People per hour... ;-(
- Thread starter Baz Watkins
- Start date
People Per Hour was one of the better freelance sites as well.
It's only a matter of time before these sites get hit hard by the far east by the thousands all wanting work for 50p per month.
Competing in those market places just proves more time and effort than will ever be received in work. It can work for some though, if you have the time to monitor daily.
Freelancer.com is a whole lot worse. As with most places, hundreds of spammers will bid on every single project using the same copied and pasted text all promising services for next to nothing.
It's only a matter of time before these sites get hit hard by the far east by the thousands all wanting work for 50p per month.
Competing in those market places just proves more time and effort than will ever be received in work. It can work for some though, if you have the time to monitor daily.
Freelancer.com is a whole lot worse. As with most places, hundreds of spammers will bid on every single project using the same copied and pasted text all promising services for next to nothing.
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Weeble
Hello
New member here, first post. I've tried to sell my services unsuccessfully on PPH in the past and realised pretty quickly that PPH and other similar forums aren't good for freelancers as prices are driven down. However, I'm in the process of setting up an online business and need a website so I will be using PPH as I can't afford the prices I've been quoted elsewhere.
New member here, first post. I've tried to sell my services unsuccessfully on PPH in the past and realised pretty quickly that PPH and other similar forums aren't good for freelancers as prices are driven down. However, I'm in the process of setting up an online business and need a website so I will be using PPH as I can't afford the prices I've been quoted elsewhere.
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redtigerdesign
Agreed it's not ideal, nor are most of the freelancing/crowdsourcing sites. I think if you're looking at getting success from there, you need to push your regional/national skills - promote the fact you're a UK dev and exclusively looking for UK work. Be proud of your pricing too, enforce messages which show your pricing to be a bit higher, but that way for a reason 
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martinPPH
Hey guys,
I'm Martin from PeoplePerHour and came across this thread. There's some really mixed experiences of us on this thread so far but I wanted to share our thoughts on a few of the issues.
Obviously we're a marketplace but the mission statement of PPH is not to offshore or drive down prices to exceptionally low levels. In fact our stats (which we share on our Peopleperhour economy page) show that 88.2% of bids in the mid range (rather than upper or lower) win work. We're about quality, for clients and freelancers. In addition, 69% of work goes to freelancers based in the UK, rather than overseas.
That said we know sometimes people find it tricky winning their first job and there's a few things we recommend doing: 100% completing your profile, using an image of yourself, bidding at the right level and most of all investing time to know what the clients are looking for so you can prepare a really great bid.
We're fanatical about helping our freelancers win work so if you want to speak to us directly feel free to give us a call, send us an email (both here peopleperhour dot com/contactus.php), tweet us a question (at peopleperhour) or use our Facebook page (FB / peopleperhour]). [Not trying to push our pages here we're just keen to use whatever channel works best for you guys].
Anything else, just ask! Thanks!
Martin, PPH Team
I'm Martin from PeoplePerHour and came across this thread. There's some really mixed experiences of us on this thread so far but I wanted to share our thoughts on a few of the issues.
Obviously we're a marketplace but the mission statement of PPH is not to offshore or drive down prices to exceptionally low levels. In fact our stats (which we share on our Peopleperhour economy page) show that 88.2% of bids in the mid range (rather than upper or lower) win work. We're about quality, for clients and freelancers. In addition, 69% of work goes to freelancers based in the UK, rather than overseas.
That said we know sometimes people find it tricky winning their first job and there's a few things we recommend doing: 100% completing your profile, using an image of yourself, bidding at the right level and most of all investing time to know what the clients are looking for so you can prepare a really great bid.
We're fanatical about helping our freelancers win work so if you want to speak to us directly feel free to give us a call, send us an email (both here peopleperhour dot com/contactus.php), tweet us a question (at peopleperhour) or use our Facebook page (FB / peopleperhour]). [Not trying to push our pages here we're just keen to use whatever channel works best for you guys].
Anything else, just ask! Thanks!
Martin, PPH Team
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RevaxMedia
Hi Martin,
When I was a freelancer I used to look for work via PPH however the pricing estimate was always way too low due to the large amount of bidders.
A mid range bid on a very low budget would be very suitable for the client but not the freelancer.
Free entry level tests would be ideal for my market due to the entry level being so, very, very low, anyone can read a couple of blogs/articles and become an SEO expert and as results are not guaranteed, that client now classes the SEO industry as murkey/scam when they don't see results. Also once the clients read through 10-15 bids, anything there after they just ignore (from my experience)
Do you have any research to see what number bid is likely to accepted? within first 5,10,15 etc? would be very interesting reading.
Again, this is frustrating as I would literally spend hours writing reports for clients in terms of work flow, proposals and time scales to make my bid very accurate and when submitted 20-30 bids have already been submitted before me.
Thanks
Revax
[/close rant]
When I was a freelancer I used to look for work via PPH however the pricing estimate was always way too low due to the large amount of bidders.
A mid range bid on a very low budget would be very suitable for the client but not the freelancer.
Free entry level tests would be ideal for my market due to the entry level being so, very, very low, anyone can read a couple of blogs/articles and become an SEO expert and as results are not guaranteed, that client now classes the SEO industry as murkey/scam when they don't see results. Also once the clients read through 10-15 bids, anything there after they just ignore (from my experience)
Do you have any research to see what number bid is likely to accepted? within first 5,10,15 etc? would be very interesting reading.
Again, this is frustrating as I would literally spend hours writing reports for clients in terms of work flow, proposals and time scales to make my bid very accurate and when submitted 20-30 bids have already been submitted before me.
Thanks
Revax
[/close rant]
Last edited by a moderator:
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bediwin
It's not just those in India and the Far East driving the price down - I think there's a lot of inexperienced people doing the same thing.
Someone leaves full-time employment, thinks "Right, I need to earn, say, £24,000 per year - if push comes to shove (and I want to encourage business) I can afford to drop that a little. That's around £13/hour so I'll bid anywhere between £10-15/hour." The odd one or two people doing this can be dismissed as naivete, but when it's a constant stream it pushes the going rate down to unsustainable levels.
Someone leaves full-time employment, thinks "Right, I need to earn, say, £24,000 per year - if push comes to shove (and I want to encourage business) I can afford to drop that a little. That's around £13/hour so I'll bid anywhere between £10-15/hour." The odd one or two people doing this can be dismissed as naivete, but when it's a constant stream it pushes the going rate down to unsustainable levels.
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martinPPH
Hey Revax,
Sounds like you were competing in a very competitive category and I take your point re the budget amount but that is always going to be set initially by the client. We recently implemented a "Feedback to Budgets" that allows members of the community to send feedback to the client and this is displayed to the client as an indicator of what the community expects of a job of that size.
Re bid numbers, we get the sense that earlier bids are slightly more likely to win but this isn't the final answer since it assumes all other factors - such as the strength of the bids - are equal. We'd still strongly urge people to make a quality bid rather than a quick bid if they are to win work. So it sounds like you were doing the right thing but sadly didn't get the rewards it deserved.
Martin
Sounds like you were competing in a very competitive category and I take your point re the budget amount but that is always going to be set initially by the client. We recently implemented a "Feedback to Budgets" that allows members of the community to send feedback to the client and this is displayed to the client as an indicator of what the community expects of a job of that size.
Re bid numbers, we get the sense that earlier bids are slightly more likely to win but this isn't the final answer since it assumes all other factors - such as the strength of the bids - are equal. We'd still strongly urge people to make a quality bid rather than a quick bid if they are to win work. So it sounds like you were doing the right thing but sadly didn't get the rewards it deserved.
Martin
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- Original Poster
- #15
The problem I have with freelance sites, is the fact that the job posters seem to have such little idea about what goes into a delivered service.
I have bid on a few web design jobs, at a rate considerably lower than my normal one. I just can't price to compete. One job I bid on worked out at £4 an hour, another was even less.
The market is driven by the client, and I can't match their valuations. They all expect big loud, dynamic this, flash that, paypal everything sites for £200, with a CMS, hosting and a domain name. I'm not exagerating, as right now there is a post for a joomla template design, and the guy is offering £40 to £41 as payment. Thats not an hour thats in total. How the fecking hell do we compete when the valuation of a service is so badly skewed.
That template design price, say it took 2 days todo, that works out as £2.50 an hour...job posters need to be educated on what goes into the service they are requesting, and yet it seems to be a case of 'I don't value your work, and so I will only give you £40, and you really oughta be gratefull'...
I have bid on a few web design jobs, at a rate considerably lower than my normal one. I just can't price to compete. One job I bid on worked out at £4 an hour, another was even less.
The market is driven by the client, and I can't match their valuations. They all expect big loud, dynamic this, flash that, paypal everything sites for £200, with a CMS, hosting and a domain name. I'm not exagerating, as right now there is a post for a joomla template design, and the guy is offering £40 to £41 as payment. Thats not an hour thats in total. How the fecking hell do we compete when the valuation of a service is so badly skewed.
That template design price, say it took 2 days todo, that works out as £2.50 an hour...job posters need to be educated on what goes into the service they are requesting, and yet it seems to be a case of 'I don't value your work, and so I will only give you £40, and you really oughta be gratefull'...
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- Original Poster
- #17
The clients on your site dictate the price, so why not put some form of minimum pricing guidelines in place to tell job posters what the likely UK rates are for each service.
I've been on PPH for a few weeks now, and I have applied for a few jobs with no success. I don't expect to get much work when the disparity between what the payment offered and the minimum service cost is so big.
You cant compete at £3 an hour, and its getting worse. The prices are being driven down, and yet the costs of service provision are going up. I for one know that in terms of web design, you are fighting a battle on all fronts, everyone can do it these days, and everyone charges what the hell they like. This in turn dictates the price on sites like PPH.
Sites like PPH could help freelancers by educating potential job posters on the likely costs of the service they require. That in turn would increase the chances of more jobs being posted, and more jobs being completed.
At the moment sites like PPH act against the development of UK industry, as the values posters put forward spill out into normal life, and make it almost impossible for any small businesses to survive.
All service providers have had conversations with people who say their mate can do it cheaper or joe bloggs teenage son can build a website for £60. Its sites like PPH that help reinforce it, so please add a few pricing guidelines and help UK businesses earn a decent wage.
I've been on PPH for a few weeks now, and I have applied for a few jobs with no success. I don't expect to get much work when the disparity between what the payment offered and the minimum service cost is so big.
You cant compete at £3 an hour, and its getting worse. The prices are being driven down, and yet the costs of service provision are going up. I for one know that in terms of web design, you are fighting a battle on all fronts, everyone can do it these days, and everyone charges what the hell they like. This in turn dictates the price on sites like PPH.
Sites like PPH could help freelancers by educating potential job posters on the likely costs of the service they require. That in turn would increase the chances of more jobs being posted, and more jobs being completed.
At the moment sites like PPH act against the development of UK industry, as the values posters put forward spill out into normal life, and make it almost impossible for any small businesses to survive.
All service providers have had conversations with people who say their mate can do it cheaper or joe bloggs teenage son can build a website for £60. Its sites like PPH that help reinforce it, so please add a few pricing guidelines and help UK businesses earn a decent wage.
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RevaxMedia
I can agree with you to some extent however introducing minimum fees per country would be a god send. Having a restricted number of freelances per industry would also be ideal but I imagine impractical however when looking on your website there are nearly 20,000 similar freelancers fighting for around 90-100 jobs?
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