The Super Freelancer (more like snake oil salesman)

[host4go]

Hi guys,

I wonder how many of you use freelancer websites to hire designers, SEO´s, developers and so on... I am guessing a good chunk of you already did.

The freelacer websites are full of snake oil salesman, jack´s of all trades ... self called "experts" most of this freelancers will apply to every kind of job, from toilet cleaning to building a space shuttle while calling themselfs the expert in the matter.

I just saw a perfect examples of this "extraoinaire" freelancers.

Look at this proposal.

--- Start Quote ---

Hi {customer name},
I completely understand your requirements and can start the project immediately.
I have around 5 + years experience in web development and SEO. I have verse exposure to PHP, Magento, Joomla, Codeiginiter, Cake PHP, Shopify, WordPress, Drupal, MySQL, PSD'S convert in bootstrap 2.3.2, bootstrap3, bootstrap3.1, DHTML, XHTML, XML, PSD to HTML ,HTML5 ,CSS3 , Responsive Design, Adobe Photoshop Coral Draw, Vector Graphic, Java Script, Ajax, JQuery, Adobe illustrator, SEO, SMM, SEM, Content Writer etc.
When we can discuss future details of the project ?

--- End Quote ----

I can bet your arse, that this extraodinaire brain wil offer his services for some low $$$, and the customer will trully believe they were able to get such an extraidonaire professional for the value of a meal out in the town.

Newsflash people. If it sounds to good to be true, it is! (yeah I took out the "probably" because,... well, there´s no chance in hell this guy would be offering his services for a couple bucks with IT companies contantly in the lookout.

And then there´s another assumption people make on this website. They trully believe a good developer from India, Pakistan and the likes work for pennies. Let me tell you. they dont! good developers in India charge the same as the EU / US ones, you know why? because they know their shit so they don't need to undervalue themselfs.

So now you ask...

So who's the guys worknig for pennies?

My good friend, I'll tell ya.

It´s the "Developer" that uses programs than are no more than template generators (thus why you always see this guys trying to shove Wordpress into your throath". (don't confuse with commercial templates clubs)

It´s the "Designer" that uses programs like AAA Logo Designer

It´s the SEO expert that his only tool is the Free Google Websmaster tools

It´s the SMM that tells you about the wonders of fake likes

... and this continues because the freelancer websites dont give a shit about who´s getting scammed as long as they get their cut.

So now you ask. "Are you saying that there are no good freelancers out there?"

NO! that´s not what I am saying, but unfortunately 99.9% of the customers won't hire good freelancers because their proposal will be several times over the "expert jack of all trades proposal".

/rant

Beware people. If the freelancer is working for a sum your wouldn't. Don't hire him.

 

[raindog308]

You get what you pay for.

It's slightly distorted in the online world because you have different economies and in some countries, doing a web design job for $100 would make sense.  But those people are not idiots - if they can get $500  by charging the going rate, they'll charge $500.  The only people who charge $100 are the people who can't charge $100.

If you pay less than the going rate, you won't get good work...this is the story in every market.

Also: check references.

 

[host4go]

You get what you pay for.

It's slightly distorted in the online world because you have different economies and in some countries, doing a web design job for $100 would make sense.  But those people are not idiots - if they can get $500  by charging the going rate, they'll charge $500.  The only people who charge $100 are the people who can't charge $100.

If you pay less than the going rate, you won't get good work...this is the story in every market.

Also: check references.

This may come as a shock to you, but a good developer in India, hired by an US/EU company with offices in India, earns as much as his EU/US colleagues.

The thing with outsorcing to Asia (India, Bangladesh and Pakistan being the most outsourced to when it comes to freelancers), is that people really believed that the good guys would work for $100 because in India everything is cheaper, but, the reality is different. Allot of  large corporations have offices in India, this companies hire whoever is good, regardless of origin and will pay them fairly to keep them motivated.

Who´s charging 100$ is not the "out of luck" developer, it´s the guy that it´s not a developer, designer or anything of the sorts.

This is way you see so many self appointed experts floating around in freelancer website. The sme guy claims to be the best at pretty much everything he remembers to add to his "list of skills".

and the portfolios, oh my.. these are as fake as they come. I have literally seen the same logo on diferent portfolios.

Sites like freelancer.com feed this "distorted reality" because it fits their business.

 

[drmike]

Any time anyone tosses the word expert into anything a big red ALERT light flashes in the mind of rational folks. Very few experts in anything and you aren't going to find those folks working on cheap outsourcing sites.

There are folks who can and will work low dollar projects.   Those low dollar projects are formula-based.  Graphic design is a good example - where they have down a trendy effect and the 15 steps to designing ____whatever____. Usually these are visual creative pieces.

With coding, quite rare considering the time invest to spec things, actually develop, QA testing, client interaction, etc.  Even intending to be cheap folks quickly run up hours when doing all of that at some acceptable baseline.

The testing/proofing, client relationship and related interaction - those are universal must do's and no way around it except to deliver broken and error heavy material and have client wondering WTF is going on during development.

Very little bargains truly in life.  There is almost always a catch where cheap costs you otherwise - like having to find a second developer, finding out what you bought is indeed borrowed or just not getting what you needed by end of relationship.

 

[host4go]

Very little bargains truly in life.  There is almost always a catch where cheap costs you otherwise - like having to find a second developer, finding out what you bought is indeed borrowed or just not getting what you needed by end of relationship.

You just summarized most of the transactions in this freelancer websites.

Recentely I talked with 2 enterpreneurs, on from the UK and another one from Holland, both had been thru several developers, one of them hired the first developer about 1 year ago, now being on his 4rd he discovered his website had over 500 errors (or so he was told).

All this "cheap" developers costed him to date almost 3000 €. And he haves nothing to show for it.

The other is on his 3rd developers, 1200€+- in costs and still no website to show.

None of this guys wanted a template. So they have been burning money with "low costs" developers, and will continue to burn money until the day they realize that it´s better to pay fairly to a developer and have the project completed professionaly.

From  what I hear, here the usualy interaction.

- Customer submits a quote request (on several freelancer websites).

- Tons of people will bid, some people actually say they will develop a full website for 50 bucks.  Lot´s of people tryign to guide the customer into a wordpress website (go figure )

- Customer immediatly dishes the high end quotes and interview the low end ones.

- "developers" are expert in everything and anything and start claimign they do cheap work for multinationals and so on..

- Customer hires one of the low end bids.

// Work start

- Developer comes back with some shitty work.

- If a customer complains the developer will ask for more money saying that it is mroe complicated than he supposed and so on..

- If the customers doesn't accept to pay more, the developers goes away with his initial payment and the customer is left with no other option that submit a ne quote request to find someone else.

Rinse and Repeat.

But theres even a bigger problem. Some people would say "ok, so to save myself of this trouble I can always hire someone with  a high end budget".

Well, kinda, but not really. DEpends on how high end is the proposal. You really should always interview the person properly, don't hire on the spot, talk, go for a skype call or just communicate via email for a couple of days. Make every question you can think of and see what he replies.

Most of the times you will be able to identify if the guy is full of shit or if he´s the real deal.

Try to find a gig in sites like peopleperhour.com elance.com odesk.com freelance.com and so on and you will find out that allot of those self proclaimed experts are actually trying to hire other self proclaimed experts to do the work.

The only way to fix this would be if the freelancer website would do some sort of screening. but they dont care.

Take a peek at: http://www.rozinskiy.com/why-india-outsourcing-is-doomed/