A discussion of how employers exploit freelancers and independent contractors, urging action by both businesses and legislators. If you do freelance work, you may want to take a look to see if you’re being taken advantage of….

Though it makes me angry that business owners (no, actually internet marketers) exploit people this way and destroy the level of writing in the Country, I have to stand by the saying “you get what you pay for.” (otherwise, I’ll be slamming my head against the keyboard every morning.)

Marketing has changed, and companies that cheap out and hire the lowest bidder cheapen their image and miss the traffic benefit of SEO/SEM knowledge. Companies that figure out how to adapt to the market will survive. That’s really the bottom line, isn’t it?

Companies will often spend more money on a logo shirt than on the text that will attempt to sell their image to the world. Sad.

I don’t necessarily endorse offshore outsourcing and I certainly can’t speak for all conservatives, but I do endorse a free market system and I endorse freelancing. The thing about freelancing though is that most of the time a business will go to a freelancer, nine times out of ten, to save money. Not because they feel they can get a better product.

I can also relate that most business owners that are looking for services in SEO, graphic design and content creation, seem to have absolutely NO CONCEPT whatsoever of value. I’ve priced clients out before that if they would gain one client from our SEO services, ONE, that they would have made their money back plus some. The keyword research along with their current lead to conversion metrics suggested that we would have probably ended up bringing them approximately 20-30 new clients per month… They passed in lieu of using an offshore company. I shrugged it off because I know I provide a a higher value service and its priced accordingly. I also know that Im going to go through a lot of those business owners to get to the ones that recognize knowledge and value.

Coincidentally that company paid about 15% less than the price I gave them and the keywords that they had some ranking for dropped like a stone after the offshore company did their thing. I take a slight devious satisfaction in watching that happen almost every single time. I find as long as you stay cordial and professional, once they do get dinged, or see the bad quality, it’s a good chance they will come back to use you to fix the problem or just to get quality services. I’ve gained clients that way. Then you just get to charge them more

Also one thing that I think should be noted is that just because you have money doesn’t mean you should spend it. Or more to the point you shouldn’t spend it frivolously. A good business owner knows how to invest into his/her company wisely and find the best possible situation. That’s not to say the least expensive. In fact if the most expensive is the best possible solution than that should be the solution that should be chosen, if possible.

All in all the cat is out of the bag on offshore outsourcing and as the economy keeps getting worse, which it will continue to do for quite some time now, offshore outsourcing is going to become a much larger piece of the pie.

I will cover myself here and say that I always look for US freelancers first. Our only backup Flash guy is in Chicago for example. I feel that if it’s within your means and your budget, or you can squeeze just a bit more into that budget, than I say, especially now and going forward, try to give Americans the work. We ARE transferring wealth out of this country at a frightening pace when you consider everything from oil to freelancers so keeping it here in the country, when financially feasible, should always be the goal.

There’s a 500 word article right there and all it cost was two cents on a soap box

I find myself wondering when conservatives began advocating foreign outsourcing. The direction some of you are taking is very interesting. You’re 100% right that Americans cannot compete on a wage level with many foreign countries because we cannot live on $5.00 an hour. (which isn’t really what we’re talking about here…on average, we’re talking about less. In some cases, a great deal less.)

Fortunately, the English language is difficult and people who speak it as a second language rarely get the nuances of grammatical structure exactly right. Hiring cheap often results in a website that looks like it’s written in Engrish. http://www.engrish.com/

I visited the website of the last person who told me I was too expensive for their budget. The home page was riddled with grammatical errors. I would have told him…if I really cared.

An unfortunate truth is that far too large a percentage of the population is so poorly educated that they wouldn’t have the ability to spot even the most glaring errors. However, statistically, the people with the most money to spend are usually well educated. I’m just sayin.

More to the point, this is a classic case of Capitalism in its purest form; Market conditions and competition setting the pricing standard for the industry. When you have a set controlled wage that everyone makes, well, that’s the opposite of Capitalism and let’s just say that’s called something else entirely…

Now when it comes to Ben and his article, if he can only pay $5.00, then he can only pay $5.00. He is taking a chance that the market will or will not bare that price. Fortunately for him the market does provide a myriad of options that will fit within his budgetary means. He is, however, taking a risk, be it a calculated risk that the quality of the work will not be to certain standards. However, the calculated portion of that risk is that he is paying $5.00 so while he may not get $100 per article work, if the market conditions allow it, he very well could.

Now I believe there is a slight caveat in SEO and graphic design work that differs itself from writing. You can get a lit major in high school or college to write really inexpensive (notice the word “cheap” was not used) articles for your website that are informative. While the same for SEO and graphic design, to some degree, cannot be said. Will they garner thousands of links for link bait? Maybe, maybe not, but either way $5.00 is all that he can afford.

Now in order for Ben to continue the growth of his company, he needs to best allocate funds and/or time. To Ben his time is best suited in other areas in which to grow his company. So the notion that he should drop other aspects of growth in order to write his own article when there are plenty of, at the very least, semi qualified individuals ready to create his articles for him all day long at $5.00, is, well, let’s just say that’s not the best plan of action for any business owner. Being counterproductive is still being counterproductive.

While I realize that there are a lot of freelance jobs out there that pay below what many in the US would ever accept, you have to realize $5.00 offshore, especially depending on the country, is a tremendous amount of money. For someone in the Philippines, for example, to write 8 articles a day at Ben’s $5.00 a piece that’s $40 a day multiplied by let’s say 25 days. $1,000 a month.

Over there that would get you one of the nicest apartments OR houses in Manilla, pay for groceries, car, phone, internet, etc.. and you would still have plenty of money left over to go out, save, live rather nicely actually. Much better than most with the Philippines.

(For those of you checking $1k = 48,537.98 PHP – Average Rental? 5,500PHP, high end/house? 20k php – This puts them in probably the upper 10% of the country. Sounds real exploited. I wish I could be in the upper 10% of my country )

Now outsourcing gets into a whole other ball of wax that I probably, beyond what I just wrote, really don’t want to get into the ethics of as Im simply pointing out the economics of it all.

But it really all comes down to a really simple concept, and again just as Capitalistic…

If you don’t like the pay that’s being offered, walk away, simple as that. If enough people walk away what ends up happening? The market adapts. Wages go up based upon demand. Again, simple economics, supply and demand works within the workforce as well as within brokered commodities.

And don’t get me started on Wal-Mart

So how far do you decide to support this opinion that cheap labor/goods is acceptable?