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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

Finally, keep this in mind: freelancing might seem overwhelming, but your competition is terrible. Seriously, absolutely terrible.

This doesn't just apply to developing, or other stuff you're particularly good at, either. In general, people suck at stuff.

My experience tends to be that if, as a hacker, you think you've got an okay grasp of a subject, you're probably in the 90th percentile somewhere. If you think you're pretty good at it, probably 99th.

The "keep raising your rates" advice is good for life in general. Never, never sell yourself short on anything.

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A sidenote to 'keep raising your rates'. At some point, for some sort of work, you really will be pricing yourself out of that market. I've had people express that concern to me "I'll never get the job if I quote that much!", etc.

My response years ago was to adjust the price down some (and I did it myself) and sometimes you'd get the job.

My advice now, typically, is ... don't go for that type of work. Don't bid on that project. If what you're bidding on is commoditized to the point where anyone can do it for 5x less than you want to charge, find another type of skill to enhance and sell that.

This approach isn't for everyone, obviously, but I'm finding it works. This might just be a variation of "go where the competition isn't"?

This is excellent advice. I found the exact same thing. I was getting underbid by less qualified workers for projects of X nature. I learned a little bit about Y, and now I have to raise my rates again to slow the work down.

Also, rates depend on the work required by the client. If you are purely doing some frontend/interface work, it is reasonable to adjust that rate differently from backend work.

Another note is that rates should fluctuate depending on timelines from the client, their budget and requirements. A healthy balance of determining all those factors and your ability to estimate your abilities to complete work can result in a wider range of price ranges - either fixed/hourly/weekly/monthly, etc.

Most of this can only be figured out through lots of experience.

I did this at first, but then realised that my brain and abilities didn't change when I did PM related work or back-end related work.

So now I have only one rate for myself. One consequence is that billing is easier and less error-prone :)

  >> you think you've got an okay grasp of a subject, you're probably in the 90th percentile somewhere.

You may be in the 90th percentile if you have an okay grasp of the subject. However, way more than 10% think they have an okay grasp of any subject (probably more than 90%).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority "80% of participants had evaluated themselves as being above the average driver."

I'm usually the opposite. I highly doubt my abilities and usually forget that most other people don't have the same knowledge as I do. I first noticed this after graduating with a marketing degree, now I'm starting to notice this about software.

Smart people typically underestimate their skill while dumb people overestimate theirs. However, by acknowledging and discussing this, we're probably both thinking we're smart, so maybe we're overestimating ourselves and are really dumb. Or something like that.

But how does knowing about this phenomenon change it?

Totally agree, but I think today "terrible" is now "good enough" for a lot of potential clients. I see this in both web design and pro photography.

I'm all for raising rates and choosing discerning clients, but being able to explain your rates, your proposals, and the importance of investing in someone who isn't terrible is a skill that should not be overlooked.

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