Regarding Asking Price

I’ve got a few friends who are reading this blog, and they all asked the same question: Well, what can I ask for as payment?

The answer is: Whatever you want.

The problem isn’t what you can ask–it’s that you want too much (don’t we all?) If you’re just starting out with oDesk, you probably want to stick to something reasonable. That is, unless, you have a big name in your profession. Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you don’t have publishers or companies tripping over each other to hire you. But that’s okay! That’s the whole spirit of this lesson: start small.

So, you’re searching through the jobs and you pass by a couple you want to apply for. One of them is a job to hand-draw a pastel-style book cover, scan it in, and send it to the buyer. The other, you’re programming a simple, easy to use chat-room in Java (even though it is the devil’s language). Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the two buyers are of equal standing and the workload is equal.

Art job

In the job listing, you see that there are fifty people that have applied, and three that have been interviewed. Of the fifty that applied, the average desired project payment is about 200 dollars. Of the three that were interviewed, the average is 300 dollars. Now, if you want to get this job, you could apply and say you want 500 bucks to do the job. If your example work is good enough and the budget allows it, they may just hire you! But you will increase your chances of being hired many, many fold by undercutting the competition just a little. Since people have already been interviewed, you know that the company is looking in the 100-500 dollar range. Now, if the interviews were all in the 50 dollar range, and you know that the job is worth about 300, forget that buyer! He or she is not willing to pay you what you’re worth! What you want is to see what is reasonable and then go just a little bit under to give you an edge. For this project, I would go for about 250-280. That way, they see you’re not too greedy, and if you fit the project, they will hire you on. After that, you have another project under your belt and you can ask for a little more next time.

Programming job

This one has ten people who have applied at an average of 20 bucks an hour. No interviews. You can assume that some people have applied for 10 an hour and some for 30. Naturally, you will undercut the average and go for 15-18 an hour. You can tell people all day long that you work quickly and write clean code that has zero errors (yeah right), but unless you have two or three projects on your profile that prove what you’re saying, the buyer has to take what you say with a grain of salt. If you’re just starting out, you have to work your reputation up before you can make the big bucks. Who knows? If you take this job and do really well, then you may have an opportunity to work more with this buyer at a higher rate.

The way to the top

If you don’t have a name that they will know immediately, you have to employ good business tactics to put you ahead of the competition. It’s a plain and simple fact that if you don’t work your way up a little, you will fall flat. Yeah, you may get a job here or there that pays 50 bucks an hour, but it will take you a lot longer to establish a reputation that will extend beyond oDesk. Also, people will look at that and see that you don’t work for reasonable rates, so they will go for the guy that has more experience under his belt and is asking less.

I remember when I first started writing. I was sure that the novel I was writing was going to make me rich. Later, I found out that it was a piece of trash so horrible that my computer ate the file and spat out something looking like assembly code.

I met up with a group of writers who were doing short stories and submitting them to big journals across the globe, and they weren’t having much success. We don’t write about dying grandpas and things like that. We’re vicious, blood and guts and art types. Not maximalists, not minimalists, we’re Musclemalists. And that’s something strange to the publishing world. However, we love what we do, and we were willing to start with the little magazines that don’t pay you to publish. After about 50 publications for the group in a small amount of time, people know our names, we’re talking to agents, and we’re on track to dream careers. The thing is, we started with nothing and no one knew our name. Now, people come up to me to get my business card and ask questions.

You can do the same. Keep dreaming and designing that gold and ivory tower that you will be working from (butlers and maids included, of course), but while you’re doing that, start building your career from the ground up.