Design Prices Driven Down...

After looking around the internet at a lot of freelance sites and resources, I get this sinking feeling about the freelance design community... Why?

Well it seems to me, on the internet, there are a lot of younger people, who, in looking to get their feet wet, will bid any amount to try and get a job... I've seen people bidding 100 bucks for a website for their portfolio or what have you, but where does that leave a lot of us who have been working in the field for years? I can't afford to undercut so much...

I think a lot of clients realize you get what you pay for, and although many younger designers are talented, theres potential customer service and reliability issues...

It's just frustrating for me to see so many people flooding the market with low bids to get the experience.

Anyone else see this around?

Unfortunatly if you've been browsing alot of the "rentacoder.com" style of sites you will notice alot of the people who bid for work are from countries like India (where $100 is worth alot more to them than it is to us). However, there is a growing number of younger designers/developers in this business and they will work for anything. If someone can get the same thing done for cheaper then they will naturally go for it.

I understand your frustration, the best way to deal with the bottom feeders is to promote your service as one of "high quality and service" and if anything, I would raise my prices as a sign of this. You won't get all the business that's out there but you should start targeting the higher paying clients (believe it or not some people will pay big bucks for a professional service). Bottom feeders are just that.

On a side note, i'm enforcing a rule in the contests forum soon (minimum prizes for contests) e.g $50 for a logo, $250 for a coded design etc. I'm sick of how things are turning out as well, i'm going to try and do something about it! At least here on tf anyway...

you're right robson... good points...

yeah, im with you on the contests... there's a lot of good ideas, and the contests are great, but its like people will create a contest and the prize will be "winner gets to do my laundry"... lol