How to decide the amount for bidding to win a project from freelancer.com or upwork?

[raja90m]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was thinking of starting my own website development company. I would like to win projects from project pool websites like freelancer.com or upwork.com.

I have a rather odd question.

How to decide the amount for bidding for a project from freelancer.com or upwork.com? How do bidders decide the amount to bid? Is there any course associated with this (bidding)? Any online tutorials or articles?

I know this may not the right type of question for this category but I did not find any suitable category either. Please tell me if there are better categories to post this question.

Thanking you.


Yours faithfully,
Raja Mukherjee

P.S. I know the process of bidding online at the above mentioned sites. But I do not know how to decide the amount for bidding.

[yoligrana]

Hi Raja,

I would say that good CEO and Managers are looking for "value" rather than "price" in this kind of services.

[Harold Mansfield]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was thinking of starting my own website development company. I would like to win projects from project pool websites like freelancer.com or upwork.com.

I have a rather odd question.

How to decide the amount for bidding for a project from freelancer.com or upwork.com? How do bidders decide the amount to bid? Is there any course associated with this (bidding)? Any online tutorials or articles?

I know this may not the right type of question for this category but I did not find any suitable category either. Please tell me if there are better categories to post this question.

Thanking you.


Yours faithfully,
Raja Mukherjee

P.S. I know the process of bidding online at the above mentioned sites. But I do not know how to decide the amount for bidding.

You first have to decide how much your time is worth. After that you take each on a case by case basis, determining how long it would take you to complete x's what your time and expertise are worth, and then..since it's a bidding process..the least amount you are willing to accept for the work.

There is no exact method here. Many of the people on freelance sites are winging it. You are also competing with freelancers from around the world who may be able to work much cheaper than you because the cost of living isn't as high where they live so they can undercut everyone and still make what is a profit to them.

[bob1978]

How to decide the amount for bidding for a project from freelancer.com or upwork.com? How do bidders decide the amount to bid? Is there any course associated with this (bidding)? Any online tutorials or articles?
You'll need to estimate how much work you think the project will need, as well as the number of hours it takes to complete it. Come up with an hourly average you think is acceptable to you. When you bid that amount, you need to see if clients are willing to bite. If not, then you'll need to lower that hourly average for the next bid in another project. Keep lowering it until you can consistently capture clients. Sure, it doesn't sound great at first, and you'll have to accept going way below what your actual worth is. But the thing is, when you can consistently capture clients and do the work well, your profile will start getting some positive feedback. Clients detest risk, and it's always a risk to them when finding someone on these freelancer platforms. So when they see a service provider with lots of positive feedback, they'll want to approach and hire them, even if it costs them a little extra. That's when you start jacking up your prices. Clients in such sites have a reputation of being cheap, but the thing is, they'll actually pay up to market rates if results are close to guaranteed as possible.

So don't worry about deciding on how much to bid. The way the game works isn't to measure your worth through that. Positive feedback and good ratings are your real currency. If you build those up enough, you'll be able to decide how much to earn.