 26 year old with rented PCs and Rs 6 Lakhs( roughly $15,000 USD) of startup money.
• Xicom Solutions, the number one provider on eLance grossed $600,000 USD. It charges a minimum of $20/hr for development work and was also started by a young indian who was tired of his job.

These figures are proving that freelancing is a valid and fruitful business model. It makes sense, why not leverage your talent as a technology expert to help other businesses achieve their goals and get paid well for it. Services like eLance have made it easier for providers(freel ancers) to connect with people who want work done. We did a bit of digging around at the top 50 providers on eLance and found some interesting stats.

Freelancing @ eLance factiods:

• Since 2006 eLance has sent freelancers more than $100M USD worth of business.
• Each one of the top 50 providers has earnings of $65,000 USD or more.
• The top 50 providers earnings average out to $127,443.00 USD.
• India dominates as a source of freelancers. The country has 25 of the top 50 freelancers and accounts for 52% of the revenue generate by the top 50 freelancers.
• India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Romania and United States make the top 5 countries where freelancers work from.
• The minimum rate for the top 5 providers ranges from $20-$25/hr USD.
• Repeat business and word of mouth marketing helps these providers generate even more revenue than listed on eLance.

Freelancing tips to make your first million:

• Do quality work (if you want more work and referrals sent to you)
• Charge by the hour not by the project. Unless you know that you can finish up the project under budget leaving you a margin.
• Keep a margin, but don't get too greedy. Competition is always around the corner.
• Deliver on time or ahead of time.
• Support the product, but make sure to charge for the additional support work.
• Be available to communicate. IM / Email / Phone when necessary.
• Use a project management system and billing system to keep track of things.
• Make sure your clients leave feeling happy with the results. Their success is your success.
• Expand, grow and delegate. You won't be able to handle all the projects. Built a team, hire people and pay them well.
• Use freelance sites a way to connect to prospective clients. Consider taking lower priced projects as away to get in with a client.

[notsodutch]

The good thing about the economic downturn of late is that professionals like us make less money. Even the "hotshots" - Like Wall Street and like politicians, we have been charging the max- pushing the envelope as long as we could get away with it. If you started long enough ago, you have savings, if your new, you dont. Irrespective, prices had come down. Reality sets in, good companies survive, the excess capacity- MBA's and IT outsourcing recipients alike now need to look closer to home. Ask yourself : What can I do in my own community, be it Mumbai or New York. Stop leeching of other countries- earn your money locally.

[PRR]

At the end of day US and Europe remain leaders/ innovators in IT ... Ever heard of a killer application/ OS/Game being made in Asia or other cost effective place?
US and Europe have better education system.. (no wonder bright students from Asia go there) US is 40 yrs ahead in research and development... The top 30 places for innovation probably belongs to US... the kind of funding that goes into research is amazing..(have heard of Japan catching up).
Outsourcing works out for those jobs that don't require technical expertise... Quality is not cheap... its easy to build application of any kind.. (with a little googling)... what matters is how scalable maintainable and robust application is....

You find great programmers everywhere not a particular place or region...
If you look at the Asian companies most of them are service based... The kind of hype that is generated is a little too much....

P.S. i am from Asia...

[stubborn]

@DeepBlue
Disagree on education system. After having lived in India and US for considerable period of time, I can confidently say that for anything upto graduate degree, in general education in India is certainly a level above US. Ofcourse I stress on "in general" because the best schools in US will be way better than some village primary school in India and vice versa. For post graduate and up, India just doesn't have the facilities or infrastructure like US.

Regarding applications/games etc coming out >> You have to consider that during the last decade or so, the guys who study well and successfully graduate always put job or higher studies as first priority. This has more to do with peer- pressure/social-setup because if one were to become a maverick and try to start a business venture etc, instead of aiming for job/higher-studies he will probably be considered a loser compared to his peers (who start of with a decent job at that point). Ofcourse the rewards of innovating and trying to make a product etc will be more in the long term if the venture is successfull, but the risk is also high. And for most, that risk is not taking. Unless and until one has supportive family/parents and is financially stable, can he think of "not going with the herd". The current generation has gone through this phase and hopefully will realize what they missed out and let the next generation choose their career path instead of expecting them to be either a doctor or engineer and land a job as soon as they graduate...That s all it takes to make products.

[hsheboul]

One of the most interesting "point of views" I've seen on this board!

What makes a country differ than another with highly-spanned levels?

@dafodil
I think, yes!

Remember: it's politics, it's always politics. Politics bring economy! If I want to do it right, for this topic at least, I would write a book.

A country, its top-tier "politician s", and its economy is made of what?

[Teetotaller]

Decision on outsourcing is not always made based on quality/cost ratio.
Sometimes it is just the cost. Because managers accountable for application services are looking to reduce the cost to please their managers and shareholers with the numbers.They are not taking into account the downsides of poor code - those gonna realize themeselves in rather distant future.
In addition, poor quality can always be masked somehow - quite often it is rather difficult to understand negative impact on the business and attribute it to bad outsourcing decision. So that generally leads to good programmers losing their jobs, outsorcing companies not developing quality of their services, customer business suffering, and of course, executive managers getting their bonuses and promotions for cutting the budgets down (but not actually adding value for their shareholders).

[freelance programmer]

@stubborn
Are you comparing B.Tech from india with BS from US ? I think BS is far superior degree.

[probably clueless]

i have worked with eastern culture programmers - for one thing, i think they actually believe they are smarter than american programmers - second: have u seen some of the stuff they write - who in the h*ll writes a routine with 318 lines? - what is that stuff? - charles dickens code - it's no wonder ms windows takes 20 minutes 2 load ... and finally $25/hr? - u can drive a city bus and earn $40/hr - lets see here: 1 mil @ $25... u can retire to morocco after 40,000 hours of coding
if u want 2 get rich in the software business, the best thing 2 do:
is go for ur own startup or be a freeloader and get somebody else 2 do the coding (ie: india) & then take a cut - the www is full of companies doing that

[Jyoti Ballabh]

Outsourcing is just a means of exploiting and enslaving the cheap markets of the world to get them to write "codes" for you while the "on site" companies make huge cuts. It's true that over 90% of the original codes are written here in the US and these codes are outsourced for troubleshoots, remedial modifications, real-time testing, etc..

[somantos]

Hi,

I'm new here on this discussion board I have been a very long time lurker and now have a applicable issue that i pray some of you fellows can sort out.

I had been on the look to locate some reliable and known offshore company incorporation professional, since I reside in Spain and don't wish to pay the substantial taxes here than I went with Costa Rica Corporation, won't posting a link to avoid to become deemed junk, now they said that for my goals Could not use them but rather may need to look at some incorporation within another offshore jurisdiction just like Malta, today I found the website <link removed> of which is an appealing web log which has numerous information regarding this kind of subject, just what interest me is, if a few of you can actually tell me how I is able to reduce my taxes not having going the offshore method or if Malta truly has become the location I should try to look for ?

My needs are generally to pay a minimal taxes probable, will need bank account together with internet banking and a credit card merchant account to accept credit card payments for my Footwear store.

Many thanks beforehand.

[Jerry Winston]

If we all understand that business esteems profits above all else quality, employees, contry, God. How can we not understand the impetus to outsource the most time intensive (simply & repetitive) and costly (High skill) components of IT? Programmers are learning what automotive industry workers learned decades ago.

There's no such thing as outsourcing.

Distance is becoming almost completely irrelevant in today's IT world. Each morning when you set at your desk, you're competing with programmers from around the world. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. National boundaries are a poor axis to divide the IT world. IT professionals battle across age (young v old), technology (java v .net v ruby v whatever), and deployment (web app v desktop).

Answer me this:How far away does the next developer have be to in order for it to be considered out sourcing? If two programmers in Seattle loose their jobs, one to a guy in Vancouver and the other to a guy in New York city, which of the two Seattle programmers still have a job?

You have the ability,as an individual, to actively participate in economies around the world, if you fail to adopt a global view in your career you will always be mystified by the ebb and flow in the IT industry. If you're not globally connected as an individual, you will always be at the whim of your company. In general, Americans are often times more shielded from international contact and fail to see their part in the global economy.

We American developers are hit hard because we are also American consumers and spend our money almost as fast as we make it, because its "uncivilize d" to ration electricity/light, cook out doors, walk to work,reduce our wardrobes to one Star Wars shirt, ect. The savings would be astronomical, IT professionals would work for only 20 yrs then retire. Americans accept taking on huge lifetime debts for cheap cars and cookie cutter houses, because it's the status quo here.

Let's be honest here, 99% of IT work is based on using someone else's IDE, compiler, data engine ect. When I design a database I don't create a custom data engine for each customer.I use the existing tools. I'm basically paid to know the more esoteric components of a piece of software. The more obscure the knowledge the more I'm paid. We can't pretend it takes genius to work in IT. The API for everything is freely available to anyone that wants it. So how do you get an edge?

Unfortunately, in the end we are all salesmen/saleswomen. We have to promote our own pet technologies as the best solution for any project we want to be included in. Promoting what you do isn't good enough these days, you have to shoot down the competition too (even if you're not a guru in the "opposing" technologies). "Classic ASP could never deliver you a secure site", "Linux isn't a viable platform for business in a Windows world", "It's too risky too develop with open-source because they fold and leave you high and dry","Ruby on Rails is the flavor of the month". The biggest most sweeping statements are often made by those with the least experience in the technology. The bottom line is the truth of any of those statements does not matter if you can convince the person holding the purse strings it's true.