kellystrategy

Hi folks, Like it says on the tin. I got an email last night informing me of a direct message from a client who wants a custom project done. Sent a lovely message back making sure I understand the parameters before I make a quote. Then as I looked more carefully at the conversation, in order to copy it into my offline files, I realized that the client had also sent a short message three days earlier—for which I did NOT get an email notification. Is this just a blip... a pretty serious blip, from my perspective, since clients rarely wait three days and try again... or have I got some setting somewhere that I need to tweak? Thanks...

Upwork has changed their take to 10% across the board (that's a reduction on low-end jobs, but an increase on large jobs, and no change in the middle). They've also QUADRUPLED the cost of simply applying to a job, in just a couple of months. Here, you have no charge because buyers come to you. There, if you want to be considered, you pay to play. So "reducing" their fees is only a very, very partial telling of the tale. They've massively increased what freelancers pay even to be considered, and they've made it so that getting a job is very, very unlikely by allowing the user base to go up by 500% in just one year, according to stats I've read—no more test to get in, like there is here, so no quality control at all. Their income is now from fleecing freelancers for the privilege of applying, not from that 10% across the board. It's a whole different "business" model. (I won't go into huge detail, but I've been self-employed for decades, and once I decided I liked having a middleman, I made a modest and growing income there. It has (had...) it's advantages for high-end work. But for myself and many other long-time pros I know there, it's become an ever-more expensive, zero-income disaster since last year.) If I were Fiverr, I wouldn't consider anything Upwork does as a blueprint. The law of unintended consequences is tattooed on the C-suite over there... ... unless they *intended* to have their share price collapse from over 50 to around 8 in just a couple of years and also destroy the site as a place to find work... in which case I guess that's the law of self-destruction. I haven't made an inroad on Fiverr yet, so I have no cred built up here—but I still wouldn't want anyone here to think that *other* place is a model for growing this site. The folks in the office have to eat and pay the bills to keep the lights on. If 20% from actual work being done pays the bills, be careful when wishing for changes... This way, the brass has a stake in freelancers doing well. The other way, they couldn't care at all whether you ever work, because it's not the 10% that keeps their lights on, and your lights no longer matter.