Larger companies will pay that much salary for ML talent especially with experience and a PhD. I've seen $400+k salaries for people with a few years experience and no PhD. Contractors will generally charge twice the amount per hour as an employee so you're looking at $500-1000/hr.
As for why. If a large company makes money from advertising and you improve their $10billion/year click model by 0.01% CTR then you've just made them a million dollars. Do that few times throughout a year and a million dollar payout seems low.
> Contractors will generally charge twice the amount per hour as an employee so you're looking at $500-1000/hr.
Yea, no. Not outside of the HN bubble. I run a data science company myself (in Europe). Rates here are really not higher than 80~100 euros per hour. That's for someone with a master's degree in data science and years of experience. On top of that, we have to very actively look for clients and advertise a lot. It's not like people are en-masse knocking on our doors to throw their money at us. So I claim BS on 500/1000 per hour. That just absolutely does not happen except for maybe the 1% who is a celebrity in ML world.
The first thing I see going on your website: it's in Dutch.So you are targeting local companies only,or at least that's the impression I'd get. Is there a lot of large/extra large companies in Netherlands that could use your expertise?I don't mean the offices of some multinationals that are only there with a tiny office for tax reasons but companies operating there.I'm not in the ML industry, so I can't comment much on the services you provide,but I I think you should look into getting advice on your sales process, marketing,etc.
As for why. If a large company makes money from advertising and you improve their $10billion/year click model by 0.01% CTR then you've just made them a million dollars. Do that few times throughout a year and a million dollar payout seems low.