Price Competition in the Freelance Market and How to Beat It.

A chronicle of my journey through the tides of freelancing and its price competition.

The freelance market, mostly referred to as the Gig Economy, has grown bigger than the world imagined. Fortunately, it’s peak seems far from reach at the moment. Like every other market growing rapidly, new freelancers are entering the industry every day, significantly affecting the price of services. Freelancers in countries where the cost of living is high are finding it hard to compete because of the crashing price of services caused by the low charges of freelancers from third-world countries.

Amidst the chaos in the freelance market, there are opportunities to charge even higher and win far better clients than your competitors. As Petyr Baelish, a GOT character, once said: “the chaos is the way.”

Although I’m not as successful as most top-rated freelancers bagging hundred of thousands of dollars on freelance contracts, I have had my ups and downs within the market. Like everyone else would, I have been tossed back and forth by the crashing price of freelance services. And I have learned some random lessons from these dreaded tosses. While I briefly chronicle my short journey through freelancing so far, I’d detail the lessons I learned from the crashing prices and increasing my prices above the industry average.

The Beginning

From the suburbs of West Africa, in the last quarter of 2018, a confused young graduate couldn’t face the competitive job market where people earn so low that they could barely fix their basic bills. Freelancing was the safest “go-to”. But how do I start and where do I start from?

I signed up on several freelance platforms including Guru, Freelancer, Fiverr, Upwork, to name four. Meeting up on all platforms was overwhelming since I had to shuffle myself through each of these marketplaces searching for gigs. Eventually, I decided to settle down on Upwork and Fiverr. I dumped the other profiles. My email is clogged with updates from over 10 freelance platforms each day. I disabled some accounts just last week.

The prices of services were low but enough for me at first. Of course, it should be. I was excited to earn $365 in my first month of consistent freelancing. Anyone would be excited to earn that huge in a country where the average salary of graduate-level employees is barely $130.

Not long, I approached freelancing as a business rather than a “get-by” job. I focused on building myself as a brand to earn directly on Upwork. I couldn’t drop the Fiverr account because I was still raking in some bucks from there. Fiverr required less attention to maintain. My gigs were set up and they were having fairly good impressions. I could just run through the analytics every weekend to see how everything was doing and probably make some required changes in SEO and price. Because of this, I took Fiverr as a side hustle while I chased clients from end to end on Upwork, submitting 5 carefully crafted proposals each day.

Smoothly I rocked my boat across the sea of freelancing until I hit a rough wave…

The ‘Rat Race’ On Price

While I was trying to get every contract I could, outsource the tasks I could, and deliver the best value possible, the asking prices of clients were dropping faster than I could imagine. At a moment, I was too occupied to find out why, so I just rode the wave to make sure I don’t sink. I was cutting prices lower and lower to win contracts. While I cut prices, I cut my flesh. Arrgh, It hurts! The same thing was happening on Fiverr. Gig prices were going down. Some freelancers were offering three times more for half the usual price. It was depressing. (almost crying)

I kept going like this for several months until I realized that I was handling jobs for almost nothing. I was literally providing values for free. I reached out to a few mentors that I could contact. They were old. (Pardon me, please. I relate better with older persons for some reason I can’t seem to understand.) Most of them couldn’t really understand what it took to work from home and earn a living since they were from the previous “nine-to-five” era. They couldn’t offer specific advice but I picked up something invaluable from my chats with them.

For the stone in a catapult to travel forward speedily, it must be pulled backward first.

Ding dong! It clicked. I was running too fast and shuffling through the crowd. I needed to pull myself back a little bit to see what’s going on. At that point, I decided to take a break, look through the market, and find a way around the price hassle.

The Breakthrough

Once decided, I took two weeks off hunting for clients. I outsourced all the ongoing contracts on my plate. All I had to do was review deliveries and send them through to the clients. This gave me enough time to focus on finding a solution to the challenge in front of me. I read a few more books than I read weekly. Read blogs. Checked out top freelancer’s profiles on Upwork, they were earning so much. Some were charging far above the industry average and most had ongoing contracts. They seemed very active. I couldn’t tell what they were doing differently. Many were in my niche: writing and editing.

After about a week of peeking through pinholes, I experienced my “eureka moment” (or aha! moment, whichever you call it). The simple formula was targeting and timing. I figured out that there are clients who didn’t care about the prices of your service. As long as you are exceeding their expectations, they are ready to cut the cheque. At the same time, I figured out that certain clients, businesses, and top publications build a correlation between price and quality. No matter what you write in your proposals if your price is too low, they assume that your services are substandard. No brainer.

Although I had to strengthen my skills — through courses — to up my game, the question was how I was going to target these clients. Who they were. How they think. And most of all, when to reach them. That’s what I meant by targeting and timing.

Targeting, Timing, and Precision

These are qualities that I’m still striving to perfect — if perfection ever exists. Choosing my target clients meant that I had to know when they go to bed. When they wake up. When they need me and when they don’t. This was difficult at first because my routine is somewhat weird and nocturnal. I usually wake up by 1 pm (Nigerian Time), socialize, then work through the night.

The first step to understanding the behavior of my clients was to precisely define my target clients — those that paid well above the industry average. They were entrepreneurs, business executives, coaches, experts, publications, and even businesses themselves. These people have similar routines.

Most entrepreneurs and coaches alike, wake up early and delegate what needs to be delegated first thing in the day after fulfilling their morning rituals. Understanding this, it’s up to me to choose which entrepreneurs I want to be available to. Those in the United States with EST, 5 or 6 hours behind me, or those in Australia that is 9 hours ahead of me?

Choosing my target clients helped set a rigid time to continuously refresh the Upwork Job Feed to quickly apply for open jobs. Since most of these entrepreneurs, executives, and coaches are productivity junkies, they are probably posting the jobs and hiring almost immediately. Time is invaluable and I wasn’t going to watch it slide by. To catch a productivity junkie, I had to be one.

Once that phase passed, I would focus on businesses and publications that likely post their open jobs at the start of their working day. This set of clients usually hire immediately to get the jobs moving. While the last set that I usually don’t try to catch are those that post jobs at the end of their working day. For businesses, they seldom hire immediately. They just post and receive proposals. They sort through proposals and make hire decisions on the morning of the next day. Over time, I learned to stop investing my energy in winning this type of client. Many of them self-reflect at night and often change their mind before morning.

Basically, I had to be available when these people need me the most. And they are always ready to pay the price for a prompt and excellent service. With effective targeting, timing, and precision, I increased my prices to what they should be, improved my skills to match my high price, and maintained excellent relationships with my clients. Always being available when you are needed does the magic better than Gandalf and Lord Voldemort.