An aspect which has anguished me to no end for a long time now, is to do with the low bids which are placed on freelance projects, particularly by newbie freelancers.
Remember - and just ingrain this in your mind somewhere...
You DO NOT compete on price, you compete on value...
Therefore, even if you are a complete novice as far as freelance sites like Elance, oDesk, Freelancer, etc. are concerned, it does not in anyway mean that you should resort to bottom feeding. Rather, you MUST compete on the (presumably) UNIQUE value which you are able to offer to clients.
- Maybe you are blessed with a unique skill set of your own
- Maybe you are uniquely placed to deliver on the said project within a time frame that others would find very hard to match up to
- Maybe you have years and years of experience behind you
It can be any number of these factors...
What matters is that you realize the importance of bidding realistically - and indeed the fact that you are NOT on any of the said freelance sites merely to win projects at any cost, but rather to make a living.
And this living CANNOT be made at bargain basement prices, when costs of things around us continue to zoom upwards at a scorching pace. If I look at the prices of everyday items around me here in India, they have simply skyrocketed within a relatively short span of time. The price of petrol (or gasoline as Americans refer to it) has more than doubled in India over what it used to sell at, just a few years ago. Ditto with housing prices; metros like Delhi and Mumbai have some of the highest real estate prices in the world and there is seemingly no abetment in their prices, round the corner anytime soon.
In such a scenario, to bid unrealistically low and then try and win projects on freelance sites is nothing short of a SIN in my opinion.
These are thoughts which I had shared in a video on my freelance YouTube channel, which you can see below:
I sincerely hope that in the times to come, freelancers on these freelance sites will gradually realize their folly and bid realistically. That is when the entire freelancing experience will be a much more positive one for the entire freelance community.
Otherwise, we will only languish in this entire spectrum, feeding on crumbs which will not do good to any of us...
That is NOT what we want, do we?!
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