Pick a niche. This is key. You may be the best programmer in the world, but people won't know whom to pick. You might be the best game programmer, but there are many others. However, if you pitch yourself as the expert in getting html games to perform smoothly with poor connectivity, then people with that problem know exactly whom to pick.

For this to be effective: Don't pick too broad a niche.

You can pick the niche based on data -- which if your skills is most in demand, pays the most, has the most wanted posts and so on.

Make sure your whole profile is geared to promoting your prowess in the niche.

Did I mention, pick a niche?

Once you have a niche, you can expand to adjacent niches.

Oh, and don't underprice yourself. The price is a signal of quality so only go as low (if you must) as the market average but no lower for your niche.

But usually there are local rates as well based on your country. These are somewhat pegged to the international rates past a certain level of quality. These can be lower than international rates.

Sometimes you can squeeze an even higher price out of a local contract because you'd add the benefit of more strongly understanding the problem, better communication in terms of time zone, language, and face to face interaction. Plus there's some security in meeting a person face to face.

However, high-end means the focus gets drastically shifted from programming to figuring out what the client wants.

That said, you can charge 250-500 as a freelancer for a few hours of consultation. Your rates should largely depend on:

1) How many hours the client intends on spending with you 2) Urgency of work (and thus how much bandwidth you need to give to it) 3) Client's ROI

If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client: even if they are only paying people $50/hr to create these reports.

You can't charge 100,000k, otherwise the client will not have a great ROI. However, such a solution should take you somewhere around 100-400 hours to complete.

That works out to $125/hr in the worst-case, giving the client a good ROI after the first six months, and should give you a solid 4-6 months of work. If they need it sooner you need to charge them more, because you'll spend less time on business development.

This is a perfect world hypothetical of course ... in reality many other things come into play that will only work to drive your rates down.

For instance, the person who would want a site for $50/hr is probably not going to pay $125/hr. You could try with that person, but that would be pushing your luck. In this case they're not the right client for you.

Sometimes I give it away ... for a client that is giving me a lot of business.

However, you can charge what is 150/hr for WP work if you have a good reputation and do good work. Literally EVERYONE who has any kind of money runs a charity, or is involved in a business or seven that needs a new homepage ...

This won't work if you're trying to cold call and get clients, you're right.

I started out at 50-70/hr programming. Some of my contracts now are only ~90/hr.

How do you get this information? Do you ask them how much time is spent on this task per person and their average hourly rate? Or do you go about finding this info out another way? Do you usually prepare a confidentiality agreement to discuss this? How do you bring it up without coming off so blunt?(as in not making it seem like you're using these numbers to figure out how much you can charge them)

You'll reach a groove once 120% of your referrals are word of mouth. The pendulum flips quickly between looking for clients and then getting a good rep. for doing good work and the clients flowing to you. Good work is hard to find.

With that said, don't negotiate for the highest rate possible at the start. Getting a good rep. will get you better paying clients a lot faster.

1. Get off of Upwork, now. You're only getting into a bidding war with low-priced overseas developers.

2. Instead, search remote job boards, Twitter, Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn for freelance remote contracts related to your field.

3. Find the client's email and send them your portfolio directly.

Following this strategy is what has landed me the most freelance gigs these past years.

There's also aggregation newsletters like RemoteLeads that send you remote freelance gigs a few times a week directly to your email.

https://remoteleads.io/

Shameless Plug: I started RemoteLeads to make finding remote front-end freelance leads easier for myself.

As an ex frequent buyer on Upwork I can confirm, that place is the pits.

Where do you find Remote jobs on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn?

Various sources are scraped to find remote jobs and freelance gigs specific to front-end web development. I go through them manually after I've found them and only send the best 5 max.

Anyway, I'm a full stack developer so what about the back end stuff or mobile app development?

I'm interested in knowing where you source your leads so I might be able to find contracts in those areas.

Right now, I've only been able to find stuff through UW, so I'm curious that you've been able to find direct clients.

I guess the shrewd commenters who said this piece https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ConstantinBacioiu/20171121/3... was actually something of a subtle sales technique were pretty much spot on!

As far as marketing yourself as niche vs. a generalist developer, it really depends on the types of clients and projects you are looking to work on. Being a generalist means you will qualify for more projects, and probably can create extra work for yourself since you can help clients with a broader range of development tasks. This will be useful if you want to help clients build and scale a product. Niche skills on the other hand means more niche marketability and searchability for clients looking for those specific skills.

When it comes to marketing yourself....keep blogging! Even if its only for 15 mins a day, write something. Share what you've been doing, answer questions for potential clients and other developers. You've already seen the pay off. Netowrk, online and off. Go to events and conferences, share your work and interests. Personal connections still count for a lot, and have a stronger tendency to lead to referrals.

Lastly, don't forget, as freelancer you are your own business. Some freelance platforms will take care of a lot of business aspects for you, but you still should be prepared/ knowledgeable about the following: -Terms of Service Contract -Your own (favorable) NDA -Time Tracking/Invoicing Software - Regular Review of Your Rate

Here's an article I wrote on landing clients as a freelance dev: https://www.codementor.io/blog/land-clients-freelance-develo...

If you can answer this-- you can direct your own proactive business development campaign. On this subject, Mike Weinberg is brilliant > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simpl...

The best projects with reasonable pay will come from your own network, people you know. So focus on networking following up with old contacts/making new ones.

Reach out to the game dev community, get in contact with podcasts, write articles, get involved with the community.

When someone is searching for a solution to an existing problem they face and you can demonstrate how you've solved it, and many more in that domain you're immediately valuable.