[HN Gopher] Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving eve...
___________________________________________________________________
Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10%
bracket
Author : desaiguddu
Score : 165 points
Date : 2023-05-06 06:42 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.upwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.upwork.com)
| hakube wrote:
| How's Upwork nowadays? I tried getting some gigs there for 3+
| years and got nothing. I had more success with r/forhire and
| Craigslist and the good thing is there's no middleman. Heck, I
| even spent for Freelancer Plus and I just lost my connects to
| people who didn't even consider to read my proposal and check my
| profile
| bogwog wrote:
| I used it many years ago and it was decent, but not good. Tried
| again recently and it's way worse than I remember.
|
| Pretty much every client expects you to enter a bidding war
| starting at $100 (and going down, obv) to build them a
| multiplatform app with backend and a mountain of features.
|
| What I don't understand is who accepts these jobs? Scammers? I
| can't imagine that Upwork has many happy clients.
| anaganisk wrote:
| $100 in US is INR8000 in India, if the job timeline is one
| week, and they took up 4 jobs in a month that is 32,000.
| Which is more than the entry level software job salary.
| Upwork is a global company, not just the US market, so
| thinking in local currency won't make sense. I was on Fiverr
| 7 years ago I explored it a lot, during my course of finding
| work there I came across interesting things. There were
| dedicated shops that took up 10-15 projects a week in the
| same bracket as u mention, the owner of one such shop bought
| a Harley Davidson in a year(Harley Davidson bikes cost a lot
| in India) his shop was 4 fresh out graduates who exclusively
| built WordPress websites. And there are many such groups.
| Also funny enough most of the logo/graphic design/video edit
| jobs a remixes of PSDs/templates found on envato,
| freelogogenerator etc. You rarely find quality in such sites,
| you get what you pay for.
| MrThoughtful wrote:
| I have been using Upwork for years to outsource tasks. I'm still
| not sure what to think of them.
|
| On the one hand, I keep coming back because I usually find the
| better freelancers on Upwork than elsewhere.
|
| On the other hand, paying them 10% means a freelancer who works
| for me for two weeks works one whole day just to pay the Upwork
| fee. And there are other fees on top of that. Upwork's overall
| take rate is over 15%.
|
| And what is super annoying: For every freelancer you work with,
| they send you 12 (!) PDFs per month. For each week, they send
| you: a) The invoice of the freelancer b) An invoice of Upwork 3)
| A receipt for your payment.
|
| Even if you worked with a freelancer for years, there is no way
| to switch to monthly invoicing.
| desaiguddu wrote:
| Absolutely. Additionally they have a power to de-platform an
| individual.
|
| This move will potentially hurt lot of indie & freelancers who
| were working with long-term clients through Upwork.
|
| This is like forgoing your 5% net income.
| benatkin wrote:
| They seem to try harder than most not to kick anyone off.
| That was demonstrated in that they waited until the last
| possible moment to stop operating in Russia. Also their press
| release reads like this:
|
| > Our hearts and support go out to all those affected by this
| senseless war against Ukraine. We hope that a path to peace
| is ahead for Ukraine, and that we are able to bring our
| mission back to Russia and Belarus in the future.
|
| That's quite hopeful considering where things are right now.
|
| I would put them in a small set of bold companies processing
| lots of difficult payments including Uber, Lyft, AirBnb, and
| Coinbase.
| Veen wrote:
| > works one whole day just to pay the Upwork fee
|
| If they have any sense they pass the cost of the fee on to you
| in their hourly rate or project cost or whatever.
| Atlas22 wrote:
| Which raises the freelancers bid, which decreases their
| competitiveness, which decreases the chance of winning the
| job/contract, which decreases overall pay. That's what one of
| the other commenters meant when they said they have to pay it
| one way or another.
|
| The only way the fee "magicly" disappears is if someone in
| the pipeline doesn't care about the increased cost and eats
| it. At which point, the freelancer is underbidding for the
| job anyways.
|
| The real point is having effectively having high % fee
| discourages/suppresses the volume of transactions. Because
| freelancers are pretty heavily locked into the platform by
| design and the companies that hire are not, the freelancers
| get hit with the burden of the suppressing fees to a much
| higher degree (they have to compete with bids from other
| platforms/consultants that don't have large fees)
| aerhardt wrote:
| My experiences have been similar. Very happy with the talent
| and confident that I could get good people there at any time.
| At the same time, I'm quite ambivalent about their UX (the
| invoice issue you mention is really bad) and the fees. I feel
| it's prime for disruption.
|
| The platform has a lot of features, including complex ones in
| the area of payments. But I think a challenger should be able
| to build something with fewer resources and take, say, ~7%
| instead of 15%. Being an old incumbent, Upwork probably carry a
| lot of cruft around.
|
| Of course building a marketplace is very hard (dual marketing
| problem, etc.) but I don't think it'd be _that_ hard to build a
| new one. As a buyer at least I 'm not that locked in, I have
| also tried other platforms (ex: a European one called Malt)
| with great success, and I often shop around between platforms
| if I can.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| In the UK, if you work through a recruitment agent then they
| will be taking 10-20% of your rate as a margin.
|
| If you work through a consultancy that could be as high 30-50%.
|
| If you do your own business development then that is hard work,
| risky and also expensive. It would take much more than 10% of
| your time.
|
| Though freelancing can be a tough gig, I don't think Upworks
| rates are unreasonable considering they have a marketplace of
| work requiring very minimal biz dev and various financial
| protections to make sure you get paid.
|
| All of these rates just gets loaded into the rates the clients
| pay anyway so it's a wash to a certain extent.
| webmobdev wrote:
| A recruitment agent or a consultancy will often give you a
| personalised one-to-one service, and hence the higher fees
| can be somewhat justified. Upwork largely provides an
| automated service. So let's be realistic and not compare the
| two.
| aerhardt wrote:
| > In the UK, if you work through a recruitment agent then
| they will be taking 10-20% of your rate as a margin.
|
| I would still expect a pure software marketplace to be
| significantly cheaper than a recruitment agency, given
| economies of scale and other efficiency gains.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It is significantly cheaper and more efficient. The
| expectation that this benefit would be passed on to us
| clients is what is unrealistic. :)
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Why would that mean it was cheaper instead of making the
| middleman's margin fatter? Upwork isn't a charity, the
| owners want to make money.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| In a word, competition.
| benatkin wrote:
| What if it goes up to 15%? The Overton Window is shifting.
|
| Just this last week I saw ads for the "CPA Card" from
| Expensify with 2% cash back.
|
| All those cash back offers from credit cards is from money
| extracted from businesses of all sizes by monopolists.
|
| I think there should be pushback for any increases in cuts
| that are taken.
| msadowski wrote:
| The 12 pdfs are equally annoying to freelancers.
|
| I think what hurts here are how the fees are structured. If I
| charge client $100, the invoice will show this number. This
| will also be the income I'll be reporting to tax authorities,
| so I have to pay income tax on $100, and an Upwork fee will be
| automatically deducted. I don't know if they would have a legal
| way to do this but I would much rather my invoice showed $90 in
| this case since I never even had the chance to see the full
| $100.
| csunbird wrote:
| Not a tax advisor, but you probably need to show that you
| paid Upwork 10$ as commission and get a business expense
| deduction.
| msadowski wrote:
| In some countries not necessarily. I'm based in Czech
| Republic and as a sole proprietor the most preferential way
| to do taxes (up to certain threshold) is to report the
| gross income and use a tax rule that assumes that it cost
| you 60% of gross revenue to get your income. In this case
| the lower income shown the better.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| So you've spent 10% and are 50% up. Isn't that already
| advantageous enough for you?
|
| Taxes fund a civilised and (mostly) well run society that
| you benefit from. Misreporting your gross income shifts
| more of that burden onto your friends and neighbours!
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The Upwork fee is reported as a business deduction on your
| tax return. As an independent contractor you pay income taxes
| based on your self-employment _net_ income (not your gross
| income, as employees are) because you are effectively treated
| as a type of business for income tax purposes.
| strobe wrote:
| it's really depends on the country laws and legal entity
| type, in some cases you must report gross income and all
| platforms fees can't be considered as expenses.
| szundi wrote:
| There are almost no forms of tax that are significant in
| size and based on gross revenues at the same time.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| San Francisco has a gross revenue tax that is significant
| for tech companies.
|
| Hawaii also has a general excise tax based on gross
| retail and/or service revenues and is the state's primary
| tax on businesses (in lieu of income taxes).
|
| Ohio's commercial activity tax is based on gross revenue
| above a threshold.
|
| Oregon's corporate activity tax is based on gross revenue
| above a threshold.
|
| Washington's B&O tax is based on gross revenue and is the
| state's primary tax on businesses (in lieu of income
| taxes).
|
| France's social contribution tax is based on gross
| revenues above a threshold.
|
| And those are just the ones I know off the top of my head
| because I deal with them regularly.
| rdl wrote:
| Washington State has a B&O tax which, until recently, was
| the primary state tax. Hawaii has a ~4% gross receipts
| tax but it can be visibly passed on to customers like a
| sales tax.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I realize this doesn't apply to Upwork, but don't the new
| U.S. tax laws discussed in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313 prevent
| companies from writing off development costs, meaning
| they _are_ taxed on the gross revenues (at least for that
| year)
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, they have to capitalize (or amortize) development
| expenses over a 5 (domestic R&D) or 15 year (foreign R&D)
| period instead of getting to deduct them currently
| (meaning in the year incurred).
|
| Due to the way depreciation works, development is treated
| as incurred mid-year regardless of when in the taxpayer's
| tax year they are actually incurred, so the ultimate
| effect is that only 10% of the development costs can be
| deducted in the first year, 20% for the next 4 years, and
| 10% in the final year (6th calendar year after incurring
| cost, due to the deemed mid-year start in the first
| year).
| benatkin wrote:
| UpWork by default has your freelancers install their crappy
| spyware. That's the main reason I've never used it.
|
| Fiverr trademarked the word "gig".
|
| That eliminates two of them. Luckily there are regional
| freelancing firms that seem promising.
|
| At least UpWork lets people rant about them on their website.
| Maybe that will change too now that they've given into taking a
| higher cut. https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Time-
| Tracker-Is-...
| sph wrote:
| Meh, that's a dishonest title.
|
| Yes, Upwork are moving everybody on the 10% fee. But they
| previously had a progressive fee:
|
| * 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client
|
| * 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned
|
| * 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned
|
| Those figures are per client. Start a new job with someone else,
| you start from the lower bracket again.
|
| So they were basically living off short term contracts and low
| paid freelancers. Now it penalises everyone the same, but 10% is
| much more reasonable than 20%
|
| I've been trying to stay afloat in this terrible hiring market
| through Upwork, and I'm ambivalent. Without it, I'd pretty much
| be broke. But even with a profile that has been created in 2012,
| has $50k billed, I've only been able to find short term
| consulting or sysadmin jobs paid terribly, and lost 20% off each
| of them because of the prohibitive lower bracket.
| benatkin wrote:
| Not a dishonest title. The word "bracket" refers to this sort
| of thing at least with tax brackets.
| desaiguddu wrote:
| IMHO, most of the Upwork jobs are upwards of $1000 if it's a
| serious client.
|
| A large number of freelancers & agencies have built a stable
| clients on Upwork from years together. It will be a little
| revenue shock for them. Or eventually clients will pay more to
| cover the costs.
|
| Let's assume you are a freelancer with a client relationship of
| 40k
|
| * 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client - $100
|
| * 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned - $ 950
|
| * 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned - $ 1500
|
| New model - 40k
|
| Am I missing anything here?
|
| * 10% fee of any amount - $ 4000
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah, a lifetime 10% just for making the introduction is pure
| exploitation. On the buyer side we have been defrauded by
| Upwork providers and the company did absolutely nothing.
| Clear cut case of illegal activity and ToS violation, Upwork
| did nothing other than take our money. The FTC needs to beat
| this gang of criminals into the ground. They are a racket
| from top to bottom. Fraud shouldn't pay. Exploitation of
| workers shouldn't pay. Breaking the law shouldn't pay.
| fatfingerd wrote:
| I don't know, it seems like an impossible market for an
| honest middle man to me. 10% of short term contracting
| being a total bust where a worker should none-the-less be
| paid seems like a cost companies had that dealt with the
| lowest of job agencies. If those job agencies could afford
| to reimburse its because they were taking 50%.
| xeromal wrote:
| I've hired people with Upwork a few times and I just hire
| them for a single job and if I'm happy with it. I move to
| whatsapp and pay via revolut. Everyone seems happy besides
| upwork to me. lol
| mulvya wrote:
| Lifetime, in theory. In practice, you can move the
| relationship off Upwork after 2 years.
|
| See https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360043210654-Mo...
| [deleted]
| nidnogg wrote:
| Has anyone paid this fee? I think when it gets to the
| point of dropping 12% of a freelancer's annual income to
| just talk outside of the platform it's simply not worth
| it.
| Uvix wrote:
| If you wait two years per grandparent's post, the fee is
| only $1, which probably _is_ worth it.
|
| If you want to convert sooner, it's a percentage of the
| income for that specific client/freelancer relationship,
| and not _total_ work for the freelancer. So it is
| probably a more palatable amount, assuming the freelancer
| has multiple clients.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Yeah but the fee is calculated as a percentage of a full
| time (2080 hour) year. So it's only worthwhile if you're
| being hired fulltime, near full time, or at a much higher
| rate than your existing upwork rate.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| > Taking a relationship outside of Upwork without first
| paying the Conversion Fee is a serious violation of the
| our Terms of Service.
|
| This sounds like something a pimp or a mob boss would
| say.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| It's hard to find any important difference between the
| two.
| mooreds wrote:
| Have you filed your concerns with the FTC? Have you
| contacted your congress person?
|
| These seem like real concerns and failures of the market. I
| know Upwork has strong network effects, so this seems like
| a justified government intervention
| AJ007 wrote:
| Upwork contractors reside in many different jurisdictions
| around the world so I won't even trying guessing the
| legalities. Certainly they are breaking the law somewhere.
| However, one thing is certain: there is a very strong
| incentive to not look for long term contracts on Upwork.
|
| That incentive always was there, but it was small. It isn't
| small any longer. The trajectory makes one wonder what this
| fee will be in another year or two. Clearly they won't be
| lowering it.
|
| Upwork is not an independently sustainable company. Upwork
| shares are worth less than at their 2018 IPO. They've never
| really been profitable. They rarely have a positive free
| cash flow. They've increased outstanding share count 26%.
| The things they've done only reduced the value customers
| receive from them (like when they decided to charge extra
| money to view contractor reports.)
|
| How did they never make any money? Companies spend billions
| of dollars a year on recruiting. This isn't a tiny market.
| Someone grossly mismanaged Upwork -- for their customers,
| for their contractors, and their shareholders.
| sph wrote:
| True, your figures seem correct.
|
| I guess the problem is that I haven't had any luck finding
| any serious client, due to the competition and race-to-the-
| bottom.
|
| Some clients want quality, of course, but in this economy if
| it's a lottery to find a job in the real world, it's a
| lottery for those billing upwards of $100/h on Upwork.
|
| So what's left is small contracts where being a seasoned
| expert to deal with emergencies is more important than being
| cheap.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, you're probably an at least somewhat known
| quantity for clients that aren't especially price-sensitive
| (so bill in the $100s/hr range) or you're a name in a hat
| along with a bunch of people who will just take anything
| they can get. The middle-ground seems like a difficult
| place to be.
| whitemary wrote:
| [flagged]
| muzani wrote:
| The problem with the new pricing is that matchmaking value
| drops the longer a contract goes on. Once the relationship and
| trust is established, they can go around Upwork for 0%.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Yes, milking the lower end is just unfair and will obviously
| create resentment in freelancers. A really long time back I
| complained to them that their fees were unfair (I think about
| the time when eLance and oDesk merged). And their reply was
| educational to me - _" Why are you paying the fees? Bill it to
| your client or share the cost with them?"_. And I did start
| doing that. Few clients were ok with that because the <$500
| crowd are the "cost conscious" (to be polite) crowd. The higher
| brackets were somewhat more easier to convince because they had
| more to lose and thus felt the indirect payment through UpWork
| offered them some protection. But yeah, even 10% is still high
| if they are also charging the other party too.
| bombcar wrote:
| All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another, it's
| just how it's advertised and how you think about it.
|
| With business-related things it's better to have it upfront
| in my experience.
| qwytw wrote:
| > All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another
|
| In theory only partially if the freelancers are competing
| with those who are not using the platform and just bill
| their clients directly.
| nnurmanov wrote:
| I could not find a ClickHouse expert for some project, not sure
| where to look such people
| sph wrote:
| Not a direct answer but: don't look just for ClickHouse
| experts. When you hire a plumber, do you only hire experts of
| that exact brand?
|
| 90% of the job I apply for, on Upwork or otherwise, are
| always looking for an expert in a particular niche
| technology, and hire only based off that small nugget of
| information.
|
| I have been doing Elixir full time since 2016, and got a
| contract with someone that was looking for a Phoenix.Socket
| expert--a small WebSocket server module part of a larger
| framework--and the interviewer spent 30 minutes drilling down
| how much I know that small piece of logic. In this case it's
| like hiring plumber asking them how much experience they have
| in square zinc kitchen sinks. Given that I couldn't convey
| how dumb that is, I had to lie and say that in all of my 7
| years with Elixir I have been using Phoenix.Socket pretty
| much daily. And as expected, it was a bog standard job doing
| nothing more complicated than an intermediate Phoenix
| tutorial.
|
| If someone has a lot of experience in databases, and in
| competitors to ClickHouse they might be good or better than
| someone that claims to be a world class expert in ClickHouse
| and nothing else.
|
| (Not to pick on you in particular, but as a true generalist
| this hiring pattern has been bugging me more and more as my
| breadth of experience grows.)
| sleepychu wrote:
| When I'm hiring an employee, I'm looking for you! A
| generalist who will apply their wealth of database
| experience to my problems and learn what they need for my
| specifics along the way. I expect to pay some on ramp time
| where I don't get much in return.
|
| When I'm hiring a contractor, I'm not really interested in
| paying them to learn, I'm interested in getting my need
| fulfilled as efficiently as possible. If the problem I have
| is my square zinc kitchen sink it makes sense to find
| someone who already knows about them.
| akvadrako wrote:
| You don't have to pay them to learn. I'm also a
| generalist freelancer and those general skills make me as
| productive as most specialists, even accounting for ramp
| up time. If it does take me more time to learn a new
| tool, I don't charge for those hours.
|
| This doesn't apply to everything, but Clickhouse is not
| so different from other analytics tools it requires a
| specialist.
| whatshisface wrote:
| One thing I like about this thread is the idea of a sink
| made of pure zinc as a metaphor for a typical codebase.
| sph wrote:
| Makes sense, but I do not completely agree.
|
| In my 11 years of experience as a consultant, people hire
| me because they need a square zinc sink fixed, but as
| soon as they see that I know much more than that, they
| ask me to redo the living room wall and trim the topiary.
|
| Being an expert gets me through the door, being a
| generalist keeps me around.
|
| The problem is that the square sink expert filter is the
| biggest obstacle to getting a contract. Reason why with
| 17 years of total experience, I'm still without a job
| after 4 months, my longest jobless stint in my entire
| career (to be fair, I'm pivoting towards starting my own
| business rather than keep being rejected by clueless
| recruiters)
| Retric wrote:
| If you need a contractor for 4 hours then sure finding an
| expert and paying a premium for that match is useful.
| However, there's also a huge opportunity cost in looking
| for someone that's an exact match for what you want.
|
| At around 2-3 weeks of work paying a someone that's very
| close but not quite what you're looking for saves your
| time and means at the end of it you have someone that you
| can go back to with the exact skill you're looking for.
|
| It really doesn't take long before the contractor's
| overall competence dwarfs how much specific time they
| have with some niche thing.
| doix wrote:
| Not sure if you're still looking, or what your budget is, but
| back in 2018(ish?) I worked at a semiconductor company that
| was looking to write their own system for analyzing
| production test data. We tested a bunch of databases and
| decided to use Clickhouse. We paid for a support contract
| from a company called "Altinity". They consulted on the the
| schema, how we were loading the data, the queries and even
| fixed some bugs in Clickhouse that we hit.
|
| Looking at their site now, it looks like they've grown a lot
| and aren't a just boutique Clickhouse consultancy, but offer
| managed clickhouse cloud instances. There's still a reference
| to their support contract on the site though, so might still
| be worth a chat with them.
|
| I have no affiliation with them, just an extremely pleased
| ex-customer. That was a long time ago though, so I take no
| responsibility if they've gone to shit now :D.
| bravura wrote:
| Upwork is the prototypical clown car that crashed into a gold-
| mine. (Or is it?)
|
| Well it's definitely a clown car. The product experience is
| comically bad (like sad clown comedy). There is incredible
| friction in the hiring and interviewing processes. API access is
| disabled unless you have a through-the-nose enterprise account.
|
| I would die for a freelancer hiring platform that I could
| interact with programatically, so I wouldn't have to use their
| shitty tools.
|
| (Source: Hired through rentacoder, vworker, upwork, elance, etc.)
| msadowski wrote:
| Wow, I thought they would honor the 5% charge till the end of the
| contracts but it seems they will go to 10% by the end of the
| year.
|
| Since Upwork theoretically locks you in for 2 years with a
| client, I'm expecting there will be a small exodus of people with
| long-term projects . I'd much rather sort out invoicing myself
| and get paid through Stripe than lose out on extra 5%.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I use Zoho Invoice for invoicing my clients. It's free and
| works well imo.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| > locks you in for 2 years with a client
|
| Can you explain?
| msadowski wrote:
| I didn't check the ToC in a while but last time I did if you
| got a client through Upwork you cannot work with them outside
| of their platform for two years otherwise you and the client
| risk a fine.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Not even contract to hire? What kind of fine are we talking
| about?
| msadowski wrote:
| " The Conversion Fee is 13.5% of estimated earnings over
| a 12-month period in each specific client-freelancer
| relationship. Learn more".
|
| It seems they changed it quite a bit since the last time
| I looked at it. You can find more information about it
| here: https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360043210654-Co...
| vimy wrote:
| An empty threat. There's no way they would know.
| msadowski wrote:
| The worst that can happen is that they can deplatform you
| as far as I can tell from the ToCs so I bet some people
| will do just that if their fees go up at the end of the
| year.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| The main value add of Upwork for freelancers is helping them to
| find work in the marketplace.
|
| If you can find and bill directly, of course that may be
| preferable, but finding clients is hard and the business
| development also has a cost.
| Rufbdbskrufb473 wrote:
| What I don't understand is how they keep most freelancers on
| the platform after finding a client.
|
| I've only used it once, but after having a call with the
| client, I felt comfortable accepting payment directly in
| crypto and not paying their fees.
| msadowski wrote:
| This is against the terms and conditions I believe and in
| theory Upwork can charge you or the client some extra fee
| if you take the project outside of the platform.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I'm sure lots of people do this.
|
| The advantage of staying on the platform for freelancers is
| that they are guaranteed to get paid for correctly booked
| work on a predictable timeline.
|
| For buyers, the advantage is one weekly payment to your
| credit card, some contractural protection and a bunch of
| features to support the work.
|
| I've never felt the need to bypass them as a buyer, and
| I've only been approach a few times by freelancers to go
| direct. (My answer has been no mainly because I dislike the
| admin of manually paying people, checking timesheets,
| invoices etc.)
| throwaway290 wrote:
| People who actually rely on Upwork care about fresh
| reputation and active status. Platform makes it appealing
| to stay active. They have a decent reputation with
| customers, so it's a backup for when you fire your current
| client. But if you are inactive they stop recommending you
| and after a while you are delisted making it tougher to get
| clients. And customers like to see people who are active.
|
| Also, automatic billing is a big value add for those of us
| who hate paperwork and chasing non paying customers. Upwork
| does it for you.
|
| Re crypto, it's an appealing vehicle for laundering and we
| don't want to be implicated. couple of clients suggested it
| and it's a red flag for me. (if you want to get paid in
| crypto I don't get why you would use Upwork at all
| honestly, surely you have your own great platforms with how
| much talent is supposedly working on that web3 stuff)
| JCharante wrote:
| What they're saying is if you have a relationship longer than
| 2 years then you'll just go off platform for that
| relationship
| MereInterest wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but applying that to existing contracts
| sounds like fraud, a classic bait and switch.
| fbrncci wrote:
| When I started out as a freelancer / independent contractor, I
| made the conscious decision to not use any of these platforms,
| out of fear for my client base or finances being tied up and
| taken away from me due to a simple ToS violation; the fees never
| sat with me either. Admittedly, it took so much longer to get a
| consistent base of clients (1-2 years), but it feels like a fresh
| of breath air over having to rely on another platform to do right
| by me. Now I am at 0% fees, NET-14 and get paid directly without
| a hold.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > NET-14
|
| Impressive!
|
| Assuming that I'm correct and that that hyphen should be read
| as "minus": How are you able to get your clients to pay in
| advance?
|
| Assuming that I'm wrong, it's still impressive.
| papertrail-work wrote:
| The advertisement of your service seems like the best part of
| Upwork though. If you already have clients, there's no point in
| using it.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Isn't it against the ToS? If you advertise yourself as an
| independent entity you basically lure people outside of the
| platform.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| Don't worry, on Upwork you can blatantly violate the TOS and
| even if the client complains the platform will not take away
| the payments. Or maybe they will, but they most definitely will
| not refund them to the client. Speaking from experience (as the
| client).
| roflyear wrote:
| Same experience
| asnyder wrote:
| This is in addition to the % fees they also charge the buyer.
|
| As a very long time user of Upwork since before the days of oDesk
| and Elance, don't understand the greed here. They used to at
| least offer discounts on the rate when you had over $10K billings
| with a client.
|
| This just increases prices across the board as contractors will
| raise their rates to account for the fees.
|
| Silly as it gives their users motivation to give competitors a
| look, as well as a competitor to rise that doesn't want to be as
| greedy with the now common Airbnb style of charging all sides
| fees.
|
| Surely they got jealous of all the 20-30% fees relatively new
| services like Uber, GrubHub, Fulfilled by Amazon charges and
| figure they should get in the game as compared to their legacy
| thinking...
|
| Wish they'd provide additional value and services for additional
| revenue, rather than continue to squeeze both sides of the
| transaction.
| [deleted]
| pythonbase wrote:
| I have found a number of long-term clients from UpWork. In fact,
| working with one since last 8-9 years, around the time UpWork was
| conceived.
|
| Although not so much on UpWork these days, I personally feel that
| having a single fee is less confusing then the so called
| "progressive" fee bracket.
| madballster wrote:
| It is mind-boggling how this business with $600 million in annual
| revenues is still barely breaking even on a free cash flow basis.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Wow 600 million. I don't understand where that money goes.
| Aren't they just a website that connects clients with
| developers? Maybe they spend a lot on advertising or business
| development
| bilsbie wrote:
| Is there any good way to move upmarket from upwork?
| oivoodoo_ wrote:
| I lost believe to work via upwork to be honest. I have the
| profile 10 yo. and after the changes with connects to use to send
| for the dead job posts as result it's really unfair. then they
| added more commissions and the rules are always changing.
|
| I feel like now it's better to search the job in LinkedIn via the
| connections and the jobs posts with Fast Apply option. I don't
| promote LinkedIn but it's more attractive for me for now.
|
| Also what you get by paying the huge commission and timer that
| screens you? they don't help you promote, autocomplete cover
| letters, what the real advantage in this case.
| biql wrote:
| They do help with promotion by giving "top rated" and "raising
| talent" badges and work history. Hard to say how much value and
| leverage it really gives and whether it worths all the
| downsides.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| They must already be making a killing as they don't do much; I
| mean their platform is so depressingly badly written, I don't
| quite understand how you can get it to that state. They want
| (it's in the rules) you to stay in their chat and communication
| system, but it is basically unusable for anything serious, so no
| one does. There is the impossible invoicing more people here
| mentioned; my accountant keeps asking if they cannot just send 1
| invoice once per month that it is clear instead of the vague
| warble they send once a week.
|
| Their 'recruiters' are just friendly community chatters who talk
| a lot to people with that automatically (you get them too in the
| recommended list) match the skills (in their profile; there is of
| course no way to tell if they actually _do_ match the skills you
| need; I needed an AD expert for 1 year and the recruiter
| introduced me to the perfect person; in a chat they admitted to
| me that they had worked with it once a long time ago...).
|
| This is ready for disruption. But not by something like Toptal.
| Which should be mentioned, if you want to talk about greed...
| anovikov wrote:
| They are losing money and have always been. They are spending a
| ridiculous amount of money to bring in clients through ads and
| other marketing channels, and the whole thing simply doesn't
| look too sustainable.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Ah, I did not know that. It looks like a goldmine considering
| the amounts that streams in. But yeah, if they spend a lot on
| acquisition; that goes _very_ fast.
| anovikov wrote:
| This seems to be happening due to the nature of the
| freelance work itself. It simply can't work at scale in a
| win-win fashion: if you want to attract immense volume of
| clients the way Upwork does, you are inevitably looking for
| those who don't know what they are doing, and are lured by
| advertisement. And that's pricey. I've been there for 15
| years and made millions; i believe whole freelancing thing
| exists simply due to the systematic fallacy.
| mike503 wrote:
| The 5% to 10% bump is a real kick in the pants.
| jesushax wrote:
| Coincidentally, I just became Top Rated Plus (as opposed to
| normal Top Rated) on Upwork thanks to finishing my first large
| contract! I'm going to have a mini-party with my wife to
| celebrate, haha. Upwork dramatically changed my life. I don't
| care much either way about the fee change, but I get why other
| people do.
| xupybd wrote:
| That's a huge tax
| stuaxo wrote:
| Just love the whole intermediation model of... well, basically
| all the startups on this site.
| greatgib wrote:
| I find it shameless that after a 10% cut on back of the worker,
| they make it complex and confusing by not just rounding down the
| amount of their fee.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I've had a good experience with Upwork as a buyer of Development,
| DevOps and Design Services. There are a lot of unreliable
| providers there, but also some really talented, dedicated and
| professionals too who seem to make a good living if they live in
| slightly lower cost regions.
|
| We had a fairly complex client project, and it worked really well
| for bringing in fractional skills. 20 hours of a Spark expert, 60
| hours of an Azure expert, 5 hours of someone to help install a
| certain tool etc. Better than hiring a generalist for a longer
| period.
|
| I imagine it is challenging as a freelancer, but it's a decent
| platform from the other side and adds value.
| desaiguddu wrote:
| Yes, it is great platform to discover talent.
|
| It has a medium talent density, as a buyer there are lot of
| protections & power to switch.
|
| As a Freelancer, you similarly have challenge of working
| unreasonable clients.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Sites like upwork, freelancer, fiver, etc are the worst places to
| find contract jobs. Its a mix of very desperate people and
| scammers, the quality is very low, and the rates are low -
| attracting the worst possible buyers. No one will see your posts
| unless you spend money, and it costs a lot. So you are better off
| spending your money and time on advertising your services and do
| networking activities in your local area. Use your social network
| to find referrers. Or work for people that are good at finding
| jobs
| scarface74 wrote:
| For reference: I was unfortunate enough to be a tech lead after a
| company got bought out by private equity. Their edict was "they
| don't want to be a tech company". I was forced to hire
| contractors through an agency.
|
| They charged us at least 20% more than the contractor.
|
| I also work in cloud consulting at $BigTech. I know exactly how
| much money I bring into the company at I know how much my bill
| rate is. The company takes much more than a 10% cut.
|
| On a broader note: it's easy to find out how much revenue BigTech
| brings in per employee and compare it to your compensation.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Why are they still afloat? Last time I checked you couldn't find
| any work there:
|
| - You could only find jobs if you were ready to underbid everyone
| else.
|
| - The disproportion between the amount of work and job-seekers
| was abysmal.
|
| - The platform did nothing to protect the workers from untruthful
| or exploitative clients (from anecdotal evidence).
|
| - Upwork attracts clients who can't find contractors any other
| way, mostly because of unrealistic compensation expectation,
| unreasonable requirements, or poor reputation. This leads to the
| average job being an underwhelming experience (to put it in
| generous terms).
|
| Moreover, being on Upwork is a sign of desperation. You fear the
| day any of your regular clients notices and asks why are you
| there or just starts to doubt you.
|
| The proposition of the service is very attractive, but I'm not
| sure if it brings more value than harm in practice. It's very
| hard to find clients nowadays, but I'm still fighting the urge to
| restore my account there.
| ghaff wrote:
| The same reason Uber still has drivers. There are plenty of
| people in the market for gig work however low paying.
| winrid wrote:
| It was that way from day one.
|
| It is like it's own career. You start off being underpaid to
| get a reputation, and work your way up.
|
| Weird story: I started my career on odesk (before it was called
| upwork) and finished 50 or so contracts before I moved 3.5k
| miles to my first bay area job.
|
| Which was across the street from the odesk office.
|
| Weird world.
| roflyear wrote:
| They don't protect employers either. We had a guy whos contract
| was still open and he booked 80hrs and scammed us and then
| closed his account. Couldn't get the money back from upwork
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