I’ve recently been investigating various freelance sites, such as Rent-a-Coder, looking for juicy contracts to pick up and, to be honest, I’m amazed by people’s mentality. For example, I saw a contract that I really liked – it was in line with our expertise, the client seemed serious, but… they’re looking to pay $1500-5000 on what is basically about $100k of development effort.

Now, this got me thinking: obviously we won’t be bidding for such a contract, but other people will. Can they really offer such an amount of development effort? Even if we assume that rates on freelance sites are a lot smaller than ours, I’m thinking that people still need to make a profit, right? Either that, or everyone out there is out to con unsuspecting buyers of their money. Because it looks like you’ve got a buyer who wants a BMW but only has enough for a Lada. Do they get a BMW? I don’t think so.

The economics of freelance sites are bewildering.