How to compete with low market prices?

Hi! Lately I have been reviewing freelancer work platforms and I could observe that the prices offered by freelancers from countries with fractured economies are very low, much lower than the average, which makes it difficult for other programmers to compete . It's nothing new, I know but the idea of this post is to learn more about the topic.

I understand the free market and that everyone sets the price they consider fair for their work, but doesn't it end up being unfair? How do you compete with those prices? Even for the same programmers who offer those low prices.

What would be the solutions to this problem? For example, for me it would be, that the platforms establish a minimum price for technology, that is, depending on the technology there should be a minimum price to offer in this way if someone charges the minimum would be charging the fair.

For the freelancers who work on these platforms...

-What has been your experience?
-How do you compete with such low prices?
-Are there any platforms that set minimum prices?
-What would be your solution?

I'm waiting for your opinion.

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

Comments

[yellow1912]

I think experienced clients who have been burned before know what they expect to get vs what they should pay.

First you should identify your strong points for example:

1. Business understanding: if you have good understanding of business in general, it will greatly help you the understand and deliver exactly what the clients want. You may even act as a tech consultant.
2. Languages: if you can communicate with the clients in their language it's also highly appreciated and allow you to get in different markets.
3. Expertises: it's great to know lots of things, but being a specialist in certain fields make it difficult for your clients to choose anyone else but you.

[Lesly Villalobos]

Good point but the percentage of new clients is higher than that of experienced clients. A new customer who doesn't know what to expect usually prefers the cheaper.

[yellow1912]

Another option to get in the low end market is to mass produce. Something that you can work on it once (kind of) and sell to thousands. Those include: templates, plugins, saas services, etc.

I saw some neat simple things such as instagram scrapper got sold as a service for several usd per month.

[yellow1912]

So true. But let them get burned once or twice. It's difficult to tell a child not to play with fire because it's hot till he/she experiences that.