Ask HN: How does one find contract work in data science/analytics?
I don&#x27;t know what country you&#x27;re in, but if it&#x27;s the US, my advice would be to just start a company, throw up a decent looking website and start pounding the pavement. Most of the freelance sites encourage commodified race to the bottom behavior on your labor. Also, 50-100 is too low if you&#x27;re in the US. If she wants to hit parity with what she would make in the industry working a &quot;real job&quot;, she needs to charge closer to 200. (Assuming a target wage of ~150k)<p>Don&#x27;t charge hourly, charge weekly or daily (if a week is too large of a unit). It will save you a lot of headaches and free you&#x2F;her from time tracking at an annoyingly granular level. It also discourages clients from micromanaging your billing (which they definitely will do when you essentially turn in time sheets.)<p>When she&#x27;s selling, the goal is to anchor your estimated price to the value of the project (you have to understand the client&#x27;s business well enough to do this.) The idea is to frame your cost as a fraction of the total value. The rest of the sale is demonstrating you&#x27;re low risk and that you can deliver. Typically you do this through social proof, or through a small starter project that demonstrates ROI.