Competitions will be getting set prize limits but I don't think it's something that can be as effectively added into the market place.

We cant FORCE people to sell their work for more than they want to, we can offer some guidlines for the market place to help freelancers (not things like set minimum prices) and I do think this is something that the staff have discussed.

I firmly believe that iTrader will go along way to helping things, it will improve the buyers experiance within the MarketPlace and will weed out any duff freelancers. People getting a low rep will then have no option but to buck up their ideas and take note of how the best freelancers go about things. They'll then want to go about things in a similiar fashion to make sure they get sales, that should then, in theory, mean they raise how proffesional they are and will raise the quality of their service. With a raise in quality will come a raise in price. This way it will be fair to both sellers AND buyers.

We won't be relying soley on iTrader to improve things for the MarketPlace though as there needs to be a much more long-term focus than that. As I said earlier this is TalkFreelance and we are here to help the freelancers and thats exactly wht we want to do. So as well as iTrader we will be looking at many other ways to make the MP a better place for everybody and will be looking into different avenues we can take to help freelancers while we are doing it.

There really is no instant-fix for this I don't think, slapping a minimum fixed price on things is going to harm as many freelancers as it helps.