Can a PHP freelancer earn $1500 or more a month?

$1500/mo from 40 hrs per week is less than $10 per hour. A decent freelance programmer can make FAR more than that per hour. But ultimately, how much you can make really depends on A) Your skillset / experience and B) How well you can market yourself.

I don't do much freelancing myself anymore, as I prefer to spend most of my time creating and marketing my own software creations. But you can definitely make good money freelancing as long as you know what you're doing.

Freelancer.com might help you get projects, but you're up against loads of people who are willing to accept a very low salary.

If you already have a solid customer base, then give it a try. If you have absolutely no customers as of yet and want to go freelance... ouch! php market is very competitive as it's an easy language and many students know it and are willing to work for a low salary.

I found to actually make more money, you're better of taking all your skill and knowledge and create a product (wordpress theme, plugin) and try and sell it.

Yes there are many programmers that will earn WAY more than $1500 a month!

I think it's depends on their skills

cant comment on php freelancing, however ive done .net freelancing for years now and if I opted to put in the hours youre looking at you could easily make the kinda money youre looking for...

something to think about though, in agreeance with the comments above your biggest hurdle is going to be the amount of competition you have for projects, even more so the bad reputation freelancers are starting to get as new programmers come on the scene is getting worse these days with the sheer volume of programmers out there and some of the crap jobs that are being done alot of people who trusted freelancers are beggining to reduce, meaning less work available and more programmers to fight for that work, bit of a catch 22 really.

On the buy a coder sites, it seems like people dont even read whats being asked, they just make a silly offer and say it can be done within 1 day. do they deliver?

The freelancers I know that make consistent money have developed their own client base which they work exclusively.

They primarily work via referral and their steady repeat clients.

You need to decide how much you want to make, what you are willing to do for that money and the type of people you want to work with.

Then start building a repeat client list over time.

You need to be able to communicate with clients that know NOTHING about coding and help them understand what it is they are trying to have made. Give suggestions and create visual mockups very quickly and then get feedback from the client.

The better you are at this and the faster you are getting what the client thinks they want into a mockup and working with them until the final version the more money you will make.

The programmers that can not do this and just do what they are told without being able to communicate clearly with a client to help them and you understand what they want are the ones that never make money as freelancers and pretty much go broke.

Most coders I have worked with, can't do this and need hand holding through out the whole process being told every step of the way what to do. They understand coding but when it comes to creating something PEOPLE would actually be able to use most can't grasp the concepts there. Which is also an essential skill to marketing and where most programmers fail as well. They can code but they can't sell their creations so they either give them away or just end up creating useful tools for themselves because they can't figure out how to get others interested in their nifty gadget.

The things I just wrote in this post pretty much differentiate a six figure programmer and a 100.00 a year programmer.

Start with any top freelance marketplace. You can earn more than $1500 per month after completing few projects successfully. But it is a good idea (I think) to start with a lower rate to get your first job.

When I did freelance PHP work, I made 1600/wk, sometimes more. If you stay up to date on both front and back-end development and design, and have the skills to create what's cool now, than you can make an okay living as a freelancer.

I've moved on to working on my own projects. Although you CAN make money freelancing, I prefer the gratification of seeing my own intellectual property generate income.

It's quite difficult to say that freelancer for php can earn $1500 or more but freelancer for ASP.net can surely earn more than this coz asp used above than php, if i give u $1500 for perfect php then i would love to give my bucks to the asp developer for my website development.

surely, PHP developers can earn a lot, the main thing what he is coding, THE IDEA
Idea earns, not coding

If a java freelancer would earn $1501 per month would you rather learn java ?

I'd say that's not very much money, but it really depends on where in the world you live. If I was only making $1500 per month I'd consider myself failing. I don't freelance much any more, just a little sidework for those I know and trust, but earning that amount only takes me about 20 hours. I live in the US, this money doesn't go as far here, but it's nice supplemental income.