I've recently started bidding projects on freelance sites, mostly for web design/programming. I'm bidding against people who will work for $10/hour or less and do really good work. Can Americans get freelance jobs on these sites at a decent wage? Say $20/hour or better?
Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
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Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#2Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd.
Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work from them, all you need to do is not sound like a desperate child trying to get away with something.
Take 10 minutes and write a good proposal, with a summary of the project, your basic approach to solving it, and what you think it would realistically take to do the job. Quote your full rate, and don't worry even for a second that your bid is ten times higher than the next highest one. You're sending a message that "I can actually pull this off", and the best way to do that is to distance yourself as far as possible from the herd.
If you succeed, the project owner will end up looking at two stacks of bids. One stack will have 150 flaky looking quotes to do the whole project for $300, none of which stand out as inspiring much confidence. The other stack will have a single well written proposal, quoting a bit more than he'd expected to pay, but clearly from a guy who has done this before and can do it again.
His choice is now: Sift through that rubbish pile and hope I get lucky, or go with the expensive guy.
That's a pretty good place to be.
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#3Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd. Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work f…
I agree. However, you will be passed over by most project posters for one of two reasons:
1) They aren't serious, and are posting the project to get a sense of how much it may cost them to develop an idea.
or 2) They don't care or are ignorant of quality issues when choosing a $10/hr bid.
As developers, we scoff at badly written code - it offends us. But as a business person, especially the cheap ones, as long as it works and accomplishes the goal, you're happy.
You should ask yourself if that's who you want to work for. You won't capture every dollar posted using the method above, but it will filter out the non-serious and non-quality minded project owners.
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#4Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd. Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work f…
The project proposals are often incomplete, so my strategy is to make a bid, and in the comments ask intelligent questions about the project and design to show I'm serious and experienced. So far no takers on that.
It could be that the project posters aren't serious, or that they're not impressed by my credentials/portfolio, or maybe my higher price.
Does anyone in the HN community regularly bid on freelance projects and get them?
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#5I hire on Elance and ODesk a lot, and almost ignore price. I've never hired the cheapest person.
Instead, put your attention on getting good ratings from past clients. That makes all the difference in the world.
Even consider using their platform when doing work for friends or existing clients. Do it through the site, letting them take their cut, because it's worth it for getting a good strong history of past-projects there.
I'm working with an animator on Elance, and even though we've done 5 projects together, have 10 more upcoming, and do all our communication directly by Skype, he still wants me to keep all project posting & payments through Elance. It's good for both of us. (After each project I give him 5-star ratings, and he does the same for me as an employer.)
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#6If you're not in a position to market your skills outside of freelance sites or at a higher cost, your skills probably aren't worth over $10/hour.
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#7Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd. Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work f…
I have to agree. When it ultimately comes down to it, you shouldn't be competing with the $10/hr crowd.
Clients that understand the importance of good design and solid code knows that it costs money and they're willing to pay for it. Clients that think $10/hr is a normal rate are probably bad clients with an unrealistic expectation of how much work it takes to produce a good website. They'll be late to pay and double the scope of the project.
When I freelance, I usually go through a talent agency. This guarantees payment, the clients are usually much bigger and the projects much more exciting than mom and pop stuff I'd find myself or on those freelancing sites. With them, I'm getting at least $35/hr full time for the period of the project. Sure, not as high as my personal rate when I deal with clients directly, but I enjoy the peace of mind that buffer provides. Plus working through an agency, I never run out of work because it's their job to find work for me. I usually go back and froth between agency and direct work.
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#8So far elance.com has gotten me decent wages that an American would expect; however, freelancer.com and vworker.com have yielded nothing but $5/hr crap jobs and projects where the scope creep was so bad I ended up making like $2/hr by the end. Also, freelanceswitch seems to be better because you have to pay $7/mo to bid on jobs and most of the $5/hr crowd won't do that.
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#9I'm still trying to make a go of it on vworker, but have no ratings. However, this guy seems to be successful with it:
http://tbbuck.com/winning-your-first-freelance-job-on-vworke...
Re: Ask HN: Do Americans stand a chance on freelance sites?
#10Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd. Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work f…
The project proposals are often incomplete, so my strategy is to make a bid, and in the comments ask intelligent questions about the project and design to show I'm serious and experienced. So far no takers on that. It could be that the project posters aren't serious, or that they're not impressed by my credentials/portfolio, or maybe my higher price. Does anyone in the HN community regularly bid on freelance projects…
I often go one step further, and highlight a very broad range in a bid, stating that my proposal is hourly at rate x. Then explain the reasons for needing an hourly assessment: lacking functional specification, requirements, etc. - making it impossible for me to determine an accurate project timeline.
I include a few points that can help them clear up ambiguity in their project requirements, and generally offer an hour of project review as a complimentary service.
On this call (or meeting if they are close), you can quickly determine if they are just trying to get a free hour, or if they are genuinely interested in a more experienced consultant who can really help them with their project.
My experience is about 25% of posters will respond to such a bid/proposal. Of those 25%, about 33% are actually looking for assistance and open to paying for experience.
Notes: I moonlight, and usually bid on projects for which I estimate 40-120 hrs of work, and they are generally in the realm of system administration, database optimization, and php (often on shared hosting). Not the greatest client group with which to work, but you encounter some interesting challenges.