RickDT

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We may do a follow-up survey to attempt to confirm our assumption that the vast majority of people that make money from apps are doing so by invoicing clients, rather than selling apps in the store(s).

Especially comparing the average rates to proficiency and locale, I was surprised. I would expect Journeymen and Master to be charging more than $100/hr on average. Same with people in tech-heavy areas.

But, our data may be skewed this year just due to our reach. We didn't have many people from companies in the range of 20-100 people which I think is a sweet spot for high specialization.

I hadn't considered the transitioners. That's a good point. The other way to look at it is that they don't know how bad they are yet :) When you first start to learn something, you feel like you know everything until you get that first smack down!

Fantastic point on challenging your own perceptions of the value of an hour, the market, etc. We really hope this survey (and subsequent ones that we plan to do) gives people an additional data point to consider.

- The survey was anonymous (unless you signed up to get the results). And, I don't think anyone is trying to impress us ;)

- The data clearly shows that this is per hour (see the data here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013, per the post). You can also view an archived copy of the survey here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/ It poses the question: "If you do have an hourly rate, what is it on average?"

- The point of doing this survey was that rates are rarely, if ever, actually posted. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it also makes hard to know if you're in line with your industry. Hence, the survey!

Your critiques and questions seem to imply that you don't think our findings are valid. Is that true or am I reading too much into it? ~$100/hour USD is right in line with our experience for an average across the whole industry. It's low for an agency or big firm and high for a young freelancer.

All of the above. We posted here on HN, on Twitter, our blog, and we emailed some people that we knew would want to participate.

Point taken, but if you look at the results page (linked in the post), it's a lot more clear: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013

I will freely admit that I suck as stats and data viz. We'll track the feedback and add to the results page.

If you have any recommendation on finding/using a part-time sales person, I'm all ears! Dedicated sales would be awesome, but it'll be a while before we can hire this as a F/T position.

This is the mindset we're trying to adopt now. Say yes, because too much work is a much better problem than not enough work.

This was the biggest "oh crap, what did we do to ourselves?" moment. Effectively saying "no" took us off those people's radars permanently.

Awesome suggestions all around. We're definitely going to be trying out all of the above to see what fits.