Missing average price

[Guest sa_aejaz]

I’ve heard that the ‘Average Price’ that used to show up in place of ‘Starting Price’ has been removed, and probably for good.

Now that I think about it, it was probably a pretty useful feature. Though I’ve got my gig packages prices fixed, I’ve worked for as low as $5, and at the same time, tackling orders of $150. In the designing part of freelancing, there’s no general price for tasks, each has its own custom requirement, unlike the content writing gigs, where you can price according to the number of words.

The average price option showed that no matter what the gig package price is, the price could vary depending on different tasks. It’d be great to have that show up on gigs again.

[eoinfinnegan]

Yes, but it was potentially misleading for a lot of people too.
It meant that those who successfully managed to upsell their services (to everyone’s advantage) were shown to be more expensive than their peers. The reality is that no two gigs are the same and so an average price showing does not actually make sense - what is an average sized piece of string? What is an average wage? Far too many variables for things to be averaged out like that.

[cyaxrex]

I am 100% certain that I lost a very valuable repeat client because of the average price fiasco. Every two weeks without fail for almost a year, this buyer has requested custom offers equivocal to $200. About two months ago, however, they messaged me as usual asking for a custom offer. I let the buyer know that I wasn’t at my computer but since the price and delivery time would be the same if they ordered directly, they should do that.

The last I heard from them was, ‘you’re joking right?’

In this case, I’m assuming that this buyer has used the search to find my gig, seen a $34 average price instead of $10 and assumed that I have exponentially raised my prices. Now that is just one buyer whom I know has possibly been deterred by this. It’s funny, though, how sales on all my gigs have fallen off a cliff at the same time.

People need to remember this. Even repeat buyers use the search to find people who they regularly work with. Moreover, if there is one thing everyone in the world hates, it’s not being able to figure out what the actual price of something is at first glance.

Would you pick up a loaf of bread in the supermarket with an average price of $5? Probably not. Especially since you can pop to the next store where each loaf is priced individually and more reasonably.