My gripe against $1.00 services

My gripe against $1.00 services

I never really earned well with the $1.00 services. That's not saying I didn't have $1.00 services, but there was never a time that a $1.00 buyer actually became a regular customer. Seriously, it would take me an hour to do $1.00 worth of work. Can you imagine? There are not enough hours in the day if you are only charging $1 and having to do everything manually. That's why I rarely if ever agreed to do $1 work, just a few times and for me it was never worth it.

And, I see a lot of SEOClerks sellers trying to offer these $1.00 services and maybe that works for them if overhead costs are low. But for services which require manual effort such as writing or art, that doesn't work at all.

A $1.00 buyer is more likely to call you a scammer, demand double or triple the work or gripe about every little thing as what they really want is free work and will take the cancelation option so fast if given the chance. Seriously save yourself the headache, find a better niche or something better to sell with higher quality customers and that's when your freelance career will take off.

Now, maybe $5.00 is a little high end for some, but I found it to be the best launching point for pricing. If a buyer was willing to pay $5 for 15 new forum posts, that indicated they had money to spend, as in not a cheapskate. The $1.00 buyers are usually the hardest to please as that $1.00 is all they have sometimes and it means the world to them and they are so overly watchful to ensure it's being spent in the best way. The customers who paid me more for forum posting or blog commenting services were usually more hands off, giving me the freedom to do my work and less worried over all.

My best customers were always those which were paying $25 and up, very rarely if ever issues. Always so happy with the work results. This last thing will only apply in your case, if you are actually giving great quality and I always was.

It will take you just as much time to do a $1 job as a $30 job. That's especially true if you are doing a job that requires creative effort such as art or writing. Keep that in mind and price accordingly. Now, maybe if you are just selling likes, you can load them into the panel and click go and you're set. That doesn't apply though for the creative services.

The $1 services are not a good way to build a freelance career and make no mistake, it can be just that.

My advice is to pick a specialty or niche that doesn't require you to charge $1.00 or super cheap prices. After all, how many $1.00 services do you need to sell every month to pay bills? For instance, 300, 1000? 2000? Some sellers won't sell that many in a year or career, much less a month. So be realistic about your pricing.

Don't just latch onto offering that cheapie price and think that's going to do anything for your pocket because it will drive you into the poor house. Be rare, be the big fish in tiny pond. What skills or talents do you have to offer a buyer that no one else has? What can you do for the buyer that no one else can or will?

Seriously, every seller wants to offer some high demand service like Youtube likes and that drives the price down so low. Everyone is scrambling around to get that $1 and undercut each other, one million likes for $10. And, then no one is making money. It's just completely ridiculous. And buyers are just eating it up, urging on that competition, making sellers think their service is worthless to drive down the price more. And why, because they get more for less. Why would we do these things to ourselves? That's no way to build a career.

I guess my point being, don't chase the $1.00 cheapskates as they will give you so many headaches and a world of trouble.

Rather, than undercutting other sellers and slashing prices, you will want to offer more unique products and services, even by creating a comprehensive package in your service. Add value to each service you offer. Justify why your service costs more; emphasize quality, not quantity, not cheap price. If your gimmick is "I'm the cheapest!", you will be out shouted by the next new seller who offers more for even less. Make the customer realize they are the lucky one to have your services at the $60, rather than you being the lucky one to have their tiny $1.

A good (as in lengthy, well thought out, well written) description will not only help you sell more services but also higher end (more expensive) services, even when the competition is fierce. Include enough details to adequately sell your services well, rather than just giving a few lines description. If you are not native English speaking, then ask someone else for help on this matter or pay a professoinal writer to create a winning description for you. This will be so worth the investment, not just now but later. There are some customers who would rather pay premium price for an exclusive offer they believe is worth more, rather than get in the dirt and scrounge around with the other cheapskates for subpar service.

For instance, if you offer Youtube likes, don't just talk in your description about how you offer 1000 likes (which could be bot or real, so far as I know). Give details on your promotion plan for my video. As a buyer, I would want to know all the places you plan to promote my video so that I can get those real likes. If they're not real likes, this is a moot point. If i were paying $60 for a service, I would expect at least a full page if not two of text to explain that service to me. I'd want to know what I was paying for.


One other relevant point here, I always made sure to offer highest quality work product. Be good. Be better. Be the best! Make it your goal to provide the best quality (whatever it is you offer, even forum posting) in the entire niche. For instance, my niche was always writing, either forum posting or blog commenting and even if someone was only paying me 20 cents a forum post, they got $1.00 worth.

And, I built insane customer loyalty in that way. These buyers would come back time and again and reorder.

I always tried to go way out of my way to ensure that I was giving more value than anyone else.

The customers always appreciated my effort. Treat your customers good, be friendly and accommodating. Don't ever accuse a buyer of being a scammer, even if you think they are one as there are always going to be bad days for your customer and times when misunderstandings occur. A bad attitude will ruin any chance not only with that one buyer but any others he knows.

This same principle can be applied no matter what you are selling, whether likes or blog commenting, digital art. Whatever your niche or specialty, focus on highest quality work.

Promote yourself relentlessly. Bump your services daily. This is so important, especially if you are in a high demand, high competition niche. If you are just sitting there waiting for the buyers to come to you, well then good luck. It's not going to happen. Even in a low competition niche like blog commenting or forum posting, I rarely got work if I didn't bump at least once a week. But almost guaranteed, every time I bumped at least one good service, that one resulted in many sales which kept me busy all week. And sometimes to the point that I had to raise prices. Ask your buyers to recommend you to their friends, business associates, not just online but the people they know offline. Go pro with business cards, social media pages, anything that lets your buyer know you are the real deal and an established professional.

So again, compete on quality, not price. Keep testing to find your upper limit price for your services. Don't accept that $1.00 or $5 or even $10 is the highest you can go. If a buyer says, oh well seller X gives 10 billion of same for $1, smile and wish him well and other seller the same as that other seller won't be in business for long with stupid prices.

Give more, be better. If competition is too much for your niche, find a good niche that you can still earn in (even one similar to what you have now) that not many sellers are offering now. You will always be the winner, money wise in those situations, rather than going from one $1.00 order to the next and wondering if you will have enough money for your next meal.

Focus on quality of your service, not quantity of cheap services sold. Think of all the big name companies that built their reputation on quality. They did it by offering/being the best product, not cutting corners and slinging out cheaply made goods. Apply the same principle to yourself as a seller.

Remember you are in this for the long haul and customer building doesn't happen overnight. And, you are going to have to pass up many of those easy $1 sales to get those higher paying jobs. But if you are relentless in your quality, service and promotion, you will get there.