How much money can your average website designer make UK good old pounds per year???
There is only so many hours in a day after all, I am seeing web designers boasting of big bucks....
But lets talk about the average freelancer..... making general sites for small/medium businesses....
HOW MUCH ARE Y'ALL MAKING??
I rekon 25k TOPS!
Complete arrogance. UK Labour Market:- In the UK a million people are on zero hour contracts not guaranteed any work. A lot are working below the minimum wage and so many more are on the minimum wage... in reality £25k is a good salary. Furthermore the majority of entrepreneurs are working 60 hours per week for around that or less - most are working for £14-18k per year when income permits it.
The three main reasons people are a freelancer:-
1) highly skilled individual prefer to work on projects using their initiative as self-employed as it makes them more money than a salaried job and have better job satisfaction
2) a professional looking for additional work on the side - especially if work part time or on the lower range of full time (i.e. 30-35 hours per week)
3) someone unemployed proactively looking to utilise their skills instead of being just another statistic
For #1, £25k is tiny. For #2 and #3, £25k is a really good salary/income from it.
An
average website designer? Looking at an average of £500 per week top end (just over the £25k) probably more likely £300 per week average.
By 'average' I am assuming:-
1) no formal qualifications or past experience in the industry for an employer
2) some significant experience of doing the work before and aged under 25
3) using the right tools but not too expert at it, and not too bright so everything is from scratch
4) not utilising networking to get clients, and
5) relying on freelance websites to get work
Bottom end freelancers struggle. Its not that easy to get the work and its hard to compete with cheaper labour from developing countries when solely relying on the freelance websites out there. You begin without a portfolio... discounts to get a portfolio, gets people suspicious, especially when you are beating price of the typical like-for-like quote from India or Brazil etc.
One of the latest website developers on my team struggled as a self-employed freelance web designer, the youngster found it near impossible to get the work even with a good checkable portfolio and was making no where near £20k let alone £25k. It wasn't so easy for him to get a job as employers were suspicious that his self-employment was a nice way of putting "unemployed". The guy is a whizz kid... he types code like he was typing a word document. A very good investment employing him; he began only as a
junior, but with training and support from the
senior developers, now he is at the standard where we would have to pay him double his current salary if he came with that training. Furthermore, he is a good bloke and enjoys the work he does.
