Should freelancing websites allow people to hire freelancer on very low bid?

bash4996 Level 1

July 10, 2016, 3:39 pm

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Should freelancing websites allow people to hire freelancer on very low bid?

I started working as freelancing few months ago and have seen many people hiring freelancer on very low bid. And also found that people are not aware of freelancer rights.
Like a person want a website to be developed in wordpress he doesn't have design he also want freelancer to design it and want to build a plugin for its e commerce website and he is offering 20$. Another person want to hire a freelancer and want to pay 0.005$ per data entry and want to work it for him for 3 days and his total budget is 10$.
Shouldn't freelancing website check on these types of people and ban them on posting such job? Isn't it a violation of labor law?

For freelance rights visit:
https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2014/01/03/freelance-independent-contractor-rights/
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/sma...oyed-or-employee

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hitmeasap

Freelancers should be allowed to work for whatever amount they want. Even for free if that's what they want to do.
My main business is brand building and I produce content. I do forum posts mainly. With that said, I've hired people, which I've personally trained so they can make posts for me, and I've paid as low as $1 for 10 posts. I usually go with $3 of for 5 posts. With a minimum of 100-150 words or so, but I've paid less than that several times. And when it comes to my own money, the money I charge for it. That could be anything between $0,50 per post and all the way to $15 per post. I've actually worked for $12,99 per post at the most, although it was only short term but that was a fantastic opportunity for me to earn a decent amount of money.

All that said, if you want to work for $500 per hour, just go for it. But it goes in both directions. If you want to work for $0,01 per hour, that's totally up to you. No one is forcing you.

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

8 years ago

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TommyCarey

It's not really a violation of labor laws because the person fulfilling the job didn't have to do it in the first place. People will always low ball to see what they can get for the lowest price. I've paid $60 for a virtual assistant to do data entry for me and if I hired someone in the US I would have had to pay $500 to $1,000. I wasn't even low balling, it's just that people in other countries will see $60 for a week of work and that's enough to feed their entire family for a month. But some countries like the US will see $60 and think I'm low balling. I'm setting up my project knowing that I will most likely get someone from India to sign up with me.

A freelancer website shouldn't ban the people that post these types of jobs that seem to be low balling because there are people out there that will take the job and automate it so it's done in 1 hour as opposed to 1 week. If the Virtual Assistant could finish my $60 job in 1 hour I would have been super happy, but it was difficult to automate and they did it all manually.

Another reason people will takes these low paying jobs is to prove they can do the work. You won't profit much off of the job, but the person who hired you will know who you are and likely come back to hire you if they need more work done. If they come back to hire you, you can normally negotiate the price. This is if you do a good job on the first low priced project of course.

8 years ago

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Everett

People generally want the lowest price they can get, it's human nature. It's not illegal for gigantic business outsourcing their support to India, is it? A lot of the times though since they do outsource, or if someone offshore gets the work, then sometimes it's very low quality. If you want quality, pay the person whom bidded the highest, but if you don't care about quality, and just want the work done accept the lower bid.

Because you are either:

A. Accepting the bid
B. Working for the amount

.. it is not illegal in anyway. I know servers whom make $2.00 per hour, and the minimum wage here is $8.25. Is that illegal?

8 years ago

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ajlancer

Hi bash4996 thanks for sharing your experience. I think your point may logical some of reasons. Because, some of buyers and sellers always try to sale or buy services by cheap rate and they do not look quality of service. And I am sure this will not violation on labor low. Because any buyer can expect to get service with low budget and with cheap price. And he can offer job publicly. If he able to hire someone within his budget, where he violate rules? Because, decision make by mutually. It is need to common sense. I think as a buyer and seller, we must to concentrate on service quality. Unfortunately lot of buyer does not know what service has quality and seller does not know how to set up to price according to his labor?

Regards by Ajlancer

8 years ago

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EliteWriter

I am strongly against very low prices. I posted a discussion on this a couple of weeks ago in fact, whereby I discussed how I cannot understand how people decide to place bids at really low prices just for the sake of getting an order. I believe that a freelancer needs to be realistic and not charge high prices especially if he is a beginner. However some bids are way too low, such as for example there was a bid of 20 articles of 800words for merely $20. However I do not think that it is up to the site to impose prices either. It is the seller's discretion after all.

8 years ago

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Everett

I'm actually flabbergasted that someone down voted this post. I mean what you have to say is very true, and on point. However, let me put some opinion on this statement:

However some bids are way too low, such as for example there was a bid of 20 articles of 800words for merely $20.

If someone does write 20 articles that is 800 words for $20 than you can almost guarantee that the quality of those are articles are bad. They probably are:

Stolen from another website
Spinned articles
Poorly written

At the end of the day, you pay for the quality you want.

8 years ago

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EliteWriter

I am sorry to see that someone downvoted my post. Maybe they did not understand my point. If that was the case I would like to discuss this further with whoever disagreed so as to try to see what his or her opinion in this regard is.
As you said Everett, it is practically impossible to find a writer who is willing to write all those words for such a low rate. How can he feel motivated to write a proper article? No doubt that such services end up being of a very low quality, and more often than not they are spun articles or merely copied and pasted.

8 years ago

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Everett

It was probably due to someone who actually writes 800 word articles $1 or even for less. That is not even going to pay for you to eat! Who wants to work for such low pay? I can not understand why anyone would want to work, or even lower their worth to a single dollar.

I always say, as a freelancer, or whatever else you do, know your worth. Know your products worth. Don't settle for $1 services because you believe you will get more sales, sure you may, but you're wasting your time in the long run especially if you have to write 800 word articles.

8 years ago

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Lynne

Yes I remember that post and I commented on it, I don't remember seeing that it was downvoted though.

Everett you are right, most likely it was someone selling services for that amount.

You get what you pay for and it is as simple as that. I would love to get quality articles for $1, how awesome would that be? I would never have to actually work very hard every again. This is just a fairy tale though because these articles won't be quality or work for me or my websites.

If a product or service is priced too low I won't purchase it.

8 years ago

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Neiltarquin

No one should work for a meager income. That is why there's this job. Minimum wager like me can have extra income. I understan how that works, lower price means it can attract more jobs but still. Its better to have quality than quantity.

7 years ago

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vinaya

I don't see any problems on this. The only way freelancers from developing world can compete with the freelancers from europe and america is by offering to work on low payment. Furthermore, no one will hire a completely new freelancer unless the freelancer is agreeing to work on peanuts. Freelancers can set their own pay rate only when they have established themselves.

7 years ago

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Kakashi2020

It's supply and demand, if the demand is high and the supply is low then prices go up, the problem here is there's a lot more supply than demand that's why the prices are so low. But there's a question of quality, a week back I saw a job posted at either mechanical Turk or microworkers generally they post a lot of writing jobs with reasonable but low prices in this case their looking for someone to make ebooks at $20 for 10 books so that's $2 per book, and there's several people who took this job because it's closed now. So thinking about it there's no way the end product would be original for $2 a book what can you expect with that. What I'm trying to say is if the output is crappy it's because the payment is crap. What the employers are doing is ordering crap and editing it rehashing it into good ones. They only need the basics to get ideas or have a template and from there they can make it better. So they bought it cheap and turned it into a gem. That's how businesses work. I may not agree with it but what can I do. That's how it is. Those who pay good money are usually doing it to beat a deadline or has a big budget usually big businesses and the competition is very steep.

7 years ago

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Kakashi2020

Just to add some additional info most of the people who are ordering articles with very low budgets are not the end users they are just Middle men and would re-edit low priced articles and supply it for a much higher price. So the key here for us freelancers is to find which companies or clients are the good ones.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

I had posted in another forum that freelancers are being abused with the price they pay because the supply far outnumber the demand. In other words, the client can set a very low price for a job because he knows that some freelancers out there will take it. To be frank with the issue, I hate people who are opportunists and they are doing that to the poor freelancers now.

6 years ago

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SEOClerks

Should freelancing websites allow people to hire freelancer on very low bid?

Should freelancing websites allow people to hire freelancer on very low bid?

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