Do you dream of living the freelance lifestyle? Becoming a freelance developer can greatly simplify your life. However, it can also turn out to be an uphill battle you cannot win.
As a Python freelancer, you can expect to earn $51 per hour on average.
However, one of your biggest expenses in life is housing. Millennials spend up to 45% of their net income for rent (source). So renting can easily be your single biggest expense.
At the same time, your living environment determines the quality of your life significantly.
So your living environment matters. While it’s a philosophical matter whether you prefer living in a city or the countryside, more objective observations may impact your decision:
- Larger cities tend to be more expensive than smaller cities (because there’s more demand for land).
- All things being equal, clients like to pay less for the same service.
- Your living expenses indirectly influence your competitiveness on the global freelancer market.
Living at certain places gives you an unfair advantage against all other people. What’s a good strategy to create the good life as a freelance developer? Watch the video to see what I think about this matter:
Globalization changes the game. Every coder with a notebook is one of your competitors. You have to differentiate yourself against everybody else.
Even if you have a local business, you should go online because it adds an element of scalability to your local business. Sell some information products related to your local business.
However, you should seek unfair advantages as a solopreneour. Get every unfair advantage you can get. One such unfair advantage is price.
You have an unfair advantage if you live in the cheap parts of the world. Seek to move to the countryside in your country—or even to different countries—to ensure that you have an unfair advantage against the Silicon Valley guys (who pay thousands of dollars per month for rent).
$100 per hour for the Silicon Valley guy is no big deal because he has to pay so much just to live. $100 per hour in India means that you live like a king! Try to move towards the latter extreme!
Do you want to start living the good life?
Join my free webinar to learn about the state-of-the-art in Python freelancing (and how much you can expect to earn).
π Recommended: Cracking the Code to a Better Life: How Learning to Code Can Satisfy the 8 Life Forces