[logicallee]

Sounds like, "Actually I take the idea of a 'rate' off the table, by becoming an equity cofounder with a cliff, and leveraging my connections at fortune 500 companies to sell the entire company for $60 million. This nets me about $20M based on the way I structure my contract, and takes approximately 800 days of work, so that works out to about $25,000 per day or something like $3125 per hour. Really, if the business is in a big market with good growth and good margins and some kind of proprietary lock-in or moat, $60M is quite a reasonable figure for many Fortune 500 companies to acquire for. Then I just make whatever needs to happen for that to happen, happen."

Well, good for you - but I don't think it has much to do with freelance web development! (the 'commodity' you mention).

In particular, what makes you think OP could do the same?

[bdunn]

It has everything to do with freelance web development, because I (a 1099'd freelancer) am still doing web development. I've just come to realize that clients don't pay me for lines of code, therefore I don't sell lines of code :-)

Figure out WHY a project's being commissioned and then propose what your clients actually care about (hint: not code), vs. doing the usual "here's a proposal with a bunch of technical line items, a quote, timeline, and a signature field"

[logicallee]

In my fictitious example if you're still personally coding the things that need to happen, then by your argument you're still a "programmer", just one who is earning $3000 per hour. (Which certainly stretches the meaning of the term.)

What I'm saying is that it is not quite fair to assume that every 'freelance programmer' (OP or your readers) can do that to the extent that you can. Business requirements analysis is simply a different skill from programming.

Consider the example where the person buying your services is on to your pricing strategy, and misrepresents the value of the business downward (or hides it from you), so that you are left only with the process but no good idea of the value of it.

Can you still do your business analysis, and price it as you suggest? Not nearly as well. Even though as far as code goes, you could still write all of it.

So I would say that what you advocate goes well beyond the idea of a freelance programmer, to include aspects of a business consultant. (Finally, really good proof of this is that in some cases you may well be able to hand off the actual coding to someone who will follow your instructions at a low hourly rate. The fact that this is even a possibility suggests that the value you're describing and capturing may not be in the specific programming at all, but a different layer entirely.)

[tptacek]

Real clients don't do this, but it wouldn't matter if it did. When a prospect values your services too low, you simply say "no" to them. It's called "deal qualification", and it's a Sales 101 skill. Your job is to find the clients who value what you're doing enough to be worth working for.

This isn't theoretical. Lots of people on HN execute this strategy successfully.

[logicallee]

Thomas, and do you think "freelancer" is how they should title themselves? It's not so much about increasing your negotiating skills and rate 'as a freelancer' but expanding what you're doing so that it's quite a poor title at that point.

[djloche]

A great comparison is the patio11 story about the expensive engagement ring vs extended honeymoon. If you can see what your clients care about, you can provide much greater value to those client (and have them write what seems like a ridiculously large cheque without even thinking about it) vs just delivering what they say they want without considering the larger picture.