You Need Not Bid Low To Land That FIRST Freelance Assignment!

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It is astonishing that there are many newbie freelancers out there who bid completely ridiculous rates, simply to land that first freelance job on freelance job sites like Elance, oDesk, Freelancer, etc.

Mind you, this includes professionals who come into the freelance arena with years of experience behind them.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, they have been told that they need to place very low bids in order for clients to give them that much needed break, which will effectively pave the way for their entry into the coveted world of online freelancing.

Honestly, reality could not have been further from the truth.

I as an Indian freelancer, without any high flying Ivy League college degrees or work experience in any of the Fortune 500 companies, never really felt the need to bid so low, so if you are an individual who is entering  the freelance space with years of professional experience behind you, or a college degree from one of the most reputed institutes around, and so on, you need to be all the more realistic with regard to the budgets you quote.

Additionally, you need to bear in mind the fact that while these freelance job sites are filled to the brim with very low paying jobs, there are some good quality jobs with realistic pay scales as well. Those are precisely the kind of jobs that you need to target. An excellent instance would be eBook / Book projects where I have observed the pay scales to be particularly realistic, in line with the kind of compensation that one could expect in the "real world".

Also, there are many companies or businesses working with freelancers directly, and they are more than happy to pay realistically. In most cases, price erosion on the better quality freelance sites (only Elance really, remaining are pretty much run of the mill) takes place primarily because of sub-contracting. So if X lands a job, whether on the same freelance site, some other site, or in the "real world", he or she in turn sub-contracts it on any of the common freelance sites, for much lower, pocketing the margin in between.

It is these aspects which I summarized in the following video, also showcased on my freelancing specific YouTube channel:

As a novice in the realm of online freelancing via these freelance job sites, it is imperative that you remain alert to these dynamics. You do not want your professional credence, your reputation as an individual or business that has always functioned with incredible integrity, to be compromised in anyway.

Keeping these aspects in mind, I would reiterate my assertion about not bidding low, even if you do not have any prior feedback or work history on any of these freelance sites. Remember that sooner or later, you will get a job which respects your professional background and pays you commensurately, in spite of not having any prior feedback or experience on these sites.

Anyone advising you otherwise, especially with regard to bidding very low just to bag that first job or two, is really giving you WRONG advise.

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