I use craigslist alot to find persons to do various jobs about the house that I do not want to or cannot do.  I am usually quite fair in my offers, basing them off of research. Sometimes I just go head and ask for quotes depending on the gig I am offering. Generally I am looking for household items, a floor to be tiled or a plug installed.

I am always amazed, not just at the volume of responses but at the wide variety of quotes themselves. Generally I will get a few really low bids, a bunch of average ones, and one or two insane people. Whats insane? Well for instance, I wanted laminate wood floors installed. I had the floors and the pad, and was looking to get quotes for installing 870 sq. feet of flooring. Most of the bids I received were between 700-900 or about .99 a sq. ft. but a few quotes were above 1500, and several were above 2,000. One brainchild thought I was going to pay him 3200.

I wound up paying 775 dollars for a flooring company to come in a do it, now this was a FULLY insured company. Not some random dude, who installed them in 2 days and they look amazing. But then these 3200 dollar bidders probably were wondering why I didn’t even respond to their insane bid. And I get that alot, pissy “contractors” whom either do not realize how ridiculously out of range their bids are or think that they are different and therefore worth more.  Or my personal favorite, the one who thinks they are the -only- person responding.

For the record, on that flooring gig, I got a total of 371 emails.  Overnight. I posted it around 8 PM and by 10 AM I had that many reponses. And the greater majority of them were within the 99 cent per square foot range. A few were far lower, even had a few under 300.  The median bid was in the 800 dollar range. Many of the higher responses completely ignored the details of my ad with specifics on how I wanted to receive bids. This clearly illustrate they were not professionals or did not bother to read the ad.

Every professional knows that one has to tailor bids to a customers request.

The first thing I would tell someone replying to a gig post on craigslist is this, you are not the only one responding. It doesn’t matter what gig I post I always get at least 100 replies of interested people. If the only reason you are responding is because you want to complain about the post or the offer amount you are basically putting a shirt on that says “loser”. If you were professional you would know better, if you were smart you’d know better, and if you were good you wouldn’t have even had the time to waste to do such. You lower yourself to a sub-grade standard when you approach a customer in such a manner.

Craigslist is a simple anonymous place. If you do not like the offered pay, simply ignore the ad. If you are right and they aren’t offering a fair amount, then they will get no replies and they will have to offer more.  By sending a rude condescending email you have pretty much made yourself a total douche, and that is going to hurt you in the long run. Because if that person sends that rude email to a friend, or post to their social networking site you are now looking at losing TONS of future potential customers for the one moment of vindication. Was it worth it?

And if you are wondering why you never get a response, its most likely because you are way overcharging. I rarely take the lowest bid, I generally chose a mid-grade bid from someone with references. I never chose the high bid. You may think you are worth some large amount, but if you never get a gig you aren’t worth anything. Price yourself fairly, and don’t badmouth the other potential bidders by claiming people charging less are somehow less skilled. Trust me. I’ve found that is -rarely- the case.

Here are some tips to consider when replying to a gig ad: