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3859ff8f
Community Member

How to estimate a price

Hello,

 

I have a product in mind but I have no clue how much I should pay a freelancer for it.

Whats the best way to estimate a price?

 

Thanks

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prestonhunter
Community Member

You are not required to estimate price. Post the job as an hourly contract. Then you don't need an estimated budget or price.

 

If you post a fixed-price contract, you can put in a placeholder amount, such as $5, and state in the project job description "$5 is a placeholder. Please provide your own quote."

 

You should not even be trying to post a job for the whole project anyway... just the first step.

 

For best results, hire six freelancers to do the first step, and then continue working only with the freelancer (or freelancers) who do the best work and provide you with the best value. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing who will be the best people for your project.

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prestonhunter
Community Member

You are not required to estimate price. Post the job as an hourly contract. Then you don't need an estimated budget or price.

 

If you post a fixed-price contract, you can put in a placeholder amount, such as $5, and state in the project job description "$5 is a placeholder. Please provide your own quote."

 

You should not even be trying to post a job for the whole project anyway... just the first step.

 

For best results, hire six freelancers to do the first step, and then continue working only with the freelancer (or freelancers) who do the best work and provide you with the best value. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing who will be the best people for your project.


Preston H wrote:

You are not required to estimate price. Post the job as an hourly contract. Then you don't need an estimated budget or price.

 

If you post a fixed-price contract, you can put in a placeholder amount, such as $5, and state in the project job description "$5 is a placeholder. Please provide your own quote."

 

You should not even be trying to post a job for the whole project anyway... just the first step.

 

For best results, hire six freelancers to do the first step, and then continue working only with the freelancer (or freelancers) who do the best work and provide you with the best value. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing who will be the best people for your project.


Just in case you want a second opinion, I think that it's a huge mistake to post a fixed price project for $5. Many freelancers (myself included) filter out projects that have low budgets, whether the client intends for it to be a placeholder or not. You'd be better off putting at least $100 as your price (more, if you know that it's a large project like a website). 

 

In most cases, it's also counter-productive and completely unnecessary to hire multiple freelancers. If you'll have to split your budget 6 ways, you'll only be able to hire cheap freelancers, not good freelancers. You'll also need to find the time to manage six different people (unless of course you hire a project manager, which I'm sure will be Preston's next suggestion). IMO, it's better to go through the profiles and portfolios of the freelancers who apply, and choose one person who seems to best fit your needs. If you want to exercise caution, you can ask them to do only a small portion of the project so that you can review their work early in the process, and if they seem to be a bad fit, then you're still free to choose somebody else. 

 

re: "Just in case you want a second opinion, I think that it's a huge mistake to post a fixed price project for $5."

 

Very good point.

 

Many freelancers will recognize a $5.00 fixed-price budget as a placeholder. But many will NOT, and many will automatically filter out such projects.

 

Christine's suggestion to use a higher-dollar figure is a good one.

 

If you absolutely don't want to estimate a price, then you definitely CAN specify $5.00. But it will mean many freelancers won't look at your job posting.

 

 

re: "In most cases, it's also counter-productive and completely unnecessary to hire multiple freelancers"

 

I agree that this isn't a "universal solution" to everything. But one of the most common mistakes clients make is only hiring one freelancer to work on an important project.

 

If 10 people apply to your job, and you only hire one of them, how do you know you hired the best one?

 

You don't need to hire ALL of them. But if a client wants to save money and/or ensure a high level of quality, it is important to hire multiple people and evaluate their work.

 

Remember: You're not hiring duplicative freelancers for the entire project. If you really only need one freelancer to work on a project, you're simply hiring mulltiple people at the very beginning. You don't even need to have them do exatly the same tasks, although that is often the best option. You could have them work on separate tasks, and still get a good idea about which ones are great, which ones are terrible, and which ones are in between. Continue working only with the best.

 

The MAIN reason to hire multiple freelancers initially is to save money. If your budget is tight, you want to maximize the value you obtain from the people you hire. If budget is not a concern, then it doesn't matter very much if you hire a freelancer who finishes the job in 40 hours instead of 20 hours.

 

Finally: If you are using fixed-price contracts, you need to start with SMALL tasks regardless of whether or not you plan to hire multiple freelancers or only one. Especially if you are new to using Upwork. You definitely shouldn't tie up your budget with a single fixed-price milestone/task. You haven't worked with this freelancer (or these freelancers) before. You don't know what they'll do. So start with an initial task and see what they actually submit to you before committing substantial money to work with any freelancer. Always keep in mind that when you set up a fixed-price milestone, it is not Upwork's intention that you ever get that money back. The money is sort of under your control, in an escrow account, but you can not get the money back unless the freelancer agrees to give it back to you. If you hate the freelancer's work, it is better to have learned that after spending $50, rather than $5000.

resultsassoc
Community Member

Thibeau,

 

My first question is, "What is it?" as in how much I should pay a freelancer for it?

 

"It" can be a design, a sample, a photo to use for advertising or other purposes. Your post will need to specify this. "I need a manufacturing-ready CAD file for my veeblefetzer along with a Bill of Materials, estimated labor hours to manufacture, cost of materials and any manufacturing assumptions." I know dozens of people who can give you this it.

 

"I need a prototype of my veeblefetzer per the attached specifications. Please indicate estimated price for one prototype, as well as time to produce, and any other information you require to create it." I know dozens of people who can you this it. None of them can give you the CAD file it.

 

"I need a photo of a mockup of my veeblefetzer a per the attached rough drawing and description. Milestone one is a phone conversation to provide any other needed information, and to set a final price for the second deliverable, the photo of the mockup." I know a few people who can do this, none of them can build you a prototype and none of them can give you a CAD file.

 

If you list $5 as the price I'll never see it, nor will most experienced freelancers. I filter for minimum price $251; others have different minimums. Good luck.

bizwriterjohn
Community Member

In classic consulting work, we face this issue constantly.  To deal with it, there is a classic response.  Declare the first project to be one of scoping.   "Your first piece of work is to learn enough about what I want to accomplish so as to provide back a responsible and granularly estimated scope".  (Through some phase of realistically scope-able nature.)  

Then, given the importance of this project to you and its probable size, I would engage at least two freelancers to work through a Phase 1 scoping project.  This, in turn, returns two (hopefully) well-thought-through project scope declarations.


Net-net: declare phase one scoping work as a formal deliverable.  Provide some structure as to what you want back so both scoping estimates can be compared.  A bit of money has been paid but you have received back something of great value.   Realistic and granular scopings.

 

Then hold their delivery feet to the fire when they accept the responsibility of delivering what they have been paid to scope correctly.
John.

 

 

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