Free Lancer Looking for Outsourcers?

[NoeG]

I'm not having great success on free lance job boards, for every job I bid for I have 20 more people with high profiles and tons of cred on the site, not necessarily more skilled then me and they get picked every time I must of bid for hundreds of jobs but haven't been chosen for any. I think its time for a new approach, I've accepted that I'm not gonna get picked unless I have tons of work on my portfolio and also high rankings on the websites. I read an article that said people sometimes contact small businesses and other freelancers who might have some extra work that they could throw your way apposed to just bidding for jobs. This seems like the "go getter" more hands on way to find work. Can I get some insight on this approach? and has anyone been successful doing this?

[myfayt]

Usually means your prices are too high. Check out how much others are charging and adjust your price accordingly.

Also there is a big difference between personal websites and company websites.

People who want it for projects and stuff aren't going to pay more than a couple hundred tops for like two weeks of work.

But companies are ready to pay $2,000 - $10,000 for a company website, depending on if it has CMS or a store.

Don't bid on work with cheapos.

[NoeG]

my prices have always been below the average in efforts to score projects..I think its just the fact that my portfolio is really low on work since I haven't been doing this for long.

[myfayt]

That's a major problem then, people want to see 10 - 15 projects in your portfolio. The best way to increase your portfolio is to do some free work. I know you probably don't want to, but really it's the quickest way, offer to help on projects or create 1 or 2.

Also being too cheap is a turn off, if your under all your competition then raise it. Everyone believes in "You get what you pay for".

[NoeG]

so then contacting other web designers would not be a good approach?

[myfayt]

Generally they don't give out pieces of a project to anyone who they haven't worked with before. They have no idea what your capable of. It's kind of like taking Bank of America's online banking and saying here take this and make a login system for it and send it back to me.

Isn't going to happen.