[throwaway90446]

Little bit of reality for you, HN.

All due respect to patio11, who has made an excellent career for himself, but outside of the usual suspects (NYC, SF, Chicago), the kind of rates he talks about will get you laughed out of almost all client negotiations.

[tptacek]

It's true. Patrick is able to charge those rates because he was bit by a radioactive spider, and because he famously invented the idea of hooking "Hello World" up to a random number generator and people want a little slice of that sweet sweet bingo card expertise.

[chc]

I think you're being a little bit flip. As a matter of fact, he is famous for hooking up "Hello World" to a random-number generator. You're right that it's not really an extraordinary feat on its face, but he garnered a lot of recognition for it nonetheless. Most of us here don't have well-funded companies approaching us to consult for them, so I'm not sure why you're downplaying how special the results of that were for Patrick.

[jameshush]

He's not famous. At all. We think he's great on hacker news (I've read the vast majority of his blog and listened to every episode of his podcast), but in the _real world_ nobody actually knows who he is. According to him, most of his consulting gigs have been word of mouth. If he can do it, so can we :)

[chc]

You're saying the same thing I said using different phrasing — "word of mouth" is fame. Those gigs came because people did know who he was. It's true that there are people who are more talked-about (i.e. famous) than Patrick, but it's also true that most of us are much less so.

I don't like to be negative, but I just don't think Patrick's experience is reproducible without substantial amounts of luck. I have a friend who's constantly talking about lottery winners and telling me, "Look, they did it, so why can't you?" I feel the same kind of frustration on this topic.

[tptacek]

There are four people in this thread that I can think of off the top of my head --- me, Patrick, Ali, and Brennan --- that have used these strategies successfully. Are we just all famous?

[chc]

OK, I guess I didn't explain what I meant clearly. I've never heard Patrick talk about any particular strategy that gave him his start. You would know better since you know Patrick personally, but from the accounts he's written, it sounds like he basically had clients come to him thanks to his reputation.

Like, let me put it this way: If I were to create an exact clone of Bingo Card Creator the way it looked and behaved a few years back, do you think Joel Spolsky would come knocking at my digital door? I really, really don't think so. You were laughing at the idea that his "Hello World attached to an RNG" is hard to reproduce, but nobody ever thought that was the difficult part — it's the fame that followed from it that gave Patrick a base of good clients, and that seems to be harder to replicate or replace. At least that is my impression.

(Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to disparage anyone. It's just like I said earlier — this kind of "it's so easy" talk bothers me in the same way as lottery ads.)

[sarciszewski]

Well you were mentioned in ZF0 and GoD so maybe in some circles? :P

[ef4]

How's this for reality: I know a consulting business that goes into nursing homes -- often rural nursing homes -- and charges them $3000 a day. That's hardly a high-margin industry, and yet it works, and the customers are happy because they capture even more than that.

Businesses everywhere deal with money flows that are really big by individual-person standards. It's not just a question of being in outlier cities.

[andy_adams]

I definitely don't charge what he does. But if you ever want to get closer, you've gotta take the steps. Setting a baseline that was logical was the first step for me.

[gk1]

I don't think anyone here is talking about the kind of rates he talks about ($30k/week is what he's mentioned in the past)... There is a huge gap between that and the undervalued rates many freelancers charge.

[hackerboos]

I read these articles and get excited at the prospect of earning this much money but eventually I pull myself back to earth knowing that I've never met anyone that actually charges these rates (UK).

[sarciszewski]

I know a Wordpress customizer who does very well at 125/hr in Orlando. He's booked solid 3-4 days per week