Here's some tips on pricing. A lot of freelancers think, that clients pick lower prices. And if they'd 1
bid low, they think they're going to look more attractive for the clients. 2
Sort of like a bargain. 3
Freelancers who have this sort of mindset. 4
They have this negative sort of taste and attitude towards Upwork and these freelancing platforms, thinking 5
because everybody's now competing for the price and there is a lot of pricing, a lot of people competing 6
with a price, 7
so everybody's kind of bringing the prices down. 8
But they couldn't be more wrong. If that was true, then you wouldn't have some freelancers getting paid 9
$500 per hour on Upwork. Websites are high value products. 10
They're not like toilet paper that the cheapest gets the most sales. 11
Businesses are going to use websites for their own business, so they can get more sales, right? 12
It's going to represent their company, represent their business and their brand, 13
so they don't want cheap. 14
They want standard. 15
They want quality. And often they're more than happy to pay for it. Just like a lot of us, who are happy 16
to pay a 1000 bucks for iPhone instead of paying 100 bucks for Alcatel. By bidding low, not only 17
you make less money, but you also win less jobs. 18
It sounds counterintuitive but clients actually prefer higher prices. 19
Why? 20
Because pricing is one way to tell if something is quality or not. 21
We know that it's not always true and we do realize that, but often we can't help ourselves. 22
Right? 23
So, we use pricing as one of the indicators to judge if something's going to be high quality or not. 24
By bidding low you're quietly whispering to your clients, that you are a lower quality. 25
Look at this list of proposals lower you scroll, more depressing 26
the situation looks. Less qualified people, no rating no previous jobs, 27
worse presentation. And you get lower prices on the bottom too. 28
So being on the bottom doesn't look attractive at all. 29
The less experienced talent is sorted on the bottom. So lower prices are associated with lower quality. 30
Just by looking at this list. This list is a clear indicator to the client that they should be careful 31
with low prices. 32
In this case, lower prices look like a warning sign, not a bargain 33
As a client when I'm hiring freelancers, 34
I hate the question, "What's your budget?" 35
Because most of the time, I don't know what's my budget. 36
I know that I want something done, but often I don't know how much is it going to cost. 37
I don't know what's the good value for it to pay. 38
So, asking that question is gonna put me into this confused state, where I don't know how to answer. 39
But when you post a job on Upwork as a client and if you choose a flat rate, Upwork is going to ask 40
you what is your budget. 41
And for somebody like me who doesn't know exactly what's their, what is their budget and doesn't 42
like to answer that question, 43
what we do is we try to pick the lowest number that comes to our mind. 44
Last thing you want to do is to overpay for something. 45
So, if I don't know what something costs, I will go way way lower on my estimates, than it's actually 46
going to cost. Because I really don't want to overpay, so I don't want to say, "you know what, I'll pay 47
2000 for this job." 48
And what if it costs just 300 bucks? Then I'm gonna assume, that freelancers are going to abuse me for 49
me kind of putting this high budget. 50
So, now everybody is going to try to take advantage of that. And they'll say, "Oh we'll do it for 2000, 51
we'll do it maybe 1500" and so on. Where in reality the job just cost $300. 52
So, to avoid overpaying you'll see the clients often will pay way lower budget, than what they're 53
actually willing to pay. 54
And at the end of the day, they'll be fine paying 2, 3 times more of what they proposed as the 55
budget. 56
So when you see a number on the budget, don't take it as 100% true, that that's exactly the 57
amount of money available they have. 58
Sometimes it's true. 59
Right? 60
Some businesses will have exactly that amount of money available for that project. 61
But often it's not true. it's just clients pulling numbers out of their heads. 62
And when you see these budgets just ignore them, and propose what is the project worth to you. Unless 63
if you see inside the job description, that they explicitly mean that that's their top budget 64
and that's what they're going to pay.