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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

Exactly what I tell my startup friends. I know people who run design consulting firms and pull in $300-500k/year in profits. Some run SEO/SEM marketing agencies and do similar figures. They give themselves generous salaries and own nearly 80-90% of their businesses which, on paper, are worth $4-5M.

That's definitely very, very well-off, if not F-U rich. And it's very "safe", unless your $1M in revenue hinges entirely on one or two clients

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It's safe but it's also exponentially more difficult than starting a startup.

The amount of connections one would need to start a business tomorrow generating $500k in annual profits is insurmountable.

Being a successful consulting agency or freelancer is attainable in two ways:

1. Know a lot of people at a lot of very large companies that are willing to throw you a bunch of work.

2. Build up clientele for a very long time making no money until you hit critical mass.

When I was freelancing it was one of the worst experiences of my life, so of course I'm bias. But I want readers to know that there are 2 sides to every coin.

Exponentially more difficult than starting a startup? No shit, all you have to do to start a startup is say you started one and give a vague semblance of the idea.

You need a Bootstrap website too.

In more concrete terms; I'd say it's harder to gross $100k as a freelancer than it is to raise a $6 m+ Series A.

Thanks for sharing. I've heard numbers like these quoted before with respect to other small or medium sized businesses like franchising a fast-food chain and a question just occurred to me. For the people you know, are the owners' salaries taken before the profits as part of the operating expenses or do the salaries come out of the 300-500k of profits?

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