I have been contracting part time for the past few years now, always at $50-70/hr.
It recently occurred to me that my salaried rate is already at about $65/hr plus amazing benefits and many paid holidays. I’d guess my total comp would be closer to $80/hr if I added everything together.
In the past I’ve found clients on Upwork but it was pretty terrible and the clients were cheap.
I tried going on Arc and got verified, etc. but they only ever send full time jobs.
Does anyone have advice on finding part time freelance jobs at a decent rate, like $120+/hr?
I’m a US citizen, live in the US, etc. Full stack Python/Node/PHP dev so there should be plenty of demand…
Realistically, higher rates come with non-commodity services. This means relationship based- they know you are worth it, or turnkey where you give advice and make decisions for the client, instead of just doing what they tell you. If you're just delivering a commodity (and broadly I mean work that is scoped by the client), you can only compete on price and you'll always get a worse rate.
Another tactic that comes with non-commodity work is fixed pricing, where you take on the risk and upside of delivering. If you're good, you can make more money out of the risk premium, which may be worth it as a small operator (because the downside is just more hours which is manageable