Enhancing Your Income In India

What Do Indian Freelancers Make?

Hard stats on freelance markets are not easy to come by, so we were pretty excited when we saw the FeeBee report on the Indian market. FeeBee, a benchmarking tool, collects information from those who register regarding the services they provide, how long they’ve been in the business, and what their rates are.

Operated by Flexing IT, “India’s first online marketplace for highly skilled and curated ‘on-demand’ workforce of independent consultants, experts and experienced freelancers”, they found that strategy, marketing, HR, and IT were the top four areas where freelance assistance was sought. They divided twenty five hundred freelancers into four groups based on experience:

• Explorers with less than five years (17%), ₹8k/day
• Performers with five to ten years (25%), ₹19k/day
• Leaders with ten to twenty years (32%), ₹33k/day
• Masters with twenty or more years (26%), ₹46k/day

Three of every four respondents were men. The gender demographics were curious; Explorers and Performers receive equal pay, female Leaders only make 75% of what their male counterparts do, but in the Masters range women outperform men by 40%, although they make up only 10% of the total freelancers in that bracket.

Other than staying in the business, accumulating time in grade, what can freelancers do to boost their revenue?

• Nearly 40% of companies say they struggle to find talent, so there are a lot of opportunities out there. You don’t have to jump at every chance that appears.

• Four of five companies don’t have a structure for determining project prices. Implicitly, if you’re smooth, you can help scope the project.

• And despite that lack of structure, 70% of consultants rely on the customer’s budget when setting their rates.

Longer engagements command higher rates, but three quarters of freelancers are selecting for shorter projects. There are longer term gigs available, but we suspect they are on that borderline where a company might be debating creating a full time position.

The key soft point that came through over and over was this: the relationship between the employer and the freelancer is complimentary; both are going to not just complete a given task, they're going to learn things from each other in the process.

Showing off that trail of successful engagements would help earn the next one, but how do you do that? We've been busy in this area with Bitwage.me, our brand new Cross Platform Reputation system. Using our system permits you to verify that you've already passed through rigorous anti-money laundering requirements, and you can selectively reveal information about your rates and prior work to potential new clients.

You'll need to sign up to get the full sixteen page report from FeeBee, but it's well worth the effort to gain a high level view of the Indian market. That account will also gain you access to some interactive tools that let you explore the data behind the report. You already have a Bitwage.me login if you're a Bitwage customer, otherwise you can sign up at the main Bitwage site.

Header via George Tziralis