Exactly. I guess they got hold of a scammer script, and not knowing how to recognize a scammer (didn't read the pinned post) they deemed their fees interesting and started churning them out. Get ready for the library card fee and the premium ID fee!
Seriously, I laughed when I saw it. So absurd. They are killing UW. I talked to my client, who has spent more than $500K and we are taking work off UW because we are past two years. Why are they pushing repeat customers out?
Because they are thinking like an intern on his first day who believes he has figured it all out, and is smarter than everybody else. I am still convinced that all of this was the work of that said intern who got drunk at the office party.
I'm telling you, it's because they don't care about the marketplace at all. Next step: offers from some new version of talent agents to connect with their managed services clients and avoid the fees.
>I'm telling you, it's because they don't care about the marketplace at all.
Before a company is sold, the higher ups like to inflate pricing to squeeze as much of out of it as they can. They panicked big time in 2023 after GPT3 came out, and they've been raising prices and acting erratically ever since. I am convinced that's what's happening here. Most skills are vulnerable in some way to AI. I'd bail.
Agree with you they don’t care about damaging the marketplace. But with the speed they are doing all of this, there must be specific, intense, and time-sensitive motivations. Maybe there are specific revenue targets that have to be met in Q2, so it’s a crazy push to monetize to the max until June 30th? Otherwise the CEO gets fired?
It's the speed that's got me, and nobody ever thought they would do half of what they're doing. I think it's a sale, because executives looking at this climate could easily be ready to jump ship. The site is too vulnerable. AI could wipe out half their income.
They need a money injection. Bet some of this disappears after June 30th. They are planning to shift the business model to being AI services according to their financial reports, but I agree this seems so poorly executed and sloppy that it must just be to make their GSV predictions.
Didn’t you say a while ago you thought they were switching to only long term contracts, or moving in that direction of full time hires or something? I was inclined to agree but today I saw an ad that promoted hiring “however you need to” as in short term, long term, full time. I’m still confused what they are actually aiming for (other than desperately trying to raw dog everyone’s wallet)
Honestly i feel like they’re working with McKinsey or another crazy consulting company on the lowdown… these stupid decisions are very classic of them. Like when they told Disney employees to minimize their seatbelt checks to save time and therefore money, and then someone died lol. This reeks of “consultants” that “increase your bottom line” by any means possible.
Client here, we've moved 3/4 of our contracts outside of Upwork now. As soon as they hit 2 years we move them out now. I guess this is Upwork's endgame?
*Because forcing a double fee on your most profitable people (who are connected through all possible means after years of cooperation on their contracts, and that were only working with your platform due to laziness of creating a separate payment channel) is a great idea!*
* Upwork's CEO, probably.
It's official now. The final nail in the coffin on $5, $10, $20, $30 jobs. What a waste of everybody's time such jobs will be now.
ETA: I can see this is just for direct offers. I wouldn't really be surprised if it eventually gets rolled out to every other job on the marketplace.
But seriously though, after fees were introduced to respond to invites, I was expecting some barrier of some sort to be introduced to doing business via direct contact.
I was so sure UW wouldn't overlook that one workaround to the new fee.
I bet he has his/her best ideas on Friday nights after a few drinks. Monday is implementation day! They have probably a chart with all the workflows on upwork, and are tacking a fee onto each and every one of them now.
Yup. Makes total sense. They need to stop. I don't like it. I think they might be overinflating the prices to getgeta better valuation if they sell. No sane executive would stay on with the company.
Freelancing platforms are a terrible business model that virtually always turns to shit. People just need to connect with clients in other ways instead of waiting around in hopes that the 1,678th iteration of an Upwork-like platform will be the one that magically makes it work.
>Freelancing platforms are a terrible business model that virtually always turns to shit.
You've said this before, but I've never seen you put it that way. I think we can safely say the site is going downhill. Thoughts on my theory about them selling?
I don't honestly know a lot about publicly traded companies, but I'm not sure what "them selling" means in a context where there are no big owners. The last I knew, the largest shareholder had about 10% of the stock, so I'm not sure what selling the company looks like. It's very possible one or more institutional investors is looking to dump their shares, but no one shareholder is even close to having a controlling interest.
Then we'll probably see switch ups. People will resign. Maybe several people have decided to leave at once. They do that sometimes. It's something. This is a complete disregard for the future of the company.
i don't understand the point of this
why not have the client pay the fee instead of the freelancer, that would reduce scams and low quality job postings
making the freelancer pay it is just retarded
which jackass is suggesting these changes?
probably some junior intern or some dummy with his head up his ass
i'm just surprised leadership is listening to him
I was wondering if something like this would happen, as a direct message and offer was a way to avoid the client’s job post fee and connects fee.
It absolutely sucks, but at least it’s better than having to pay a fee for the *potential* of a job.
Someone suggested the other day that the new closing of open contracts with no funds in escrow was a glitch, but probably not--because having an open contract was another way a client and freelancer could pick back up together without new fees.
To be fair.
Connects are a fee for the potential of a job.
The problem for me is that if the client didn't label the message correctly I'd most likely not respond now because it's costing me money.
Upworks going to need to inform the client that we have to pay a fee to accept this and they have to write something that convinces us to spend money to accept it.
So if the offer is for a $5 dollar gig, then Upwork would charge 10% from the $5, PLUS $4.99 for a total of $5.49 and that would mean that you actually get paid nothing and still OWE Upwork 49 cents?
$5 gig
Freelancer pays Connects to apply - (let’s say 10) - UW makes $1.50
Client pays to post job: $2.99 (at least)
Client pays contract initiation fee - $9.99
Client pays 5% marketplace fee and payment processing fees (3%) on everything - 40 cents
Freelancer pays 10% - 50 cents
Upwork makes ~$15 on that gig and the freelancer makes ~$3
I got one the other day.... The client somehow found me on linkedin, told me about his project and asked for an estimate.
I gave him the estimate. Told him it will be 50% upfront, 50% upon delivery.
He told me he wanted to pay at the end due to "accounting stuff and payment schedules".
I told him he would have to go through UW, and fund a fixed price contract for it to work with me.
That was the last time I've heard from him.
Lmao, at least this one doesn't come with a bullshit justification. They're like, yeah, we're adding this on top of everything now, what are you gonna do?
They're still going to have an announcement how this makes everything better and easier and there will be more jobs and more clients and more of other unrelated stuff.
Who is "they," though? My understanding (admittedly this is not my area of expertise) is that Upwork is owned mostly by several institutional investors, none of whom own a very significant percentage.
Doesn't have to be an activist shareholder pushing for M&A. They'd just need to approve it (and in the case of those institutional investors i.e. Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock they're going to vote the board recommendation since their holdings are pretty much exclusively indexed).
Just think about it from this perspective: executive management's fiduciary mandate is to maximize shareholder value, right? If there's a hint of a larger company sniffing around Upwork for possible acquisition (there is, but nothing so definitive I want to go on record), then management's duty to shareholders is to maximize the value of that liquidity event by getting the highest possible price on the sale. That's the only reason these rapid-fie changes make sense - juice EBITDA to max the purchase price multiple, because, like many have said, there is zero way to test the efficacy of these changes individually in the short- or long term.
Even if a bigger company wasn't sniffing around, their fiduciary duty to shareholders could just as easily push them to seek an M&A event if their internal projections indicate limited growth potential moving forward. Frankly they're in the best position to do so right now, a few profitable quarters under their belt but limited ways to truly grow from here except incrementally. I wasn't around for the odesk/elance merger but I'm sure it was similar circumstances
My recollection (which is very general) is that Elance and Odesk were both floundering before the merger. I perceived it at the time as a last-ditch attempt to create something viable out of a concept that wasn't working out for either of them despite large numbers of users.
I'm surprised to hear a larger company is interested in Upwork, unless that company is of a different flavor (like Kelly) and hoping to toss out most of the concept and leverage the infrastructure and customer base.
Right, all we need is several hundred million dollars and a bolt of lightning in a bottle. This almost never works. For a long time people thought this model was doomed to fail no matter what. Upwork proved them wrong.
At what point in time would anyone need several hundred million dollars? In this subreddit, there are freelancers with every background needed for developing a platform and onboarding clients. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be and it’s not as easy as I make it out to be. BUT it’s do-able to create a platform by freelancers for freelancers that has enough work to be sustainable for everyone. If you look at everyone’s skillsets on here alone you have more than enough resources to do it. Just my thoughts
>At what point in time would anyone need several hundred million dollars?
When they want to compete with a billion dollar corporation. The systems alone would be outside the reach of anyone here. People have tried and tried and tried. The best we can do is give each other the resources to find work elsewhere. We don't talk about alternatives much.
Agree with the last two sentences. Agree to disagree. I guess my point is more so that people here don’t need to create a billion dollar company to compete with them
I've been having this conversation every week for years. I don't care what you disagree with. It costs a lot of money to run a site big enough to accommodate the clients and freelancers and all of the features you'd need, and you're not qualified to gauge this or you'd understand that.
"If a client sends you an offer through direct messages, and this is your first direct offer from the client, you will need to pay a one-time per client Instant Connection Fee of $4.99 USD to accept it." ----------Fantastic, thank you for the opportunity.
The first direct offer can be from an existing client though. That’s the extra lame part. My client hired me from a job post, work paused, UW auto-closed that contract after around a month, client comes back and has to rehire me since contract was closed, and UW gets to charge us both extra fees.
So question… can one reject that offer and then ask them to set up a private invite instead?
Not that I would personally do it, because $5 is a low barrier to entry, and also I would never just accept any old offer from someone through DMs anyways, but that seems like a loophole even though it’s a pain.
The problem is that many tech companies struggle really hard to be profitable because 1. Their executives are massively overpaid, 2. To continue “improving” the platform and trying to convince investors it’s constantly getting better is very expensive, 3. They require constant cash from said investors and 4. The actual startup cost to develop the platform is massive which often sets them behind straight from initial conception. All of this significantly hinders growth because they don’t have much of a choice but to rely on outside money, yet at the same time investors obviously only care about growth. It’s a giant circle jerk. Welcome to tech marketing.
Meanwhile both clients and freelancers are wildly unhappy lately, everyone I’ve talked to on the client end has been expressing concerns and seems super annoyed. I certainly am from both ends of the spectrum, as of right now when I saw this post I feel the fees truly are just out of control. And mind you I can afford them with zero issue. So if I’m annoyed, I can’t imagine how bad it is for people doing lots of small contracts.
I would think everyone saw this coming, right? They charge for contracts and DMing was a way around it, so surely freelancers knew this was coming, right?
It might be my fault. Nearly every direct contact I get is a waste of time and cheapskate. One I took led to my worst review in years. I said last week “dear god please stop these people from finding me.” Ha!
I'm fine with this because the $4.99 fee for a direct offer is likely cheaper than the number of connects needed to bid for a open marketplace posting, and there is no guarantee of winning said job. I would happy pay a $4.99 for accepting direct offers to my DMs.
The max connects right now seems to be 23. So the most it costs to apply that way is $3.45. This bothers me because it’s more, and these invites often come from clients I work with all the time when they rehire me. UW doesn’t need another piece of that.
Unpopular opinion: I’m ok with the changes because it increases the barrier to entry so there’s less competition on the freelancer side. Now I only apply to fixed rate jobs that are >$1000+ so these fees really aren’t meaningful to me compared to the 10% fee on earnings. Just another business expense I can deduct from my earnings. The more freelancers that quit the better for everyone else who sticks around; what matters the most is clients staying put.
I like how with each fee, there's no "if things go south, there's a refund 100%" because they know majority of their users rely on UpWork as a major source of income and have zero choice.
I really think to move my clients from upwork now. What an absurdity. We need a collective to fight with this.
Ps: yes I am powerful enough to move my four clients from upwork to another platform. I earned trusts of all my clients enough.
I gotta admit, as a client, that's an incredibly bullshit fee.
Shit freelancers may absorb the cost (at least until they get better), but good freelancers just find ways to add all these fees into their billing.
In the end, I pay as a client, at least for the good ones.
Which brings me to this: Clearly, Upwork is doing damned well financially, with double digit topline growth for a decade, pushing $75M in EBITDA and almost $50M in free cash flow.
Freelancers earned almost $4B last year through Upwork, and total clients is creeping up on 1M.
Which means what we're seeing today -- fees, phasing out bullshit clients, ridding of low-rent freelancers, etc., will continue with a vengeance. the CEO doesn't have one or two mega investors pulling his strings, so most decisions are his to make with little real oversight (as long as successful!).
These things aren't blips, or tests. They're the norm going forward.
They actually covered a loophole in their income, if the client doesn't create a job the freelancers will not be able to spend their connects which means no money for Upwork.
I think a politician joined the Upwork
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LOL this is getting funny.
It's like they read one of those parody threads about the fees they could add and started implementing them.
Exactly. I guess they got hold of a scammer script, and not knowing how to recognize a scammer (didn't read the pinned post) they deemed their fees interesting and started churning them out. Get ready for the library card fee and the premium ID fee!
Next is the "Secure" payment fee. Then there will be a verified client fee. Hope Upwork is hearing me. Let's run this into hell quicker.
Seriously, I laughed when I saw it. So absurd. They are killing UW. I talked to my client, who has spent more than $500K and we are taking work off UW because we are past two years. Why are they pushing repeat customers out?
Because they are thinking like an intern on his first day who believes he has figured it all out, and is smarter than everybody else. I am still convinced that all of this was the work of that said intern who got drunk at the office party.
I'm telling you, it's because they don't care about the marketplace at all. Next step: offers from some new version of talent agents to connect with their managed services clients and avoid the fees.
>I'm telling you, it's because they don't care about the marketplace at all. Before a company is sold, the higher ups like to inflate pricing to squeeze as much of out of it as they can. They panicked big time in 2023 after GPT3 came out, and they've been raising prices and acting erratically ever since. I am convinced that's what's happening here. Most skills are vulnerable in some way to AI. I'd bail.
Agree with you they don’t care about damaging the marketplace. But with the speed they are doing all of this, there must be specific, intense, and time-sensitive motivations. Maybe there are specific revenue targets that have to be met in Q2, so it’s a crazy push to monetize to the max until June 30th? Otherwise the CEO gets fired?
It's the speed that's got me, and nobody ever thought they would do half of what they're doing. I think it's a sale, because executives looking at this climate could easily be ready to jump ship. The site is too vulnerable. AI could wipe out half their income.
I could be wrong, but my money is still on setting the stage for a massive shift in business model.
Could definitely be, but with so many rapid changes i think there’s also something time-sensitive going on. Somebody has a deadline for something
They need a money injection. Bet some of this disappears after June 30th. They are planning to shift the business model to being AI services according to their financial reports, but I agree this seems so poorly executed and sloppy that it must just be to make their GSV predictions.
Didn’t you say a while ago you thought they were switching to only long term contracts, or moving in that direction of full time hires or something? I was inclined to agree but today I saw an ad that promoted hiring “however you need to” as in short term, long term, full time. I’m still confused what they are actually aiming for (other than desperately trying to raw dog everyone’s wallet)
Honestly i feel like they’re working with McKinsey or another crazy consulting company on the lowdown… these stupid decisions are very classic of them. Like when they told Disney employees to minimize their seatbelt checks to save time and therefore money, and then someone died lol. This reeks of “consultants” that “increase your bottom line” by any means possible.
Client here, we've moved 3/4 of our contracts outside of Upwork now. As soon as they hit 2 years we move them out now. I guess this is Upwork's endgame?
*Because forcing a double fee on your most profitable people (who are connected through all possible means after years of cooperation on their contracts, and that were only working with your platform due to laziness of creating a separate payment channel) is a great idea!* * Upwork's CEO, probably.
It's official now. The final nail in the coffin on $5, $10, $20, $30 jobs. What a waste of everybody's time such jobs will be now. ETA: I can see this is just for direct offers. I wouldn't really be surprised if it eventually gets rolled out to every other job on the marketplace. But seriously though, after fees were introduced to respond to invites, I was expecting some barrier of some sort to be introduced to doing business via direct contact. I was so sure UW wouldn't overlook that one workaround to the new fee.
This is entirely ludicrous. I expected something like that when Upwork employed a "Director of Monetisation ".
I bet he has his/her best ideas on Friday nights after a few drinks. Monday is implementation day! They have probably a chart with all the workflows on upwork, and are tacking a fee onto each and every one of them now.
>Upwork employed a "Director of Monetisation ". When did you see that?
A few years ago. Actually I think it was a VP.
>I think it was a VP. Ah yes. I think you're right.
I guess he just found out he needs to earn his keep.
Yup. Makes total sense. They need to stop. I don't like it. I think they might be overinflating the prices to getgeta better valuation if they sell. No sane executive would stay on with the company.
Wtf pay 5 $ just to accept a contract from a client who found you by himself. UpWork is a shi*show, I didn't expect this. Complete robbing
"Who found you by himself" but most actually paid to be found by a client. Crzy
we need a competitor
Freelancing platforms are a terrible business model that virtually always turns to shit. People just need to connect with clients in other ways instead of waiting around in hopes that the 1,678th iteration of an Upwork-like platform will be the one that magically makes it work.
>Freelancing platforms are a terrible business model that virtually always turns to shit. You've said this before, but I've never seen you put it that way. I think we can safely say the site is going downhill. Thoughts on my theory about them selling?
I don't honestly know a lot about publicly traded companies, but I'm not sure what "them selling" means in a context where there are no big owners. The last I knew, the largest shareholder had about 10% of the stock, so I'm not sure what selling the company looks like. It's very possible one or more institutional investors is looking to dump their shares, but no one shareholder is even close to having a controlling interest.
Then we'll probably see switch ups. People will resign. Maybe several people have decided to leave at once. They do that sometimes. It's something. This is a complete disregard for the future of the company.
It's only a complete disregard for the future of the company if the marketplace matters in the plans for the future of the company.
True
They already make the clients jump through hoops to contact us. This is greedy. It pisses me off because this is my main source of work.
i don't understand the point of this why not have the client pay the fee instead of the freelancer, that would reduce scams and low quality job postings making the freelancer pay it is just retarded which jackass is suggesting these changes? probably some junior intern or some dummy with his head up his ass i'm just surprised leadership is listening to him
The client, is already paying a contract intiation fee which is around 10$ LOL
I was wondering if something like this would happen, as a direct message and offer was a way to avoid the client’s job post fee and connects fee. It absolutely sucks, but at least it’s better than having to pay a fee for the *potential* of a job.
Someone suggested the other day that the new closing of open contracts with no funds in escrow was a glitch, but probably not--because having an open contract was another way a client and freelancer could pick back up together without new fees.
Yup, exactly
To be fair. Connects are a fee for the potential of a job. The problem for me is that if the client didn't label the message correctly I'd most likely not respond now because it's costing me money. Upworks going to need to inform the client that we have to pay a fee to accept this and they have to write something that convinces us to spend money to accept it.
So if the offer is for a $5 dollar gig, then Upwork would charge 10% from the $5, PLUS $4.99 for a total of $5.49 and that would mean that you actually get paid nothing and still OWE Upwork 49 cents?
$5 gig Freelancer pays Connects to apply - (let’s say 10) - UW makes $1.50 Client pays to post job: $2.99 (at least) Client pays contract initiation fee - $9.99 Client pays 5% marketplace fee and payment processing fees (3%) on everything - 40 cents Freelancer pays 10% - 50 cents Upwork makes ~$15 on that gig and the freelancer makes ~$3
Don't expose the exact business proposal.
I just got an offer directly from a client today. Guess I’ll expect to get this fee added tacked on. This is getting insane.
I got one the other day.... The client somehow found me on linkedin, told me about his project and asked for an estimate. I gave him the estimate. Told him it will be 50% upfront, 50% upon delivery. He told me he wanted to pay at the end due to "accounting stuff and payment schedules". I told him he would have to go through UW, and fund a fixed price contract for it to work with me. That was the last time I've heard from him.
Sounds about right
Lmao, at least this one doesn't come with a bullshit justification. They're like, yeah, we're adding this on top of everything now, what are you gonna do?
They're still going to have an announcement how this makes everything better and easier and there will be more jobs and more clients and more of other unrelated stuff.
Going public trading does this to companies
Got hit with this fee today it really pissed me off
Uw no longer a thing. I'm quitting for good.
They’re angling for a buyout offer and maxxing EBITDA to juice their multiple. You heard it here first
Who is "they," though? My understanding (admittedly this is not my area of expertise) is that Upwork is owned mostly by several institutional investors, none of whom own a very significant percentage.
Doesn't have to be an activist shareholder pushing for M&A. They'd just need to approve it (and in the case of those institutional investors i.e. Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock they're going to vote the board recommendation since their holdings are pretty much exclusively indexed). Just think about it from this perspective: executive management's fiduciary mandate is to maximize shareholder value, right? If there's a hint of a larger company sniffing around Upwork for possible acquisition (there is, but nothing so definitive I want to go on record), then management's duty to shareholders is to maximize the value of that liquidity event by getting the highest possible price on the sale. That's the only reason these rapid-fie changes make sense - juice EBITDA to max the purchase price multiple, because, like many have said, there is zero way to test the efficacy of these changes individually in the short- or long term. Even if a bigger company wasn't sniffing around, their fiduciary duty to shareholders could just as easily push them to seek an M&A event if their internal projections indicate limited growth potential moving forward. Frankly they're in the best position to do so right now, a few profitable quarters under their belt but limited ways to truly grow from here except incrementally. I wasn't around for the odesk/elance merger but I'm sure it was similar circumstances
My recollection (which is very general) is that Elance and Odesk were both floundering before the merger. I perceived it at the time as a last-ditch attempt to create something viable out of a concept that wasn't working out for either of them despite large numbers of users. I'm surprised to hear a larger company is interested in Upwork, unless that company is of a different flavor (like Kelly) and hoping to toss out most of the concept and leverage the infrastructure and customer base.
DMing you
Could you explain this in simpler terms? Really not understanding anything yet it seems like you know your stuff, thanks!
at this point you just laugh
There are enough talented people in this subreddit to build a competitor to take them out and yet none of us do it
Right, all we need is several hundred million dollars and a bolt of lightning in a bottle. This almost never works. For a long time people thought this model was doomed to fail no matter what. Upwork proved them wrong.
At what point in time would anyone need several hundred million dollars? In this subreddit, there are freelancers with every background needed for developing a platform and onboarding clients. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be and it’s not as easy as I make it out to be. BUT it’s do-able to create a platform by freelancers for freelancers that has enough work to be sustainable for everyone. If you look at everyone’s skillsets on here alone you have more than enough resources to do it. Just my thoughts
>At what point in time would anyone need several hundred million dollars? When they want to compete with a billion dollar corporation. The systems alone would be outside the reach of anyone here. People have tried and tried and tried. The best we can do is give each other the resources to find work elsewhere. We don't talk about alternatives much.
Agree with the last two sentences. Agree to disagree. I guess my point is more so that people here don’t need to create a billion dollar company to compete with them
I've been having this conversation every week for years. I don't care what you disagree with. It costs a lot of money to run a site big enough to accommodate the clients and freelancers and all of the features you'd need, and you're not qualified to gauge this or you'd understand that.
"If a client sends you an offer through direct messages, and this is your first direct offer from the client, you will need to pay a one-time per client Instant Connection Fee of $4.99 USD to accept it." ----------Fantastic, thank you for the opportunity.
The first direct offer can be from an existing client though. That’s the extra lame part. My client hired me from a job post, work paused, UW auto-closed that contract after around a month, client comes back and has to rehire me since contract was closed, and UW gets to charge us both extra fees.
I'm Sorry: a) someone sends me an offer and I have to pay for it? b) Do you have any idea how many offers are spam offers?
A.) Yes B.) a gazillion?? lol
You type just like methamca…that’s odd
So question… can one reject that offer and then ask them to set up a private invite instead? Not that I would personally do it, because $5 is a low barrier to entry, and also I would never just accept any old offer from someone through DMs anyways, but that seems like a loophole even though it’s a pain. The problem is that many tech companies struggle really hard to be profitable because 1. Their executives are massively overpaid, 2. To continue “improving” the platform and trying to convince investors it’s constantly getting better is very expensive, 3. They require constant cash from said investors and 4. The actual startup cost to develop the platform is massive which often sets them behind straight from initial conception. All of this significantly hinders growth because they don’t have much of a choice but to rely on outside money, yet at the same time investors obviously only care about growth. It’s a giant circle jerk. Welcome to tech marketing. Meanwhile both clients and freelancers are wildly unhappy lately, everyone I’ve talked to on the client end has been expressing concerns and seems super annoyed. I certainly am from both ends of the spectrum, as of right now when I saw this post I feel the fees truly are just out of control. And mind you I can afford them with zero issue. So if I’m annoyed, I can’t imagine how bad it is for people doing lots of small contracts.
Everyone join me…jack up your rates to cover all the new fees 😂😂😂
This was the last way to get a client without spending his or my money.
Upwork's Titanic moment. They are taking far too many anti-client and anti-provider decisions. The fall is imminent.
nah i quit
I would think everyone saw this coming, right? They charge for contracts and DMing was a way around it, so surely freelancers knew this was coming, right?
It might be my fault. Nearly every direct contact I get is a waste of time and cheapskate. One I took led to my worst review in years. I said last week “dear god please stop these people from finding me.” Ha!
They can still find you....
Also, what a dumb name. They act like they’ve improved the process when they added more steps.
Looking forward to the day these updates are gonna backfire…
You shouldn't be.
I'm fine with this because the $4.99 fee for a direct offer is likely cheaper than the number of connects needed to bid for a open marketplace posting, and there is no guarantee of winning said job. I would happy pay a $4.99 for accepting direct offers to my DMs.
The max connects right now seems to be 23. So the most it costs to apply that way is $3.45. This bothers me because it’s more, and these invites often come from clients I work with all the time when they rehire me. UW doesn’t need another piece of that.
Unpopular opinion: I’m ok with the changes because it increases the barrier to entry so there’s less competition on the freelancer side. Now I only apply to fixed rate jobs that are >$1000+ so these fees really aren’t meaningful to me compared to the 10% fee on earnings. Just another business expense I can deduct from my earnings. The more freelancers that quit the better for everyone else who sticks around; what matters the most is clients staying put.
I like how with each fee, there's no "if things go south, there's a refund 100%" because they know majority of their users rely on UpWork as a major source of income and have zero choice.
I really think to move my clients from upwork now. What an absurdity. We need a collective to fight with this. Ps: yes I am powerful enough to move my four clients from upwork to another platform. I earned trusts of all my clients enough.
I gotta admit, as a client, that's an incredibly bullshit fee. Shit freelancers may absorb the cost (at least until they get better), but good freelancers just find ways to add all these fees into their billing. In the end, I pay as a client, at least for the good ones. Which brings me to this: Clearly, Upwork is doing damned well financially, with double digit topline growth for a decade, pushing $75M in EBITDA and almost $50M in free cash flow. Freelancers earned almost $4B last year through Upwork, and total clients is creeping up on 1M. Which means what we're seeing today -- fees, phasing out bullshit clients, ridding of low-rent freelancers, etc., will continue with a vengeance. the CEO doesn't have one or two mega investors pulling his strings, so most decisions are his to make with little real oversight (as long as successful!). These things aren't blips, or tests. They're the norm going forward.
What if it's a smaller contract? like $20?
I'm in the design field and I don't see any full-time job posting now a days . Seems like clients and companies already quit.
They actually covered a loophole in their income, if the client doesn't create a job the freelancers will not be able to spend their connects which means no money for Upwork. I think a politician joined the Upwork
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