Freelancing is, at its core, a hustle. You have to sell yourself for each little job, the pay is never sexy, there’s no such thing as bennies, and even good clients will ghost you. On the other hand, you don’t have to wear a tie or high heels, you can drink a beer while you’re editing somebody’s memoir, and you set your own hours.
I’ve been freelancing as a writer, proofreader, and editor for 8 years. I started out with a few different platforms: oDesk, Yahoo Media, Helium, and a few smaller greeting card and media companies. One by one, all of those places went away, replaced by the deathstar that is UpWork. eLance bought out oDesk in 2014 and created a freelance wholesale meat market. The result for freelancers has been terrible. When I started with oDesk, they took 7% off new contracts, and after not much time it went down to 5. UpWork takes 20% off new contracts until you reach $500, at which point it drops to a “mere” 10%. Full 80% of available jobs that I qualify for, or more, are short term gigs, paying less than $500. In 2016, UpWork made $11 billion in profits. I made maybe $3K. But, if you get to $10K on any contract (never happens for most freelancers), you’ll pay a 5% fee. Here’s their helpful diagram:
I remember after the merger, when UpWork first raised the fees, they sent around a thinly disguised marketing poll that ostensibly asked about “freelancer satisfaction.” It was really asking how many freelancers would bail after they hiked the fees. At the second round of fee hikes, they didn’t ask us anything. The profit margins were growing and any pretense of caring about the people driving that profit was gone.
Some other new and lousy changes: you must pay to see other freelancer’s bids (that used to be free); you must pay to apply to more than so many jobs (ditto); your profile is made private—not visible to clients—if you don’t make money for more than a month (in other words, fees for UpWork—that just happened to me); if you’re brand new and don’t get a job within a month, they’ll close your account. Tech support is feeble (used to be okay); your money on pre-paid jobs sits in escrow for 5 full days; any comment deemed anti-upwork is edited out of the community forums. People from many, many countries freelance through UpWork, so their abuse of workers is truly international. I’ve talked with some of my good clients on UpWork, and they’re not happy with the changes either—the quality of the worker pool has dropped. You’re better off just doing mini jobs on Fiver and building up your portfolio.
When a new client asks for free work in the form of 1,000 word “trial” article, or endless revisions, or any other kind of coerced labor, I got no help from UpWork. There’s no arbitration, no resources for the workers. My only option is to call the person out and close the contract, which usually results in a bad rating for me. Likewise when someone is downright cruel—the freelancer is totally at sea, without any aid from this faceless corporation. Actual things people have said to me:
“Whatever, no one gives a shit about your self-righteousness.” This came after the guy had already said, “If you had remembered to write in the one ‘secret word’ I requested in the instructions, I might actually have liked you.” In a recent job—which required 4 hours of work and paid $20—when I pointed out to the client that his initial messages regarding the job did not match what he asked me to do after that, the man acted hurt and sent me a frowny face, then asked for even more work. A frowny face? I have a master’s degree and have published three books but have to relate professionally to emoticons. Yes, at UpWork, I've dealt with a lot of:
But there is another option on the horizon, thank goodness. Blocklancer is a peer-to-peer, blockchain based freelance company. It’s in the pre-release stage (early beta is online), scheduled to launch in the second quarter. They easily reached their soft cap. I bought in with ETH (etherium), just what I could afford, but am really excited to start working through Blocklancer. You’re paid in cryptocurrency, which is such a relief on so many levels. I’m not forced into supporting a bank or Paypal. In the Blocklancer community, token holders (both freelancers and clients) resolve conflicts and evaluate work, earning ETH as they do. The fees are 3% per project. 3%! Yay!
There’s an actual 100% payment guarantee (haven’t seen that before with any freelance platform) at Blocklancer. Because it’s a blockchain, nothing can be deleted—job offers don’t just disappear on you. Abusive or threatening language is out there for all to see. This is is everything I’ve wished for these last 8 years—real value offered for my work and a healthy community that rewards creativity. If you’d like to look into Blocklancer as a freelancer, client, or token holder, here is the affiliate link:
https://www.blocklancer.net/?affiliate=12553
And now, I’m going off to have a beer and work on a memoir.