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

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.

NEVER Bid Low on Freelance Projects!

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?!