Freelancing is a commonly used term for the self-employed professionals who work on a project to project basis and more often are not committed to a particular employer/business. As many of us are not getting satisfied with current job payouts or for building multiple sources of income or to build a portfolio, whatever the reason maybe we are choosing the freelancing path.
How do I get started on it?
To start freelancing we need to find clients to provide our skilled based services like designing, coding, writing, marketing, etc. It was completely dependent on our skillset. If you haven’t given a try till now Try it out Once.Most of the freelancers just started giving a try which changed their ways of living. Many of them quit their daily jobs once they found their matching client who pays a lot more than what daily job offers and also many of us are doing both Job and freelancing because we love doing it. It depends on person to person
Where to find freelance work
We can make use of various methods to find freelance work like social media, freelance platforms, via referrals, through friends and family, advertisement, etc.
I have personally used Upwork and freelancer to get some work. I have used Fiverr to hire designers at a low cost for making some logos and app designs. I have also worked with some clients via referrals and friends. There are many sources for freelancing out there like
PeoplePerHour and so many
So it all depends on us how much time we do freelancing and how much we make out of it. If you are doing a job then you may do it as part-time by burning out some personal time.
Freelancing is about more than just being good at what you do.
How to give an estimate of app development
I going to talk here regarding the estimate for an app but it can be applied to other platforms as well. To decide the cost of an app we first need to analyze the App Complexity.
App Complexity
App Complexity is directly related to its cost. Categorize the app whether it is a simple app that takes less effort or a complex app that takes more effort or an enterprise app that is like building a system or a game that needs additional skills.
Simple apps have a limited number of screens typically 1 to 3 screens and may need API integrations to fetch data from servers. App development costs depend on the number of features and how you choose to build them. A single app developer or small team can create simple apps in 1 day to 3 months. Simple apps can be of just creating an app with a single screen which may be finished in 8hrs approximately.
Total hours * Hourly Rate = Development Cost
So in the above case like 8hrs * $20 = $160 may be the cost. It is variable because the hourly rate varies from person to person. The hourly rate is not a simple figure that you can put in as you wish. The hourly rate depends on several factors like experience you have, technologies you know, city we are residing, communication level. So be careful to decide your hourly rate.The hourly rate could solve the problems to a greater extent.
If it was me the above app with a single page the estimate would be like
8 * $10 = $80 if it was single page Webview
8 * $40 = $240 if it was native screen with some simple design and an API integration(scenario like fetching a list of items and displaying them in a list)
8 * $100 = $800 if it was a native complex screen with some complex design and multiple API’s to integrate (scenario like chat screen where it has multiple functionalities but 1 screen)
Be honest while giving the estimates. It’s not a rough figure. Analyze everything before giving an estimate
Complex apps have more screens, in some cases, it may be 8 or 10. Every page may require API integrations. Designs may be complex for some screens. These apps may require locations services and payment gateway integrations that require additional effort. So the formula would be the same but the cost per hour varies depending on the complexity and number of features we are going to develop.
Enterprise apps generally have more than 10 screens, every screen is polished and professional. All complex apps features are contained in enterprise apps. Here every screen may require multiple API calls and additional frameworks integration in some screens. The analytics part needs to be counted here.
Let’s take an example of an app and estimate it to get a clear picture of complex and enterprise apps.
Example of estimate
As complex and enterprise apps are a little bit tough to estimate let’s take an example and divide the tasks and estimate the cost. Let’s take an example of estimating an app like WhatsApp which is most popular.
Firstly we need to break down the product idea into features. Let us consider that the app has the following features
- Registration
- Contacts list
- Message Part
- Notifications Part
- Search
- Security
- Settings
- Contacts sharing
- Video calls
- Payments
- Profile
- Payments
Subtasks Division
Let’s take one feature and break it into tasks and then estimate that. So the first part is Registration. What would be the tasks here
Designing the pages like Signup Screen, OTP Screen, Basic info Screen. Now it depends on the expertise how speed you can work on the UI part. Let us take a rough estimate of 8hrs per each screen which may vary from person to person and also depending on the complexity of screens.
So for designing 3 screens, it would be 24 hrs roughly. As we previously talked it is your hourly charge that will play the key role. My hourly charge varies from $5 to $100. So decide your hourly charge before jumping in and getting confused.
Each screen has one or more API integrations with some validation which would take around 8hrs per screen. So for 3 screens, it is 24 to 30 hrs.
So for the total Registration part
UI Designing Part: 24hrs * 50$ = $1200
For Functional Part: 30hrs * 50$ = $1500
Total UI + Functional flow: $1200 + $1500 = $2700 approximately
Break the features into tasks then break them into subtasks then estimate the time and cost accordingly. If you fallow this it would be easy and helpful for you to give correct estimates. Do some Home Work don’t do on the fly calculations at the begging stage. Estimate at feature level so that it would be easy.
The formula for calculating total cost would be
(Number of Features * Time) * Hourly Rate = Cost
My advice would be before starting the app development in a hurry get the wireframe, designs, images, documentation each and everything so that you could give the best TimeLine and Cost estimate. Be clear on every aspect. Have discussions and resolve all your queries before you start. Keep your hourly rate reasonable. Respect the clients. All the best….
Want to become a successful freelancer then checkout post about Tips for successful freelancing which will help you in many ways.
Please share some of your freelancing experiences that could be helpful to others.