Freelance Web Developer Salary
The average salary of a freelance web developer is around $72,208 per year. Also, there is no real limit to what a freelance can earn. It all depends on the person. If he/she is willing to take up more projects, willing to work more, knows how to strike a deal, then the earning would obviously be high.
A freelance in this field can also earn as low as $22,000 a year to as high as $150,000 a year.
Again, it all depends on the freelancer and how much work they are willing to put in.
Career as Web Developer Freelance
Also, a freelancer is not just a developer; there are a lot of things associated. Promotion, advertisement of self, building networks, increasing contacts, finding community, etc. these all are part of freelancing work. There can be days when the freelancer is getting a project daily, even has an overload of projects, may have to hire other freelancers to do the job. With flexible work timing, desired routine, and no foundation, there are also some disadvantages to freelancing. There can also be days when the freelancer is not getting a single project and has serious financial issues. So, it is risky in its own way like a business, where the sole responsibility of earning is on the person itself. These days lots of online platforms have come up for helping freelancers find a job, and employers find a good person to get the job done. There are sites like Freelancer.com and Upwork.com, where a person can make their account and straight away explore all the different freelancing works posted worldwide. These sites have helped lots and lots of freelancers all over the world.
Steps for applying to a Freelance web developer job
- Find a freelance web developer job posting
- All the freelancers who consider themselves eligible can apply for it by submitting a proposal.
- The proposal contains a cover letter where the freelancer has to express that they are fitted for the job and know the software stack required for the project.
- Then, there is a bid, where freelancers in their proposal put a price for which they will be willing to work.
- Employers then go through the proposals and select the one whose proposal is considered best.
This is a common way of earning for freelancers, and of course, there are also other ways. They have their network through which they get clients, they may have their own office, and if famous enough, employers will come to them for their projects.
Web Developers as Freelancers
Freelancers work on their own from their home or any other place of comfort. Freelancers are not part of any organization, not tied to any bond. Freelancers work on their will. If they are willing to take up work, they will, and if they feel like relaxing for a while, they will be off work. Freelancers work independently and directly with clients. Clients give them specification to the work to be done, like to build a website all the details are given, what are the functions to be provided, what is the motive of building it, what should be the theme, what would be the deadline and what would be the payment. It now depends on the freelancer to complete the job on time on these conditions and requirements, which would be acceptable to the client.
Web Development
It refers to the work involved in developing a website, web application, services, etc., that works on the internet. Web development can be used to make business models on the web, social networking platforms, hospital management platforms, banking systems, or just about anything. A web developer knows web development, different technologies related to it, creating a web page, and styling it, making it functional, interactive, and many more.
Web development has become a full-fledged profession. More and more people are getting into web development every day, and still, there is a requirement for more. With increasing web developers, there is also a rapid increase in new technologies for web development. There is a gap between the developers who could work with these new skills and how many are required. Many of the developers are still accustomed to the conventional method of web development. It will be harder to survive in the industry with a set of obsolete skills; people have to update themselves with the latest technologies.
Types of Web Development
Web developers are basically of three types, though there are two realms of web development. There is front-end development, and there is back-end development. Developers can be front-end developers, back-end developers, or full-stack developers. These are the three main categories of web developers. According to the knowledge of technologies, they can further be separated into numerous categories, putting developers with a technology or a group of technologies. Front-end development can also be called client-side scripting, and back-end development can also be called server-side scripting. The front-end deals with how the website will be structured, how it will look to the user, how it will interact with the user, the user experience, how the data will be presented on the browser, and all such things or clients. The back-end deals with the hidden part not seen by the user. It includes how the data is requested to the server, how the data will be fetched from the database, how the data will be sent back to the user, the form of data, encryption, decryption, and database operations, etc.
A solution stack or software stack is a term that refers to all the software, services, components needed to create and operate a platform completely without the need for any other external resource. There are many things in a software stack to develop an application, or specifically a web application. It includes operating systems, web servers, web browsers, databases, scripting languages, programming languages, and maybe some other supporting frameworks. These things should work in coordination in a single platform to be successful and ready for deployment. These include both the front-end and back-end parts, so there is a need for both the type of developers. A full-stack developer is expected to work on all the software stack layers, knowing all the components, including front-end and back-end.
Scope of Web Development
With everything getting digitized, the need for web developers is more now than at any time before. Most of the things have been digitized, and almost all the things are shifting online, finding their application online. Like, what can’t a person have done on the internet? All of the world’s education has got online; anyone can study whatever they want anytime, anywhere. Most of the transactions have started taking place online. Digital currency has also boosted this concept; people mostly do not need to carry much cash with them, if it’s legal, obviously.
Hospitals are heavily dependent on the internet to find patients, give medicine orders, and connect with doctors. Today, almost all businesses conduct their deals online, advertising online, promoting online, and money transactions online. Police, Intelligence Agencies worldwide also use the Internet to keep their criminal records, tracing, and various other activities. Libraries are also getting shifted online; people make friends online, find their partners online, date online, and find soul mates online. Basically, people are doing just everything online. There have to be platforms to support this vast load on the internet, even where people accomplish these tasks. So, what are these platforms? Websites and web applications. For building these websites and web applications, there is a need for lots of web developers, in both the realm of back-end and front-end, who can design them, write codes, analyze the problems and maintain them. Those who can be a full-stack developer have the higher privilege.
Roles as a Web Developer
- A front-end developer works with the part of the website/platform that the user sees and experiences. From fonts, font color, background, background color, paragraphs, spacing, alignment, drop-down menu, header-footer to click of a button, navigation to another page, sound, video, animations, everything is controlled by a front-end developer.
The most basic and most important tools for front-end developers are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Knowledge of these three is a must for anyone going to become a front-end developer or just any kind of web developer.
Today there are lots and lots of frameworks and tools for a front-end developer to know. Some are Bootstrap, Foundation, Backbone, AngularJS, JQuery, etc. They make front-end development so much simpler and elegant. Also, a lot of time could be saved using these frameworks. We might not be able to build a webpage in an hour using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as good looking as something we can create using these tools in just 30 minutes or less. So, most organizations use modern technologies to build their web applications; therefore, developers need to know them to compete.
- A back-end developer works with the part of the website/platform not visible to normal users. A user does not need to know what format the data is accepted, sent. What happens in the server with the data, how is the data fetched from the database, how is the request processed by the server to give the best results to the user, how authentication happens, etc.? All these things are taken care of by back-end developers. There are many different tools, frameworks, languages a back-end developer should know to accomplish his work effectively and make the website run smoothly to provide the best results.
PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, Java are some of the server-side scripting languages in most users worldwide. Database technologies: Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, etc., are also of great necessity. These were the technologies developers have been using ever since, but there is also some addition to stacks here, such as Django, Express.js, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and Angular Symfony.
These frameworks make it much easier to build a website’s back-end; it makes configuration very simple, integrating website and database very easy. Developers can focus more on enhancing the performance rather than worrying about connections. Similar to the case in front-end development, these technologies are in wide use today for back-end development, and the developers need to know them.
A web developer can be working in a company or be working freelance. There is demand in both fields for web developers. Companies need great developers to maintain their website, create new websites, add functionalities, content, to modify the website from time to time. We always see that apps and websites are getting updated; sometimes, they completely change in their look and feel. Recently most of the websites have been giving a feature of dark mode theme, and this is the work of its web developers (front-end). There are also lots of small organizations that want a good working website for their functioning. They tend to hire freelance web developers who can build their website from scratch, or using some platforms like WordPress, Wix, etc. So, overall there is no deficiency in demand for web developers. Now coming over to the salary part.
Web Developer Salary
The average salary of a web developer is around $76,895 per year in the United States, and also we can count $2000 cash bonus yearly. The salary is also subject to experience.
- Experience less than 1 year earns $69,115 per year.
- The experience between 1 to 2 years earns around $67,809 per year.
- The experience between 6 to 9 years earns around $89,720.
- Experience more than 10 years can earn up to $97,768 per year.
We can also see the data of web developer salaries according to cities.
New York State is the highest paying city for web developers, with a salary of around $95,614 per year. Then comes Dallas, TX, Salt Lake City, UT, Houston, TX, and Austin, TX, with a $74,723 per year.
Skills also pay a great role in a web developer’s salary.
As discussed, there are several new frameworks to use in web development and are in trend. Everyone wants their website built using such tools, so knowledge of such tools means more salary for web developers.
- Knowledge of Backbone.js can offer a salary of 46.17% more than the base web developer salary.
- Angular offers 26.87% more.
- Node.js offers 19.61% more.
- React offers 18.76% more.
- Java offers 16.30% more.
- Javascript offers 8% more.
- SQL offers 7.41% more
- Scala offers 49.43% more.
- GraphQL offers 35.86% more.
Salaries are also decided for some specific job titles. An entry-level web developer could earn $65k per year. A junior web developer could earn $59k per year, a .NET developer could earn $69k per year, and a senior web developer could earn $88k per year, and a web designer could earn $53k per year.
Also read How I Got a Web developer job
