How Much Dollars Is Your Time Worth
Make Money Online | September 19th, 2007 | 3 CommentsThis post is mainly aiming the programmers and web designers rather than bloggers (even tho it has a lot to do with bloggers as well). The question to all your web designers and programmers is How much dollars is your time worth ?
I was seriously thinking about running a xHTML/CSS slicing (coding) service that would aim to design companies that need to outsource coders in order to finish as much projects as possible. Indeed it is a great idea, and it works..it does, doesn’t it? After the birth of this idea and a research of the market a new question was born without even thinking about it actually much. How much is your time worth ?
All designers and programmers are facing this question day after day. The low rates that coders and designers from India, Romania and other less developed countries charge. These low rates can be found on webmaster forums mainly, while the market research that I made from search engines (direct to designers and coders portfolio website) the prices already seem much more reasonable (to me, to someone it might sound expensive).
What happens to someone that needs to build a portfolio but doesn’t want to waste his time by doing work for free or simply doesn’t want to sell himself dirt cheap?
- Sell himself dirt cheap
- Invest your time and work for free
Since these extremely low prices exist it means that the market has a need of it, but not everyone is trustworthy with web designers or programmers that charge cheap for their work. Hence selling your self for dirt cheap might have you risk your credibility into other people that are reading the thread.
Option two would be to waste (or invest, depends on your point of view) your time and offer couple works for free just to build a portfolio. But always when you offer your self for free don’t make it be actually free, ask the guy to give an opinion about your service and the work you did provide to him/her, if possible ask to leave a backlink to your service’s website in the footer (I know, it might not be ethical but you are in the early stages).
By the way, if you are a web designer or a programmer, share with us your experience how did you build up a portfolio, it might turn of a great use to many of our readers, after all, it takes part of the internet marketing for webmasters, for those that do actually build sites for others.
Hi Astrit – I am always wary of getting work done by anyone who charges too little.
A few weeks ago, an Indian designer said he would do some work for me. He was going to charge me very little and I said I’d rather pay the going rate.
Anyway, I waited ages and he never did the work for me – I ended up doing it myself.
I think it is better to charge more and provide good value – eg. fast service.
I built my software development portfolio by being employed by some well known software houses. Being qualified and skilled usually helped in that regard 🙂 In my opinion anybody going freelance without getting industry experience is usually little more than a chancer and 9 times out of 10 ends up damaging the reputation of the industry. I packed it in because of cheap labour, there are easier ways to earn money.
I still love programming though so I still contract from time to time. It’s normally via word of mouth referral with the customer knowing my very expensive rates before contacting me.
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