Is Your Service Cost High?

By: Partha Bhattacharya
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:43:25
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Like any professional, it’s a quest that has over time grown into a habit I’ve become susceptible to. It is to know how much are others charging for service similar or nearly similar to mine. It is a touchy issue and many service providers would rather prefer not to speak about it. That is quite understandable because pricing your service is perceived as a weapon in your armor that better serves when concealed. Or does it?

The question assumes importance in view of the fact that online service providers are multiplying everyday, thanks to quick inroads being made by ‘broadband connectivity’ and of course the Internet as a whole. What this means is that for your next writing project or seo work, you may not turn to your local expert. Instead, you may spread your net far and wide to hook an expert in a faraway country, who will be more than willing to lend her service at a fraction of expense you’d have otherwise spent for local expertise.

Much of this is already known, and indeed that is how a content writer like me is able to cater to assignments, coming as they do from distant shores. If that is true, will it be wrong to suggest that providing service is just another type of commodity trading? Skeptics may term it preposterous, but perhaps that is how it will shape up in coming days. And there are good reasons for that.

If you have spent good amount of time on the net and have remained abreast of latest happenings online, you’d know that many services, which hitherto you would have availed of within the confines of your locality, are now available across the globe at a much lesser cost. And the quality of work is comparable, if not better. After all, isn’t Google looking for quality writers from India? This brings me to the next point.

Taking the argument further, let’s explore why lending online service can be considered as commodity trading. A successful model of commodity trading is one where there is equal space for both supply and demand, overlooked by some sort of governance that ensures quality at either end of demand and supply. The latter is necessary in order to establish trust and fair play among participants so that the push and pull of marketplace can throw up healthy competition, which in turn will contribute to overall expansion of scope of service while economizing on cost.

According to various indicators, many online services have both high demand and commensurately high supply. Since there is little ‘governance’ to bring about conformity in them (like comparison shopping), we get to see both poor quality (and therefore ‘poor supply’) and high cost (meaning ‘high demand’) at either end of the spectrum. This is not an effective market, which means there is lot of mediocrity out there, as well as an inflated entry barrier for the ‘deserved’ ones.

Laws of economics suggest that a mismatch between supply and demand cannot last for long. Correction sets in sooner than later. Perhaps a day is not far off when a service-hirer will be able to do ‘comparison shopping’ for her job needs, similar to what she does when buying say an electronic gadget online. Any thought?

Article source: Expert Articles