I find it hard to 'compete' with people who constantly undercharge for services. Now that a lot of people undercharge for work people like me find it hard to get paid the right price. We often get no response or responses like 'well I'll pay you 70% less of what you asked for because so and so offered to do it at that rate, take it or leave it' But 'so and so' doesn't even know what he's talking about. They're probably plagiarizing anyways. I mean they're not even trying to go higher, in fact they keep going lower. Just the other day I was on a forum and saw some guy who couldn't speak English, at any comprehensible level, selling his posts for 1 penny each and the articles for 25 cents each. What is up with the internet today? Are we all to lower our standards because the world is unaware that many of these undercharging people aren't even capable of speaking the language they're advertising in. I mean I wouldn't be so mad but seriously... YOU CAN CHARGE MORE EVEN IF YOU CAN'T DO THE JOB RIGHT! That's why many states and countries have minimum wages so people don't start working for a penny a day again. I've started working with the real world again and I write content, design, and program for at least $10 an hour. I've charged up to $1000 for installing designing a basic ecommerce website.
Who the heck are you determine what the "right price" is and that people are charging too low? If people don't like your prices they're going to go to someone cheaper. Thats called competition. Either sell your services cheaper to compete with them, get out of the business, or try and perform a better service and charge a higher price for quality. If people want to work for a penny a day, let them.
I am no to judge at price but I can personally say as a business major that they will drop the market. Sure do it at a penny a day and then the next day someone will do it for half a penny. Guess what? business/website owners won't make money because everyone is working for a damn penny a day. They can't afford to pay for advertising, they can't afford to buy anything from anyone that earns normal wages. Owners have lower their prices. Then you have to start charging a penny a day. Next thing you know business doesn't exist. Not to mention a lot of people actually do have the quality and yet they believe they should charge 2-5 cents a post just because everyone else does and it's the first price they saw. I personally have been getting posters/article writers offering their services at much lower prices and I pay them what I would expect in that position a good price. I don't take advantage of people. In fact I try to educate because I believe everyone deserves better in life. It is easier to fail than succeed. Lazy doesn't strike a good impression of anyone in my book. Charging a penny a day not only shows me a lack of confidence but a lack of education. Ignorance. And I'm not the one that decides. Statistics do. Statistically writer's earn so much a year. Then you divide that by the average amount of hours they work a year. Then estimate how long it takes to write an article. Do math basically and it comes out to a price you should charge. It's not healthy to lower you prices by that much. If you feel that it should be that low you know nothing about healthy competition. Supermarkets for instance truly never go below 25% of what their competitors charge unless they're trying to clear stock that doesn't sell. Wholesale exists but usually you have to put in so much before you get 'super low cost products'. Simple economics. I'm sorry but I don't think the future all want to work at a penny a day. And who are you to say I can't have my opinion on such a matter . OH and even more on that note I've known many situations in which people pay the average man below average pay. The rich got richer and poorer even poorer. Created a great social divide just because a couple of people couldn't compete in a healthy form. They were too lazy to learn. If you have an internet connection the options are endless for education. Personally I learned a lot of HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Quarx, Flash, and etc. I even learned about other cultures and habits. There should be no excuse to still have such poor quality and still charge a penny a post. Situations like this give capitalism a bad name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism I'm not going to force them into charging more. Go ahead it's their choice but i pity them. They probably don't want or need it but I can still say I pity them for all the business owners who take advantage of them.
so you charge more but get less work no one bumps your thread so your thread dies.... You charge a cheap price and get alot of work you build up a customer base and them few cents turn into a few dollers who has more sense? the world wide web is made up of different countries if i sold my house here i could retire in india for life....
You're a pretty lousy business major if you don't understand basic free market economics. There is nothing wrong with outsourcing jobs, and it actually helps the economy grow. There is a market for crappy articles and there is a market for well written articles. You can easily earn $20+ per article you write, if you write well, but unfortunately, from this post, I can see why you're chasing the low quality article market.
When the economy drops, people will try to get more for less, that is true. However, you can always pick a different market and in my experience, searching for work via freelance sites or DP doesn't really work; too many 2 cents guys. Just take your local telephone directory and start calling; I still make trivial websites and get paid up to E25k for them. Quality doesn't matter too much; what is important that companies just want to get everything from someone who works close to the company and who can deliver all services and support. For instance; the above 25k site was 1 week work (including php/design etc) all done by me and the company wanted me to host it too; hosting and support I put at E5000/year. Great fun
Lol good point. Kudos for you. Anyways I just hate waiting 4 weeks for a person to reply back to my job application because I'm charging higher than anyone else. And then they end up hiring me to edit the article or improve someone's mistakes. Just now I had done a simple copy and paste job. The guy almost didn't want to pay me because he said that I had lousy English skills. He replies back a day later only to realize he had mixed up his hired posters. I still got paid but moments like that make it hard. I also had my payment delayed because someone else screwed up. And clearly a lot of people don't advertise 'low quality articles only 25 cents each'. In fact most people just advertise it as 'unique content'. So the 'crap quality' and 'quality' isn't really defined on here. BTW I'm in the process of a Business major, I just finished first year. So I'm no expert but from what I learned so far. The tactics of a penny a day are a bit like kicking someone in the balls in a fair boxing fight. We'll recover but it's very low on their part. Well I've stopped the calling because people just refer me now. I do desktop publishing, HTML, CSS, ecommerce, and web design. I'm not the best at it but my clients feel it's better than what they could've gotten if they had gone through someone else. However I don't offer maintenance because my schedule is hectic, so I don't earn as much as I could. Not to mention I live in a big city and everyone wants Flash design which I refuse to offer for personal reasons. I'll probably be moving on to animation and cartooning. I feel business is doing better in that field now. Web design and online jobs are mainly gas money or school money for me. Besides I know I'll never be able to compete with the big dogs once I graduate. I think I'm more artistic than professional when it comes to web designs. A lot people want sleek and calm. I often make out of the ordinary. I've been told if I did band profiles I'd get better business but they all want flash websites . Well you could and that sounds like one hell of a retirement plan. I do think India will be gaining a bit more as far as money and maybe your dollar won't go so far anymore. They offer incredible customer service at low rates. Not dirt cheap low rates and they are hard to compete with because they have people who are trained and actually speak the language they advertise in. I have no argument there except when I get someone who has an extremely heavy accent that I can't seem to understand. I try to work with it most of the time. I don't think that the business off line is the same as it is online for Indian people. On top of that I feel that by doing that, even if it is a good idea for you, isn't such a great example for everyone else. I feel like a bit of a slave owner if I did that sort of thing. I earn millions here then go off to another country and pay them extremely low rates I mean I'd at least offer a bit more seeing as I'm more fortunate than they are.