From $75 to $160 Per Hour: The .NET Stack That Doubled My Freelance Rate in 6 Months

So right now it’s 3 years with freelancing work, and till now I was charging $75 per hour and feeling stuck. I’d see job posts asking for “experienced .NET developers” offering the same rate I was getting.

But the math was quite imaginary. After taxes and expenses, I was making less than my full-time salary had been!

Then I got a call from a client I’d worked with before. They had a performance problem. Their API was handling 800 requests per second, and their AWS bill was hitting $12,000 monthly. They asked if I could help!

I quoted $160 per hour. Fingers crossed, but they said yes in under five minutes.

That project changed how I think about pricing. The client didn’t care about my rate. They cared that I could save them $8,000 per month. I spent 40 hours on the project and cut their infrastructure costs by 60%. They paid me $6,400. They saved $96,000 that year.

So,

rates aren’t about your time. They’re about the problems you solve.

The Problem With $80/Hour