Holly,
I am 100% with you aswell. The amount of people asking for 10-20$ (50$ is rare) for a logo is crazy high, and I have no idea what the clients have in mind/expect when accepting someone designing a logo (or anything else, really) for such a low pay. But people that ask that low, usually have pretty high standards aswell...
You can see the results on platforms like the big "F", advertising how designers are "ripping off" clients, and people are better off paying 5$ for their logos, as that's a "fair pay" for those things.
Too bad those 5$ designs end up being a complete rip-off from a stock premade design or straight up a copy of a not-too-famous company logo, easily spotted by making a quick Google image search. Some even go beyond that, as they provide just the PNG, and make you pay extra for the psd (which is, mandatory if you're serious about your business/brand).
With that said,(and sorry if I'm repeating myself) I don't know what people would expect from someone paid 5-20$.
If you want a serious and lasting logo you need: research, sketching and the actual renderization of the selected concept (without counting the time for meetings and revisions etc.). Even if you boil down the WHOLE thing to just 3 hours, that's not even 3$/h (if you don't count the Upwork taxes), and needless to say, that's way below the minimum wage in most parts of the globe.
Sure, maybe you'll be able to make 40-50 of those and bank...but you'll need to reduce your production-time to 20 or 30 minutes each, and, once again, what can come out of a 20min logo design process? I think everyone gets it...but this platform (and others aswell) are still FULL of people that don't fully understand how pricing of those things work. Should the platform set a minimum-standard for some things? Maybe don't set limitations, but educate the clients beforehand?
I do understand that probably most of those clients are new to the market and starting their own little activity/company, so don't wanna spend 1-2k for a logo, but asking for 10$ is straight up insulting.
I read a bunch of threads about it just yesterday (not on this platform) and it irked me soo much.
People will still give you weird looks and scream for heresy if you ask more than 100$ for a logo. It is really hard to keep yourself motivated, if there's people around that basically under-sell the whole package just because they know how to save an image from Google and/or saw a couple of tutorials on Youtube.
Hopefully no one will type the usual "pro" answer, because that's what everyone types in those discussions:
"If you value yourself way higher than those other people, then show this to the client and let him know why he/she should pay you that amount".
Sadly, that's not how it works it seems, not on these platforms atleast, because the client will most likely (maybe 90% of the time or more) choose someone that asks for 20$ instead of someone that asks 250$, regardless of how detailed and professional your cover letter or portfolio looks, you'll never have a chance to explain your point of view.
Especially when "everyone" can have a good looking portfolio.
Take for example "portfolios" on the big "F" platform: some of the portfolios of those people that do 5$ logos are ASTOUNDING, yet the sad reality is that most of those are probably ripped off from somewhere, or were just stock vectors/cliparts reused (probably even without proper licensing)
Sorry for the "little" rant
Davide
