So I've got a similar idea for a niche as you - I really like increasing performance of web applications from existing applications. I know I can take a slow web app and make it fast (really fast). Are you making significantly more than you were as a salaried employee?
Every time I see one of these articles and subsequent comments, I feel terrible about myself. As a salaried employee I (thought I was, at least) doing well, but then I read things like this and I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong not making $500k/year. I mean is the difference really that stark? Are all of us salaried employees just suckers? I seriously can't tell if a $50-75+/hr salaried employee is doing a lot better/worse than the $150-200/hr freelancers.
Yeah, but you're pretty much guaranteed 2,000 hours of your time will be paid.
I can see how specialists, available for short-term gigs, are worth more per hour than generalists. Companies prefer generalists, since that gives them the flexibility to assign them to another project, should the priorities change, but specialists are good for removing specific roadblocks and then moving on.
If you can charge $250 an hour and work 2,000 hours per year, your gross will be $500K. That's probably not realistic. Regardless of your rate you are not likely to have 2,000 billable hours per year as a freelancer. What you can charge depends on your skills, the demand for those skills, and keeping your pipeline of work full. How many billable hours you can work depends on the projects, your energy and dedication, how organized you are, and your quality of life choices.
As a freelancer you will have higher taxes. You may have to pay for lawyers and accountants. You won't have employer-paid health insurance or retirement benefits. You won't have paid vacation time. You probably won't get stock options or equity. You will have downtime when you have no projects or you are waiting for your client(s) to make decisions or deliver something. You will probably spend a considerable amount of unbillable time finding clients and projects, negotiating contracts, and various marketing and administrative chores. You will probably have to learn new tools, languages, and application domains on your own time. You may miss working with other programmers and being part of a team.
Some people choose freelancing because they can make more money. Some people choose freelancing because they want more control over their time, or they don't want to be stuck in a cubicle job. I started freelancing because I was working as a salaried employee at a company that was slowly dying, and I wanted to have a backup plan. Then I decided I could travel and work remotely since I wasn't working on-site anyway.
Having a marketable speciality helps, especially if you can build a reputation around it. Marketable speciality doesn't just mean an unusual skill or talent; you need to have a skill or talent you can get paid for. Back in the minicomputer days of the 70s and early 80s I freelanced doing performance analysis and improvement on PICK and PR1ME computers. That was a lucrative speciality for a while, because those systems were fairly popular, and buying faster hardware was prohibitively expensive. Now hardware and cloud computing power is cheap, so a slow web app can be made faster by throwing RAM and CPU at it. I'm not saying your skill isn't valuable, just that you need to be careful not to back yourself into a niche that has other, cheaper, solutions.
I don't work 2,000 billable hours a year. Instead I have more free time to do what I want to do. I live in places that are cheaper than the US, sometimes a lot cheaper, so I can work less and enjoy an equivalent or better quality of life.
I don't think you're missing anything. You have to weigh the pros and cons of a full-time salaried job and everything that comes with it against freelancing and decide which is best for you.
Every time I see one of these articles and subsequent comments, I feel terrible about myself. As a salaried employee I (thought I was, at least) doing well, but then I read things like this and I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong not making $500k/year. I mean is the difference really that stark? Are all of us salaried employees just suckers? I seriously can't tell if a $50-75+/hr salaried employee is doing a lot better/worse than the $150-200/hr freelancers.
What am I missing?