I've been doing some freelance work lately, for that little bit of extra money... I am living on a REALLY tight budget at the moment so I try to chose what I think are 'fair projects', but it seems I always get shafted with something that ends up being totally inadequate pay because of the sheer amount of time required to do it. And I can't ask for more pay, as I always get told "you agreed to this amount at the beginning.. " bla bla bla.

Here's some details of a project I agreed upon recently for a Prestashop store:

1. To update all product descriptions, keywords and titles for 8 websites.
2. Update all product tax codes to 6%.
3. Update all product weights.
4. Install 3 new modules to each Prestashop store.
5. Update a template for one of the sites.

Hm, so most of that looks simple enough. The data entry part should be easy if using an import, eh?

And all of that was for 350 dollars. Seemed fair at the time, I mean most of the data can be imported, RIGHT? WRONG! The spreadsheets provided are not in the same order as the database on the site. ALARM! Second, the spreadsheets contain 130,000 products - 50% of which have the EXACT same product name in the database. So that means there are like 20 or 50 products with the same name. s###, this means an UPDATE query is going to have a fit. So I need to create a numbering system before importing. Let's see if spreadsheets have been imported in a certain order. YEP, they have... BUT wait.. there are gaps! So that means I have to go and find these gaps in a list of 130k products?? f### that. But let's do it anyway, I can find the gaps and then proceed with the import.

Anyway, as you can imagine, it took me f#####g forever to finally get all 130,000 products updated correctly - most of the problem was building a framework that would allow me to quickly find the data I needed to insert. The spreadsheets were in no particular order, so the database looked completely different from the spreadsheets provided. Which is fine, but ITS NOT ENOUGH money... Don't you think? And that's before anything else was done.

Have a stipulation in the contract for circumstances such as these that require additional funding for the additional man-hours.

First mistake: Quoting a solid price at the beginning. You ESTIMATE the cost up front, and don't give a final figure until after the project is complete.

Jobs are offered on a set price, if you hassle over a higher price you just don't get the job at all - it goes to someone else who CAN afford to work for a lower rate of pay. If you go to someone with an offer to provide services, THEN you can quote a price.. but you can't do it with someone who already has a price in mind - you just don't get the work in that case.

Then the businesses you're working for are doing it wrong, and should be ashamed of themselves. It's unfortunate that you can't afford to pass up these jobs, because professionally that's exactly what I would do. You pay my price or you don't get my service, period.

The challenge with any freelance work is beating third-world workers who'll do jobs for insanely low prices.

Third-world workers don't do on-site labor, they don't know how to configure commercial networking and computer systems, and don't understand business or security.

But I understand the work you're doing is considerably less in demand than the work I will be doing.

It's not my main source of income. But it helps.

Can I ask what it is you do for a living and what your education is?

Why, you offering me a job?

No Just curious. Doesn't have to be anything detailed.

I do part time at the airport right now.