The answer is to stop offering a commodity and start offering something that's unique and valuable. See Patrick McKenzie's epic post: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

excellent. thank you.

I'm currently working as a subcontractor for a friend's consultancy. For the better part of the last decade, that consultancy relied on remote workers (outside the US) to generate margin.

In that last decade, my friend has discovered there are costs with a remote-only development team and so has decided to insource technical, marketing, and management roles. Her clients are SMBs in the US, and business is growing.

So, one direct answer to your question about how a US freelancer can "compete with wages set at the global standard of living, including currency exchange differences" is to serve a US clientele whose products and services are closely tied to the US and (in my particular case) where being in the same time zone has a significant impact on getting work done.

I'll also add that the insourced group is implementing more reliable processes and producing higher quality deliverables to the consultancy, as measured by client satisfaction and owner feedback.

EDIT: Add paragraph regarding work quality of insourced group.

The wages aren't set at a "global standard of living". They are set by how skilled you are. Usually people who complain about not being able to earn enough don't have very good skills. I've been using UpWork for a little over 2 years. Last year I did about $60k, this year will be around $75k. Being able to communicate well with my clients is a huge advantage compared to overseas workers. It also helps that I actually know what I'm doing.

I rarely work a full 40 hours per week. I've been a freelancer for almost 10 years now. I've briefly done some part-time stints in-person in offices in that time and it was a good reminder of how much I hate being stuck in an office following an arbitrary schedule.

What type of work do you offer? UX? Programming? (Which languages?)

Full-Stack LAMP, mainly building heavily-customized WordPress sites. My current project is big enough that we've brought on some front-end help, so I've learned to manage git and am paying attention to developing my "soft" skills such as management. I'm likely doing a basic AWS certification soon, perhaps followed by some more DevOps type stuff or learning more formal UI/UX skills. At that point I'll be far above the average WordPress developer and could hit $100k+ if not next year, then the year after that. Pretty good for someone without a college degree working from home.

You are leaving TONS of money on the table by using Upwork.

The entire conceit there is that you’re a commodity and you and the other code monkeys should bid for the job, because you’re interchangeable.

I know freelance Wordpress devs doing $200k per year, but not on Upwork.

Yes, though I get the feeling the person is trading free time for that cash. That includes avoiding bizdev hustle and doing taxes.

How many hours per work do they work? How do they find clients?

The answer is that they will all soon be much poorer

Find clients that care about quality, be better, and charge more.

It's still competing globally. Although it can be said that american coders are above average globally, to earn an American wage every one of them will have to be top 1% in quality.

So then the people who aren't skilled enough will have to either improve their skills or go find something else that better fits their skills. Competition is good.

I'd work for $10 an hour paid cash upfront. If it's a 220 hour project, that's $2200 a month (post tax, because I required cash up front).

Nearly anyone could live on that if they have a roommate and no kids.

That is a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of post-tax.

I think it's better to talk about the actual amount of money that is ending up in my bank account rather than mythical pre-tax rates that receive a 30-50% haircut, especially for 1099s.

If the business wants to deduct the expense, then I charge higher.

If the business somehow comes up with $2,200 a month in physical cash, then I won't question it.

Yes it's illegal, but that's actually for the IRS to prove and not me.