arTau

The Price of Rice

You may not have heard, but we’re in something of an economic downturn. This may or may not be the cause of what I have to tell you today.

As part of this economic downturn, we’re trying some new things with regard to looking for new projects. One of the things I’ve done is to use a site called Craigshelper to build RSS feeds of a couple of searches, so I can keep an eye out for 3D projects that may pop up around the country. I haven’t landed anything yet with this method, but have gotten close a couple times, so it seems worthwhile. We’ve also been watching a site called Elance.com, with similar results. As I’ve been watching the postings that show up, I’ve made some observations about some recurring themes that have shown up on both Craigslist and Elance postings.

First and foremost, is the tendency of posters to want a very high quality product. We all want that. I can see that. People do a pretty good job of explaining what they want. Some even provide examples. Fine.

There is a very simple saying that applies very strongly to the work I do and throughout my industry. It goes something like this; “Time, quality, or money. Pick two.” Another variant is “Good, fast, or cheap. Pick two.” It works. Every time.

Which leads to the second problem. People posting for these jobs are trying to pick all three. I guess thats the bottom line. I don’t have a problem with people wanting to shop their work, or get bids, just to make sure they’re getting a fair price. Heck, I don’t even have that much trouble with someone wanting to outsource work to India (because I know that if someone in India called me asking me to do work, I’d surely do it).

So what’s my problem? My problem is that someone is saying, “I’d like to get Product X. I’m willing to pay $10 for it.” Not a problem, in and of itself, except that a fair market rate for Product X is closer to $200. Its like walking into a Cadillac dealership, saying you need to have a new Escalade, and you have $3500 to spend. They’re going to laugh at you. The price that they’re offering to pay has absolutely no relationship to the actual cost to produce the goods.

Here’s a great example of what I’m talking about . . .

Maybe I should just be laughing at these jokers instead of getting mad.

The other thing I’ve noticed is a theme that goes something like “Great for a student to build their portfolio”, which is code for “You should be honored to work for about $.50 an hour, and might even want to consider paying us for the honor of doing the work for us, just because you’re a student.”

Anyway. Just needed to get that off of my chest. Pick two. Seriously.