Internationalization

The internet can bring to whole world together, but there can be some huge drawbacks.

Take, for example, a website such as freelancer.com. You can go there, submit a project idea (web site, program, logo, anything) and your budget, and people can ask an amount of money to do it. The project usually goes to the lowest bidder.

That could be a perfect concept. You get the world to notice your project and bid on it, but the only problem is that different countries have different costs of living. For example, on numbeo, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in India is around 25. In Canada and the USA, it is close to 70. That means that what a Canadian company is prepared to work for is worth three times more to someone in India. Another way to look at it is that an Indian company can easily be paid three times less than a USA-based one.

For example, a company in Toronto submits a new web site idea to freelancer.com. Knowing how long it would take to make the web site, it sets a 15,000$ budget. Three Canadian and American companies offer to build it for 15,000$, 14,000$, and 12,000$. But then, an Indian company offers 4,500$, followed by a Chinese company which offers 6,000$. Having a lower cost of living, the Indian company gets the job.


How can countries with a higher cost of living compete with the others?