How To Earn $100 Per Hour As A Freelancer: Interview With Bernard Vukas

As usual, I’m overly excited to introduce to you my next guest for this week’s interview series. I’ll start by sharing how I got to know him. It was last year when I read about a foreign freelancer working on the pristine shores of Boracay. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I heard his name again through the freelance grapevine. His Croatian surname stuck with me so, I did some googling and pulled up his oDesk profile. Whoa, this guy was charging $100 per hour. Then I found him on Facebook and was surprised that he was down to earth and uber friendly! Friends, meet banner bukers and discover some amazing advice on how to increase your rates and make a profitable living as a freelancer.

You have been featured in several elite blogs. Can you briefly share to our readers why you decided to ditch the corporate life and live the digital nomad lifestyle?

It corresponded to my success on oDesk. I had just landed a financial client, full-time, at $35/hr. This was going on for a few months and I realized suddenly I had a lot of money (by doing spreadsheets!!). Earning between $4,000-5,000 per month in Croatia was, and still is, a lot of money. At that time, I was also reading a copy of “The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau. I was fascinated with the chapter about remote work. I felt this was exactly something I could do, and oDesk was there to provide that opportunity. I all happened at the same time, and I just took the leap. I packed all my stuff in boxes, canceled the apartment, and permanently left Zagreb in December of 2011.

Congratulations on becoming a member of the prestigious All-star Freelancer Gold club. I have to ask, how much were you charging back in 2010 and how did you manage to increase it to your current hourly rate of $100?

Thank you! When you’re new and inexperienced, you just pick a number, and learn more project by project. My starting hourly rate was $11.11. I was completely petrified when I asked my new client about a raise, and it was approved at $13. I grew so much more since then!

Increasing the fee has always corresponded with requests for new projects, versus my availability. I always appreciated invites for new projects, even when I was busy. Just in order not to say no, I would still take on new clients, but I would assign them a higher hourly fee than the one used previously.
Some of the more significant rate jumps that I can recall are: $15, $17, $25, $35, $75, $100, $135 and $150/hr. In fact, I spent more than a year working at $100/hr+ rates. Obviously at a certain point, you hit a limit of what an hourly can do, but I still play with it, and adjust as I go along.
It’s not just about increasing the rate without a case in point. I’ve been working tirelessly on clarifying my service offering, improving my skills as well, because you do somehow need to justify the high expectations of the high-end clients, and keep delivering on the promise.
It wasn’t all glaring success though. The more you work, there will be chances you will run into a few rotten apples, or times when your budget is tight.

I’m sure you will agree with me that being freelancer has its challenges. What’s one piece of advice you wish you had known when you were starting out?

Over the years, I’ve invested a lot of time in sales. I wish I had invested equally in marketing, and scaled my processes better. As a freelancer, it’s really important to diversify on your streams of income, and to get some passive income out as well. Obviously, I’m still not as good as it appears on the surface, because I still haven’t scaled a profitable business (agency). I hope it comes with time. I’m sure Philippines will play a big part of it.

You’ve lived in the Philippines for two years now and you’ve made friends with a lot of Pinoy oDeskers. Any observations which you think Filipino freelancers can improve on or maybe doing wrong that it ends up hurting their online careers?

I think you guys don’t realise how well you have it made. For solo freelancers, I think you seriously need to consider tripling or maybe even quadrupling your rates. I just can’t figure out why a 10,000+ hour freelancer with experience still charges $9/hr? Do you guys not consider that the biggest paying clients in the developed world don’t pay in peso, but in dollars? For professionals, it’s really important to stop putting themselves into the ‘cheap’ bucket with everyone else.
Of course, raising the rate by itself is useless, unless you also add more value to the service you’re providing. So you also need to think about how to do that; I think one key to that is to stop being a generalist, but a specialist.
[Note: For inspiration and best practices on managing your hourly rate, maybe your readers would be interested in my collection of bookmarks that I’ve collected over the years:

Any last advice you can share to those who are just starting out in freelancing?

With so many newcomers coming to the platform every day, and other more experienced freelancers already well established, it is more difficult than ever to get work. My advice to them would be:

• Don’t get discouraged with the number of other contractors that may be applying for the same job. It’s actually completely irrelevant.
• If you’re completely new, give yourself a big enough window of opportunity to try and get into freelancing. I’d say, anywhere up to a few months. Apply to new jobs regularly, few times per week. Be persistent.
• If you’re in doubt, ask for feedback in support groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, or ask for input from other more experienced freelancers.
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