Has anyone here ever tried to bid for jobs on freelance websites?

Just curious anyone ever tried this? what were your outcome? thoughts?

There is like a programming job posted every second on some of these sites. But there are like 10 to 20 people bidding for each.

Besides the money aspect, how difficult was it to actually find work? if you were willing to work for $3 to 6 US an hour? Let me show you an example of what someone wants I will copy and paste

This guy wants to pay $200 but he does not want an Indian developer my guess he wants someone very good at English without the accent BUT is he paying the price that someone in the first world would work for?

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/where-do-you-find-jobs.382511/

 

For programming jobs:
It is possible to survive on that if your country has lower living cost than USA.
In case of USA I wouldn't bother, unless you have a knack of finding contracts that are paid thousands.

Jobs are not posted every second. You'll get maybe 20 or 30 jobs per day in category you can apply to, 100 of them max. Regardless of your skill, you won't be suitable for most of them. In the jobs you can apply to most of the time you'll be outbid or ignored for no reason whatsoever.

I think working as freelance artist/designer is more viable, if you're good.

Also, the best idea is to find long-term client or community you can work for and stick to that, instead of hunting for random offers.

 

Yeah I do look on these websites occasionally and I haven't found one job that would be worth it, but most of these jobs have dozens of applicants. I saw two pretty good paying jobs Unity jobs one was 80k and the other was 100k But they were onsite jobs which seems like it's the only real way to make money

 

Ow ok I was just curious about it really I don't bid on freelance sites as I build websites for people within my country only or my region. Cost of living in the Caribbean here is low, likely not as low as India but lower than places like North America or Europe.

What those guys are bidding for at $80 USD on freelancer for websites I call $500 USD here and I get it. It may take me months to find a contract but I do get it here and there through some networking, advertising online and a sign infront my house. If I had to depend on freelance websites for a living with those Indians I think I would rather apply to work on a truck offloading cases of water and soda or something.

 

Yikes!!!

I know there are software development companies here who pay $5 US an Hour for a good programmer, thats pretty low but the thing is its a monthly salary, my guess is they are probably bidding on freelance websites aswell.
Did you know when you see people bidding for $12 US an hour on a freelance website that money is split up between like 4 people? So even though you see $12 US an hour and a promise that the job will be completed in X amount of hours ridiculously fast. Its because that hourly fee is being split between a team of people.

How can anyone compete with that if you aren't from India where breakfast costs less than 50 cents? No wonder 90% of people bidding there are from India.

 

In that case, why the heck did you ask the question in the first place?

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Yes, most likely there's someone willing to work for this price in the first world.

There are different circumstances. Someone could be be looking for fun side project or just be unable to get office work due to some sort of circumstances (like a disability). Someone also might have a template ready just for this kind of situation.

IIRC someone made a review for amazon mechanical turk and concluded that it is possible to earn slightly below USA minimum wage using that service.

By being superior to the indian programmers. "How can anyone compete with that" is not the right mindset for freelancing.

 

Interesting view on this, will keep that in mind.

 

This is important. Competing with low wage economies by dropping your price is not a sustainable strategy. Not unless you want to live a low wage life.

There are ways you can compete.

• Communication. One of the prime advantages you can have over non native speakers is the client will easily be able to communicate with you. This avoids rework and ultimately makes the job easier.
• Quality. Right or wrong you can play off 'You get what you pay for'.
• Legal status. Chasing up a broken contract or IP theft across continents is almost impossible.
• Reputation. Build up a body of work. Plenty of people will pay for someone they trust or have heard of before.

In general I didn't have much luck with the free lancer sites. There is a lot of chaff to sort through, and you need to invest a ton of time on the sites to get anywhere.

Most of my freelance work has come from the link in my signature.

 

Freelancers are specialists, I don't hire someone to do a doodle and then someone else to do another doodle, my stuff would look horrific and accounts would kill me. It's better to have a staff programmer and a staff artist and when you need someone to set up the advanced networking features of a game targeting the ISS systems then you go looking for a guy (or gal) with that particular skill to do it on contract. Also you typically want to be able to find them again later.

I have done some freelancing bits an pieces and used the various sites and sadly most of my clients from this sort of thing have been either fishy characters (you may have to tell a Judge that you just made a poster and had nothing to do with the pyramid scheme and hope he believes you) or they're small cottage businesses who will want just one more amend for free from now until the end of time.

 

Where in the carib are you??