Earlier today I got severely undercut on a design job bid by a competitor who is already notorious in the (admittedly small) world of horror/haunt designers for doing that sort of thing. I can live with being undercut; that’s just a fact of life. What concerned me was the amount by which he undercut me – fully half of what I bid, which was reasonable from the beginning.

Then, just now, I heard on a podcast that another newcomer genre competitor is offering a full suite of design services through the end of the year for a preposterously low price.

So I’m pissed off, and not because there are people offering the same services I offer for less money – that’ll always be the case. I have a level of knowledge and experience at this point that no discounts or marketing ballyhoo by would-be competitors can touch. I do solid work and I stand by it.

What I can’t fathom is how short-sighted this whole doing-the-work-for-way-less-than-it’s-worth approach is. It’s beyond naive. The prices I’m hearing are clearly intended to do two things (as near as I can figure): First, get the work. Second, make sure nobody else gets the work. For somebody trying to make a name for themselves and build a smallish portfolio, I get it. You grab whatever jobs you can, even if you’re effectively working for free, so that you can build the book and client list.

Problem is, these prices aren’t reasonable (for the designer) or realistic (for the market). Sooner or later, both of these guys are going to need to start charging what the work is actually worth, and that’s when they’ll realize (too late, of course) that they’ve trained their clients to expect graphic/web design work for virtually no money. And this benefits… who? How?

Picture it like this: You have a hot dog stand on a street corner, and you’ve had it for 20 years. You charge $1.00 per dog. You have to pay the city a license to sell your dogs, you have to buy the dogs, buns, mustard, etc., and you have to pay yourself a salary for standing on your corner selling the dogs for 8 hours a day. So, the price of your hot dog, given all that, is more than reasonable.

Then a new guy sets up a hot dog stand across the street, and he’s only charging 10 cents for his hot dogs. Now, you know, for a fact, that he’s only doing it to attract new customers (including yours). You also know that charging 10 cents per dog means he’s losing money on every dog he sells, which means he can’t possibly maintain that price indefinitely. So in the short term, he might get all the customers, but after a point he’s going to have to charge what those dogs are worth (or go out of business), and by then everybody’s going to be used to spending 10 cents on a hot dog. So where does that leave every hot dog vendor in the city?

Those of us who do this professionally and maintain a realistic pricing menu have to contend with these guys muddying the waters and creating ridiculously unrealistic expectations within the marketplace. I charge roughly half of what I’m worth for the work I do because I want to do it for people who don’t have a ton of money. That’s a choice I made when I decided to specialize in horror, Halloween and haunted attraction visual design, and one I’ve never regretted. I can only hope these guys will come to their senses and stop what is, ultimately, an incredibly destructive tactic.

The bottom line: When you sell something for less than it’s worth, you devalue it. Period.