Success in Sweatpants

I estimate that about two-thirds of the buyers on Elance (and likely on Guru) are buying primarily on price. They want the lowest possible cost, and that criterion supersedes all others. I have a name for these buyers and the service providers who court them: bottom feeders.

Bottom feeder mentality is not a child of the internet; I dealt with bottom feeders in my offline company in the 1980s. It is a fact of life in the services business. The trick is to avoid falling into the trap of trying to compete with them or of taking them on as clients.

Think about this example in the copy writing market: There is a surprising number of buyers on Elance who post projects requesting a series of articles, say 25 or 30, of 500 to 750 words each for $5 per article.

Say what?! $5 per article!

And many of these buyers yammer on and on in their posts about how the material MUST be original, not plagiarized, and so on.  Mind boggling.

But wait. There’s more.

The really amazing thing is there are copy writers who actually bid on these jobs! 

Granted, some of the bidders are from countries that have different cost of living structures, such as India. I guess they can afford to take this low price and make their version of a 6-figure income. But not all the bidders hail from those countries; there are many who are from the U.S., the U.K, and Canada!

Five dollars won’t even cover the electricity to run their computers while they write! What are they thinking?

Beware of bottom feeders. Don’t sell to them and don’t compete with them. Seek a higher level in the water column and only swim there. You’ll make more money for less effort and less stress. I promise.