r/Freelancers

TL;DR: I usually bill this client $20/hr. They're a company based in Ontario. I quoted $3.5k / $5.2k / $7.4k for a stats dashboard that I also have to host on their server, wire into their messy setup, and make reachable remotely over a VPN. He said too high and that he's shopping around. Was it overpriced, or did I just pitch it badly?

I do small jobs for a lab that tracks production stats, at about $20/hr. I'm in a cheaper country, the client isn't. They asked for a fixed price to replace a Grafana board that only shows today's files, plus some PHP cron reports that fail without anyone noticing.

Their infra is a mess:

• exports land in a shared folder
• old scripts and cron jobs nobody really owns
• reports to management that break silently
• no backups
• no docs on how any of it fits together

I'd be installing and hosting it on their own machine, not my own server. On top of that I'd set up remote viewing and a VPN on their side so a few people can open it from outside the building and I can support it remotely.

What I quoted:

• $3,500: 3 desktop pages, with history, date ranges, compare to the previous period, filters, live reading of their export folder, and a nightly backup.
• $5,200: the above, plus phone and TV layouts, exports, and saved views.
• $7,400: the above, plus logins and roles, admin screens, an activity log, and the remote access and VPN.

Email reports and alerts were optional on top.

His reply: "very high to my understanding, getting a couple of other quotes."

Questions:

1. What would you charge for the 3-page version, given that hosting and setup are on their server?
2. Does being in a cheaper country matter, or do you price for the client's market?
3. Do I send a smaller, cheaper quote before his other quotes come in, or does that make my first quote look made up?

I want to ask freelancers who have been working from home. We know how it’s risky situations day by day.

First due to AI, many people lost significant chunk of their website traffic, lost revenue, small player literally got out of the business.

Now there are only few handful of people who have shifted to Insta and YouTube, so this makes me wonder.

I am so pissed. I was so excited that I got the opportunity to freelance and build a portfolio. The client reached out to me, our contract was for a week, I was supposed to be paid 9 dollar fee which was actually very less for the project I was doing for him given I needed some work experience and expense urgently.

It was supposed to be given in 3 parts. Just as soon as I provide the second draft on upwork the client ends up cancelling the contract from his side. Now I have no idea what to do because I've given my two parts and still have been paid nothing.

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i am unfortunately in dire need of 40 to 50k rupees by next 2 weeks (i have a surgery and medical bills ) that i can not ignore
i have good tech stack
i have made websites (fully functioning with seo and with whatsapp funnel)
i just have not been able to crack getting clients in freelancing i would never think of putting a message like this, but im in absolute need right now

I am very good in “boring” work. Organising documents, summarising documents, preparing documents, etc. I feel I would be a good help for people who need a “do it all guy” by sending a message to me for a boring small task and pay me like 5$ for it. Where should I find this type of people who may benefit from my services?

TBH