Question about what to pay foreign freelancers from poor countries online?

I'm hiring more and more foreign workers on places like upwork, reddit, and craigslist. I'm trying to figure out what is the appropriate way to discuss payment/prices with them, in order to pay them as little as possible? I feel like sometimes I overpay, when I don't have to. (I'm talking about countries like...South Asia(India), Eastern Europe(Poland), West Africa(Nigeria)).

For example, consider the following: I had a writing job I needed someone to do. I find someone, and we start talking on skype. After explaining my expectations, we start talking about payment.

The first person who brings up price usually loses, because the other person can then base a rebuttal based off of it, "Joe, that's too low/high, I was thinking more like X."

So I ask him what he wants me to pay him. He then asks me what I can pay him. I don't want to reveal my price range. So we do a bit of back and forth...

I can see that I'm going to have to do something drastic or I'm going to lose here(I had spent some time explaining what I wanted done to him, and didn't want to waste that and have to re-explain the work I needed to someone else).

I DEMANDED an hourly rate from him. He gives it to me (its like $5 an hour), and then we take it from there.

That situation worked out because that was kind of what I was planning on paying him, and I was adamant about not revealing initially what I was thinking of paying him. But I'm just wondering, is there a better way to go about it? When I post ads:

1. Should I just enter a range
2. Post a really low budget
3. Post a really high budget (to get people to underbid each other)?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

-Shameless American Capitalist

Considering you can hire Pakistani programmers with IT degrees for about $2-3 dollars per hour - yeah, you're a bit on the high side. But Poland is more expensive for sure.

In the end - if you're happy with the product and feel like you can work well with the guy - fuck it, who cares? You get what you want for roughly the amount you're willing to spend. Why do you feel the need to squeeze a few pennies more out of the situation?

Your approach sounds good. Don't reveal too much, vet the guy, haggle the price. You're doing well.

Hey thanks man! I really appreciate your feedback.

>Why do you feel the need to squeeze a few pennies more out of the situation?

I can see what you mean about diminishing returns. But I dunno...I get kind a little upset whenever I buy something for like, say, $15 at walmart, only to find out I could have bought it from Hong Kong for $5.

as a freelancer, i usually start with price. i dont care if its too cheap or too expensive - its what i intend to get out of this job. if money is an issue - i just drop the guy, there's no point to waste time on poor shmuks so no place for him in my luxury club of cool clients. when i subcontract other freelancers, i squeeze them until they pay me to do the work for me. if i stumble upon a stubborn type, i just drop him - no place for him in my luxury cool subcontractors club.

regards your question, when you post ads:
- provide as little info and details as possible - this way you keep your options open and let freelancers help you figure out details with questions they ask
- dont post budget at all. if you don't know what market rate is, let the freelancers bid so you ll figure it out
- freelancer is the one who does the work and knows what price he charges for it. if he cant come up with a price, you come up with the lowest price. you then divide by two and make an offer. if its too low - offer the original lowest price. if its still too low - drop him and focus on other options.

as far as quality goes, in my endeavors i have met the most crazy and retarded clients/freelancers when the price was very low or very high. most adequate people charge/pay somewhere in between.

I often set out writing jobs on iwriter.

But there are so many trying to sell you plagiarized work. I often order what they categorize as 'elite' writers, but I'd say 25% still copy pastes from other websites and wikipedia and changes a few words.

Literally 100% of all the articles I've rejected were solely for copyright reasons.

It depends on the quality of work you need at the end. If you pay 2-3$an hour like above user mentioned you will get poor quality product. The more you pay better is your end product. Before hiring someone have a look at their past jobs.

>if he cant come up with a price, you come up >with the lowest price. you then divide by two >and make an offer. if its too low - offer the >original lowest price. if its still too low - drop >him and focus on other options.

Thanks! I'm stealing that.

I feel mostly the same way as a freelancer. When I do work for other people, the moment they start acting like retards, I just fucking move on.

I had a "client" I met on craigslist that was acting out. I thought he was legit, but it turned out he wasnt, so I ignored him. But he kept on sending me weird, blast emails that I figure he sent to all his email contacts.

So, through the craigslist relay system (sometimes it doesn't hide my email/info, but w/e) I sent him his FB profile, titled " Is this you?"

Guy never bothered me again.

That's true. I did. I looked at this guy's past work. It was pretty good as far as I could see.

In fact, yesterday I rejected one copy pasted work. But this morning one copy pasted work slipped through my fingers.

Hmmm...I've never tried iwriter. I'll have to look into that. Yeah...I can see how that can be a problem.

Most of my writing work is proofreading/editing, which its pretty obvious/quick to determine if it's bad.

The absolute cheapest place I went to get writing work done was through freaking Amazon turk, but their user interface for setting up a job as a client is just...i'll be honest, it's a little confusing if you're not an IT/Comp Sci major.

Ah sorry to hear that.

Have considered like middleman places, like upwork? If the writer doesn't produce legit new content, you don't have to pay them. However, upwork charges the writer 20% of whatever you pay them, and also, the absolute minimum budget for a job has to be $5.

Also, I got lol, a music major to proofread like 2 paragraphs I had for like $2 or so. Let's just say I got what I paid for...

I was looking at upwork, but I haven't tried it yet. I actually just picked iwriter because they were clear about their prices. I'll check it out.

I often aim for around 25-30 dollars for 1500 words myself.

You mean you pay $30 for 1500 words, or you get paid $30 for 1500 words?

I was getting paid $25.00 for a 500 word article last year on upwork.

Yeah check it out. You don't need paypal. You can just use a credit card to fund payments, which can be a good thing.

Pay. I'm working on my master thesis, so I have little time to work on my websites.
So I hire pajeets to create content for me.
I think I've put out around 50 orders so far, but I'm still sifting through the writers who do proper work or not.
On iwriter you can favorite writers, so once I've reached about 15 to 20 favorites I intend to only send them work. But so far I've only favorited 7 of them.

Try reddit.com/slavelabour. You can post jobs for as little as $1.00, or even less. You can find a lot of plebs from all over the world on that site willing to do a lot for very little. Plus no regulation, which is a plus.

Props for advancing your education. I also have a masters degree. *shrugs* it doesn't hurt.

If you're fighting so hard for pennies you really should rethink your business idea. For any good hire to work both sides have to see eye to eye and be happy.

A few thousand dollars is never worth a bad employee and good partnerships are always worth more.

COPYWRITER HERE ILL DO 12 AUD PER PAGE (250 WORDS PER PAGE)
12 DOLLARS PER 260 WORDS WADUP SONNNN

I do a lot of outsourcing, but very rarely in the writing niches.

You will never ever get quality from an Indian. They might be university lecturers in the English language, but their local brand of English is too fucked up.

What you want to do is go on upwork (or iwriter etc) and look for those guys in Pakistan or Bangladesh, Eastern Europe or Philippines that rank the highest, and has the most gigs. There will be 1 or 2 (out of many hundred) that have a UK background, or are simply autistic enough to have a perfect command of the lingo.

This sounds harsh, but it's true. Not that many Americans would be able to do copywriting either.

If you go with lower quality you will spend a lot of time rewriting. You could just as well go with wordAI in that case.

If you break it down into a full-time job, these kinds of people can get $500 - $800 per month based on what they are already paid. So you base your pay on that. A pro-writer working full time should be able to churn out 3000-5000 words on a basic topic daily. Which is approximately 6-10 blog posts that are big enough for SEO purposes.

Thanks for the feedback user.

I had one really nice Indian guy who did pretty good work for me. But yeah, I've had pretty good track record with Filipinos.

What work do you outsource? Some other web stuff?

Also Russians too. Russians are good at web stuff...I'm surprised the kind of low wages some of them will accept. There is this guy on fiverr who did some marketing work for me. He did some like HTML 5 stuff and made me a video, and a few other banner things for like $20.

>*shrugs*

kys faggot

Let me guess, you don't have one and you're jealous?

lol yeah that's totally why he said that, couldnt possibly be anything else. it's not you, it's just that everyone everywhere who criticizes you is just jealous, every single time.

confirmed for absolute plebbitor masterfag.

Simple method:
-put out help wanted ad
-gather responses
-talk to guy A, find out what he wants to be paid
-Repeat for guy B, C, D, E, etc
-tell guy A there is guy B who offered his services for X price (using the lowest offer)
-haggle between all candidates until you hit a roadblock in price drop

and there's your lowest possible payment.

Keep in mind income level is drastically different across different parts of the world, and in some cases even just diff areas of the same country. Generally speaking, the cheaper you go, the shittier their work and results will be, they'll be less reliable in pretty much all ways (completing jobs, staying in touch, ETA's, hell even just staying in contact and not vanishing after 1 day)

In my experience it's really not worth dealing with the cheapest of the cheap and hiring these guys. I've done it a handful of times and it always turns out to be a waste of my time. There's a lot of value in paying a fair price to someone with some quality.

if i spent 10 cents on a dozen eggs and theyre all spoiled when I crack them i've lost 10 cents. If I spend 10 cents on a single egg from a reputable seller and its fresh, hey, I get to eat breakfast.

don't outsource to india you fucking traitors
white writers need to eat as well

you deserve all of the crappy writing you get because you hire shitskins who don't speak english natively

>tfw they don't hire australian copywriters

kill yourselves

Dude, it's the same reason you'll go with the Safeway or Walmart brand over the national brand.

Do I have to put 2 and 2 together?

Are you seriously asking me why I'd rather pay $0.50 for the Walmart Butter rather than pay $5.00 for the LandoLakes(the one with the Pocahontas) Butter?

Paying people crap wages can totally backfire, and you're sort of giving work to someone foreign that could instead go to someone locally. I get that. But, I dunno man. I want to make money too.
************************
Plus, if you're Australian, don't you guys have like a higher minimum wage than even the U.S.? I mean, I figure you must be doing pretty well for yourselves--tons of space, developed economy, infrastructure, gold/iron/minerals in perth...seriously, I'm not seeing any drawbacks.

Are you fucking retarded?
Record ONE video of the requirements and send it to 10 contractors, and demand they put what they want in the email, then choose.

Dont explain it to every single one separately lel, only as a follow up after you know the rate

I need some work to do OP please, reach me at [email protected]

yo nigga

wut u need iz a book dat be tell u wut3do

#swaag
#2pacxshacoyax4xlive

>Considering you can hire Pakistani programmers with IT degrees for about $2-3 dollars per hour - yeah, you're a bit on the high side
Programmer here.
If you think you're gonna get anything done for $2-3 an hour with some Pakis... well, I've got bad news for you. Maybe you'll get a Wordpress installation with a pirated skin. Maybe.