Building a $480K/year Freelance Dev Business (5 Lessons)

tim-noetzel by Tim Noetzel Last updated Oct 6, 2023

Ironically, my switch to full-time freelancing started with a job search.

It was late 2019, and I was designing and building a brand new product for an established tech startup. I was excited because the product was starting to see some traction, and I had spent the past year and a half creating it from nothing.

Unfortunately, the CEO wasn’t nearly as excited about it as I was. The Monday after my bachelor party, he pulled me into a conference room and told me he had decided to cut the product and double down on the company’s original, albeit struggling, vision.

I was out, and I wasn’t happy about it.

Tech startups are notoriously volatile, so this isn’t at all uncommon, but that didn’t make it any easier. I went on interview after interview, and even got several offers, but I couldn’t find anything I was actually excited about.

It was 6 months before my wedding, and I knew I didn’t want to dip into the money I had saved for the wedding and a house.

I had to figure something out, and fast.

I had done some freelancing on the side, but clients had always found me, and the gigs were usually small and short-lived. I had never really considered freelancing as a full-time career option. But I knew I had no interest in working for any of the companies I was finding on my job search.

My path from a $0 business in 2019 to a $480K/year freelance web development business in 2023 has been a long one. That first year I tried—and failed at—just about everything.

I learned many of the steps the hard way. Hopefully sharing the following 5 lessons means you don’t have to:

1. Focus on Client Quality

As developers, it can be tempting to focus on technical skills. There are countless languages, frameworks, and new technologies to learn. Should you learn UX or finally try out WordPress? What about React?

Luckily, Kyle has done an amazing job of rounding up resources for you here.

But while technology is important, the biggest differentiator between highly successful freelancers and everybody else is client quality.

Bad clients pinch pennies, require tons of hand-holding, and treat you like a code-monkey. They constantly change the scope last minute, disrespect boundaries, and expect more for less. If you work with types of clients, your life becomes a grind.

Good clients pay premium rates, give good feedback, and treat you like a partner. They even refer business your way! When you work with these types of clients, freelancing is some of the most fun you’ll ever have in your career. You earn more, you do interesting work, and you gain flexibility and freedom you’d never have in a full-time job.

So focus on the types of clients that tend to be good, and align all your marketing and sales efforts to attract more of them.

For me, the best clients have been tech startups and ecommerce companies between about 5 and 50 employees. These tech-first companies value what I do enough to treat me like a partner. They’re versed enough in the norms of the web that they don’t require tons of hand-holding. And while they’re small enough to move fast, they have enough financial resources to pay well.

Small local businesses may not be able to afford to pay you well; large companies might have so much bureaucratic red tape that you end up spending all your time herding cats rather than writing code.

Your client mix may be different, but know who you’re going after and why.

2. Pick an Efficient Marketing Method

To grow your business, you need to find clients. But some marketing methods are substantially more efficient than others.

Pay attention to how crowded the channel is and how much time and effort it takes to use.

Sites like Upwork are popular because they promise instant clients, but the truth is they’re exceptionally competitive.

A typical web dev gig on sites like these gets 50+ proposals and has an average hourly rate of just $20 per hour. The so-called “experts” recommend that you submit 25 to 50 proposals per week on these platforms.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not my idea of a good time.

Social media, blogging, and other methods have similar challenges. It takes a long time to build a following!

I’ve found that 1-on-1 conversations are by far a more efficient method. My free course covers this strategy in more detail, but the Cliff Notes version is this:

Identify the hubs where your ideal clients hang out - Coworking spaces, startup accelerators, industry meetups, and online Slack and Discord groups are great places to meet clients!

Identify the people who already know your ideal clients and can introduce you - Other freelancers are some of the best sources for leads, particularly if those freelancers work in a complimentary space. Marketing and design freelancers are already working with your ideal clients and they don’t compete with you! They’re also the first people your clients ask when they’re looking for a web developer like you.

Build relationships through 1-on-1 conversations - Act like a human and engage people 1-on-1. You can do this by asking for advice or providing value. Don’t spam or go into pitch mode. Just tell people what you do and ask them about themselves.

I’ve found that if you do this right, you can usually meet a new client in about 15 conversations. And the quality of these clients is way higher than what you’d find via a freelancing site.

3. Have the Right Sales Process

Having no sales process is a recipe for disaster.

At best it means you let the client set all the terms and the price for the engagement. At worst, you lose the gig altogether.

Sales is a complex topic so we can’t cover it all here, but always make sure to cover the basics:

Identify the business problem - Ask why the project is important to the business. What’s the business problem? Are they trying to increase revenue? Decrease costs? Something else?

Quantify Success - Ask what a successful project looks like to them. Are there specific metrics they need to hit or a specific change in the business they’re looking for?

Ask About Budget - Never guess on budget. If you’re too high, the client will likely ghost you. If you’re too low, you’ll leave money on the table (or the client will think you’re unprofessional and ghost you). Instead, simply ask if they have a budget in mind. The number the client gives you isn’t final, but it gives you a place to start.

4. Manage Client Expectations

Most of the time when clients push boundaries or make last-minute changes to the scope, it’s because you didn’t set expectations with them at the outset.

Always create a Statement of Work that documents:

Payment terms and timelines
Project schedule
Deadlines for your clients to provide assets, feedback, etc.
Limits to calls, revisions, or other time-consuming tasks

Always specifically state that anything not mentioned in the scope isn’t included.

5. Make Time for Yourself

This one is easy to say, but much harder to do. When you have several clients it’s natural for them to pull you in several different directions. If you’re not careful you’ll burn yourself out quickly.

So make time for your health and wellbeing. Take some time away from the keyboard and do something you enjoy.

And make sure to take a vacation every now and then!

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Tim is a web developer, designer, and the founder of FreelanceGPS.com, where he coaches how to start and grow successful freelance businesses.