Looking to start a career in WordPress freelancing but wondering how much can you make as a WordPress freelancer?
WordPress freelancers around the world charge anywhere between $10/hr to $150/hr (sometimes even more), so if you work 30 hrs a week you can easily be making from $1200 to $18000 per month as a WordPress freelancer. But this amount can depend on a lot of factors.
One of the main factors is of course how much work you can get every month as a freelancer. But if you could book yourself every month you can definitely make something in that range if not more.
Now let’s see other factors.
How do you decide your hourly rate as a WordPress freelancer?
Your hourly rate will mostly depend on the type of clients you serve, like first world country clients can afford higher rates but third world country clients will mostly work with freelancers with a lower rate.
So keeping that in mind if you are in a full-time job then simply divide your gross salary by 30 days then again divide it by 8 hrs to find your estimated hourly rate.
If you’re not in a full-time job then the rate will depend on your role and experience. If you’re in WordPress development with good experience you can charge at the higher end.
If you’re working on the front-end (HTML, CSS and JS) which is mostly related to the design of the website you can charge somewhere in the middle range.
But if you only work with plugins and themes with no additional customization then your rate will be at the lower end.
In simple words, WordPress developers will get a higher rate than any other role in WordPress freelancing, but if you’re a beginner you should start at a lower end to compensate for your lack of experience and then gradually move up the ladder as you gain more experience.
Hourly rate or fixed price which is better?
To be honest it is client’s preference and partly yours.
I personally like fixed-rate projects and I try to convince my clients that way.
For me, it eliminates a lot of uncertainty and stress for me as well as for the client. In hourly projects, the client is not sure of his cost so for some reason something takes longer than expected it could lead to a misunderstanding.
Whereas in fixed price projects the client knows the exact amount he needs to pay and I know how much I will get.
For small to mid-size projects, you should go for a fixed price, as a freelancer you’ll earn more that way.
Say for example your hourly rate is $25 and you’ve got a small project that would take an hour, in the hourly rate you could only charge $25 from the client but if you go for a fixed price you could easily charge $50 believe it or not clients will be happy to pay that even if you do the work in just 30 mins.
But for large or ongoing projects hourly rate would make more sense because clients can easily pay as they go along instead of having to pay a big amount at once.
So depending on the situation you should decide which way to go.
How to estimate the project value?
If you plan to go with the fixed price model you need to estimate the project value first.
So how do you estimate the project value if you’re a beginner?
First, you need to understand the scope of the work and how much time it could take.
The time calculation will depend on your skill set and you have to figure that out on your own. Once you come up with a time just multiply it with your hourly rate to find the project value for you.
While talking about the time a good rule of thumb while quoting the price to the client you should add some buffer time above your calculated time but the price should be based on your calculated time only.
This way you can also deliver your project before the time to make a good impression on the client.
Similar to hourly rate calculation client’s location and to some extent your location will play a big role in deciding the project value.
Why your location also matters?
Sometimes clients from first world countries look to find freelancers from third world countries like India, Philippines etc. so they can get the same quality of work at a lower price.
In those cases even if you have similar or even better quality than a freelancer from a first world country you will really have a hard time charging the same price.
That is just a fact!
Conclusion
As you can see in the post the amount you can make as a WordPress freelancer depends on a lot of things like the type of project work, the client’s location, your location and of course how much work you get.
But I hope now you have a better understanding of how much you can make as a WordPress freelancer considering your situation.
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