Mar 19 Softmarket Analysis - Freelancing and Freelancer Jobs between 2001 and 2008

Based on the numbers available on the still public jobs we could create a realistic picture of the sofware creation market. We can safely presume that this numbers - at a smaller scale - reflect the  trends in the market. Also we can safely estimate the number of successful Freelancers (at least in percentage). The numbers are very interesting - at least because of the clear trends that are shown and also because it clearly raises a flag for both buyer and freelancer. Most freelancers do not even  get to their first  job. They create accounts, bid on jobs, but never land one successful job. Rent-a-coder has in Marc 2009 approx 35.000 coders that won at least one job won, and has the whopping number of  244667 registered coders!!! wow.. so at less then 15% (!!!) get to win a job! Also We can clearly see that most successuful Freelancers land under 10 jobs per year and more then 80% of this "successfull" freelancers make less then 1000$ per year. Only as little as 0.5 - 1% of the winning Freelancers make more then 5000$ per year! I know we do not have the private jobs and all the bonuses one freelancer makes in this table. but even if we suppose them at double of the visible income this is not an income that can be sufficient for most of them. And do have in mind that 85 % of freelancers DO NOT EVEN GET a winning bid. Also We can clearly see that most successuful Freelancers land under 10 jobs per year and more then 80% of this "successfull" freelancers make less then 1000$ per year. Only as little as 0.5 - 1% of the winning Freelancers make more then 5000$ per year! I know we do not have the private jobs and all the bonuses one freelancer makes in this table. but even if we suppose them at double of the visible income this is not an income that can be sufficient for most of them. And do have in mind that 85 % of freelancers DO NOT EVEN GET a winning bid. Of course there are a lot of successfull developers, but they rise from a mass of over 240.000 people. amaizing. In the next table we can see the evolution of income and number of jobs in Rent-a-Coder for the last 8 years. Do have in mind that this figures DO NOT include: bonuses that buyers may pay the freelancers and NO private auctions (and i assume that most private auctions are high value). So we can safely presume that more realistic figures would be around twice the grossed sums in the table. But the statistic distribution of the sums and number of jobs should be proportonal tho these numbers. Also all programming  language specific statistics are not 100% accurate in absolute amounts, but as a trend and as an  order of magnitude these are quite accurate. Most of these trends do correlate with real events (like for instance the Mambo - Joomla Fork back in 2005). We can see analysing the following table that a large number of posted auctions go without a winner. Most of them are cancelled by the initiator or get to expiration without a chosen winner. This is good to know when you bid on some auctions and you do not get results. Advice: keep trying!   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 7372 24794 38708 35934 45140 64850 77486 90783 30554 Nr Cancelled Jobs 4520 14464 21663 20154 27402 41298 50613 37973 3926 Nr Finished Jobs 2830 10110 16355 14605 16069 20953 24256 27421 6877 Grossed Sums  $264,314  $1,036,028  $1,681,808  $1,676,800  $2,264,978  $3,071,236  $3,802,762  $4,125,758  $695,546 Average Price per job  $93.40  $102.48  $102.83  $114.81  $140.95  $146.58  $156.78  $150.46  $101.14 Nr distinct paying Buyers (Auctioneers) 731 2443 4370 5926 6258 8100 9120 9109 2094 Nr Distinct winning Sellers (Freelancers) 463 1473 2855 4273 4780 5865 6482 6668 1820 Nr Freelancers with jobs completed 1-10 395 1232 2466 4041 4511 5477 6021 6099 1726 Nr Freelancers with jobs completed 10-50 66 226 373 226 266 379 444 551 92 Nr Freelancers with jobs completed 50-100 2 15 11 5 2 8 17 15 2 Nr Freelancers with jobs completed >100 0 0 5 1 1 1 3 0 0 Nr Freelancers grossing 1000-5000 / year 68 228 361 371 496 695 835 903 141 Nr Freelancers grossing 5000-10000 / year 4 23 35 24 41 46 62 76 6 Nr Freelancers grossing 10000-50000 / year   7 11 3 12 19 28 22 2 Nr Freelancers grossing >50000 / year             1 1   Very interesting is the trend in the Average Price per Job. There seems to be a correlation with the exchange rate of USD against foreign currencies (and that should be so - since most coders are not located in USA). Also very interesting is the average number successfull of jobs posted by auctioneers per year - it seems to evolve around 2.8-3 /auctioneer /year The most amazing part is the fact that only 1 company makes more then 50.000 per year in Rent-a-coder - Tometa Software (number one in Rent-a-coder for the past 5 years!) Here is a nice graph that show the trends of the freelancing business. As you can see the incomes of rent-a-coder keep on rising from year to year - with just a small plateau between 2003 and 2004 (mostly i think due to the early 2000's recession) Even the 2008 credit crunch only affected in small the growth of Freelancing business. You can see the growth is not as steep as between 2004 and 2007. But this could be also due to a begining of  saturation of the market. There are now a lot of niche freelancing sites and more and more blossum every month. Fact: The business for freelancing sites is booming. Further we analyse the trends for specific Programming languages. PHP   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 428 2528 6136 4368 6240 9535 11725 16684 5284 Nr Cancelled Jobs 324 1794 3912 2698 4057 6488 8092 7401 669 Nr Finished Jobs 104 732 2217 1647 2163 3027 3595 4962 1305 Grossed Sums 15380 105161.76 260253.85 205742.27 309426.34 446485 539283.61 829868.37 160908.16 C/C++   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 2002 5646 7751 4182 3478 3561 3440 3395 1037 Nr Cancelled Jobs 1122 3062 4622 2483 2609 2741 2616 1520 137 Nr Finished Jobs 876 2570 3112 1682 854 813 806 776 196 Grossed Sums 59705.8 254528.52 331437.93 195838.1 210949.24 207536.96 218584.36 226650.7 29949.24 Java   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 818 2478 4795 3380 3147 4199 5325 7982 2711 Nr Cancelled Jobs 504 1450 2786 1855 2227 3031 3947 3611 352 Nr Finished Jobs 314 1022 2009 1507 909 1162 1362 2106 575 Grossed Sums 28076.8 92323.84 182567.11 136199.44 168980.26 172946.81 240510.76 446387.2 81261.48 Action Script (Flash)   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)           2 729 2263 759 Nr Cancelled Jobs           2 535 1044 116 Nr Finished Jobs             185 548 123 Grossed Sums             40628.99 176640.75 22474 We can see the trends of PHP versus C/C++ Jobs in grossed sums. The turning point for PHP developing was clearly the release of PHP5  - we can clearly see the effect after 2004 - PHP overthrowns C/C++ in the incoms and number of jobs. Take a look at the number of jobs in C before 2004 against those after 2004. Astonishing. PHP is clearly the winner in the freelancing business. This is why today there are also a lot of amateuristic approaches towards PHP, and this also leads to the misconception that PHP is sort of a lesser programming language. But the graphs show something else. What i have to make attentive to - is the rise of Action script.The Category was introduced in 2007 and it overpassed more established languages like Delphi and Python. I clearly sense a niche growing, and i clearly recommend to consider getting on the Action script wagon now. There is clear opportunity and the market is still young - this way you can enter before the players are established. C#   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 142 954 2537 1749 2148 2891 3111 4079 1294 Nr Cancelled Jobs 110 668 1711 1159 1511 2089 2234 1720 176 Nr Finished Jobs 32 284 826 584 626 798 868 1092 234 Grossed Sums 5186 41390.8 121258.76 105807.16 141106.37 164720.21 195182.23 279063.98 41437 Delphi   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total) 148 1098 2024 1139 1172 1017 935 863 272 Nr Cancelled Jobs 120 728 1300 747 765 710 688 368 30 Nr Finished Jobs 28 370 722 389 403 306 245 234 71 Grossed Sums 3818 61435.56 116515.33 58394.82 77284.75 56605.35 48962.54 71071 8127 Python   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)     133 178 201 326 430 801 316 Nr Cancelled Jobs     93 116 143 258 328 374 43 Nr Finished Jobs     40 62 58 67 99 158 65 Grossed Sums     14237 15770.7 7491.5 17304.19 20141.96 28399.9 7094 Iphone   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)             58 633 564 Nr Cancelled Jobs             49 263 39 Nr Finished Jobs             9 95 46 Grossed Sums             1570 42417.98 15050 Delphi seems to recover in 2008 from a very bad hit in 2003 when Borland released the more then controversial Delphi 8 We can clearly see that C# (C Sharp) is clearly a winning horse. For the first time in 2008 it surpassed C++ and as you clearly see the trend is ascending. Very strange is the almost stable sums that are spent on Python. There seems there is a steady and predictible customer base. Worth looking upon this niche! For comparsions reasons i added the rise of the Iphone apps business in 2008. I think this will be interesting in 2009 to follow. The potential is there (it the trend keeps, there could be a 100% growth in job numbers and income in 2009) Now we take a look at some special cases. These are not programming languages, but merely frameworks in specific languages (mostly PHP) . I added Ruby (that is a programming language for those that hear it for the first time) Oracle   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)   70 485 345 301 348 444 564 165 Nr Cancelled Jobs   44 290 235 236 283 371 278 40 Nr Finished Jobs   26 195 110 62 65 71 80 19 Grossed Sums   2360 20737.99 21953 35209 10574.66 12729 28180.89 2754 Ruby   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)         15 295 469 640 217 Nr Cancelled Jobs         11 238 383 339 38 Nr Finished Jobs         4 57 82 118 34 Grossed Sums         2020 13253.75 31627.5 52340.9 5928 Joomla   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)         40 704 1644 2274 754 Nr Cancelled Jobs         27 489 1158 1042 74 Nr Finished Jobs         13 212 470 642 201 Grossed Sums         1320 35477.3 80049.01 101172.97 19732.94 Mambo   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)   2 24 86 322 277 149 74 20 Nr Cancelled Jobs   2 13 61 227 193 114 27 2 Nr Finished Jobs     11 24 94 84 33 20 4 Grossed Sums     1750 2234 17338 16029.98 4899 5565 800 Drupal   2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nr Jobs (grand Total)     5 7 52 224 487 858 243 Nr Cancelled Jobs     4 5 36 166 369 393 25 Nr Finished Jobs     1 2 16 58 113 215 41 Grossed Sums     25 140 5546 9749 23002 56824 14615

The clear winner is Joomla with a fantastic growth from it's birth in 2005. Joomla did not only take users from Mambo (its preccursor) but it seems it got a lot of followers on its own

There seems to be  a good vibe for mature and modular CMS frameworks. Both Joomla and Drupal seem to get a large Userbase and more - even larger budgets for freelancing jobs.
There is a small growth rate decrease (the second derivate of the growth function). But i assume this is due to the 2008 credit crunch and subsequential recession. We will further see that these trends revesed and the growth will continue in 2009 with an alert growth rate

2008 the year of the great Credit Crunch

To see the effects of the 2008 depression and credit crunch, we selected a monthly based graph of Rent-a-coder incomes and the incomes for Joomla Jobs in 2007 and 2008 on a monthly basis.

2008	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Nr Jobs (grand Total)	4977	6573	6839	11767	11326	6693	7098	7358	7222	7563	6976	6391
Nr Cancelled Jobs	3263	4371	4549	6925	3311	2202	2766	3356	2453	1850	1284	1643
Nr Finished Jobs	1520	2008	2068	3655	3087	2027	1986	2271	2265	2274	2192	2068
Grossed Sums	233660.2	308207	348631.5	651210.1	440352.9	286324.7	280744.9	345442.7	321789	349995.1	292997.3	266403.1
2007	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Nr Jobs (grand Total)	6107	6174	6709	6421	6462	6506	6420	6821	6126	7088	6717	5935
Nr Cancelled Jobs	3952	4044	4408	4187	4225	4143	4146	4346	4043	4696	4461	3962
Nr Finished Jobs	1899	1874	1984	1976	1990	2128	2020	2283	1960	2255	2083	1804
Grossed Sums	294154.1	262489.3	316221.5	319067.9	322418.5	334136.9	329349.6	371432.7	282616.2	352359.7	334762.7	283753.3

You can see in the month of Jun and July how the trends reversed. There is a clear decline in income and in percent of successful jobs in the highlighted months. Althou the situation recovers in September , the absolute numbers of jobs seems to be the same, the grossed sums are lower then those of the previous year. But the trend of 2007 seem to be followed (with slight decrease of jobs in cedember due to hollidays). The good news is that for the beginning of 2009 numbers seem to get up again (we will post the numbers after the end of the month in order to have a full first trimester)

There is an interesting trend in Joomla Jobs. There was a downfall of sums in the late spring of 2008, but the jobs did recove and we can clear see that the trends are positive. December is a surprise - being the best month of 2008. I would have expected that december would be one of the worst months. But that was not the case.
Also from the total of  3110 number of joomla skilled users in rent-a-coder there are 1526 that landed a job in these years. THAT IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE from the average 15% that overall coders in Rent-a-coder have. What does that mean ?
a) Joomla coders are MUCH more reliable then average coders on RAC and
b) Joomla Buyers are much more determined to get their job done

Joomla	2008	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
	Nr Jobs (grand Total)	108	103	152	104	115	132	129	154	142	203	149	153
	Nr Cancelled Jobs	78	81	121	64	93	82	92	104	100	140	110	93
	Nr Finished Jobs	30	22	30	36	22	48	34	48	41	62	37	60
	Grossed Sums	4506	2076	8038	5753	3147	8051	10062	8000	4673	7366	5173.01	13204
Joomla	2007	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
	Nr Jobs (grand Total)	116	160	162	313	282	164	169	203	195	168	187	155
	Nr Cancelled Jobs	81	119	121	228	77	62	73	104	70	34	33	40
	Nr Finished Jobs	35	41	41	61	85	48	35	57	59	52	76	52
	Grossed Sums	3840.25	7323.5	7242	14790	10046	9603	3806.25	10048	6877.98	11580	9738	6277.99