Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this freelancer guide is that Upwork really the best place to start your freelancing
career?
Probably not.
So here are the top three reasons why it's not, and you should look at some other solutions,
timestamp table of contents and the description along with some others helpful videos to growing
your digital business and freelancing practice.
So let's go ahead and kick things off.
Reason.
Number one, Upwork is not the best place to get started, has to do with fees.
So if you're looking to make money right now, Upwork is going to be charge you the most,
even though it has some of the greatest longterm benefits, if you're really going to stick
it out as a freelancer for a couple of years, and your first $500 on Upwork is going to
be charged at 20%.
And this is almost double what you're going to get on other platforms where freelance,
well, I guess it is actually double because freelancer.com is only 10% and guru.com is
only 8.95%.
So pretty much nine and 10% versus 20% on your first 500.
Now, something that makes Upwork unique is after that first $500, your fee actually drops
down to 10%, making it comparable to the other two.
So you're just going to pay a really hefty fee up front in terms of your transaction
costs, but then you'll get the same that you would on guru or freelancer.
And then at $10,000 in earnings, your rate drops again.
Although most freelancers don't make it to that point.
Now, when it comes to proposals, Upwork is hands down the most expensive across the board.
So here's how these platforms work.
They essentially well, except for Upwork, the other two, we'll give you some free options
in terms of submitting proposals to projects.
So you'll go to Upwork or guru or freelancer.
You'll look projects, go, “Oh, I think I should apply to this one, this one and that
one”, well, guru is going to allow you to apply eight times for free.
And freelancer's going to allow you to apply 10 times for free.
Upwork will allow you to apply zero times for free.
They have a token credit system, very similar to Thumbtack if you're familiar with that.
So essentially what Upwork does, is they charge 15 cents per credit, and then there's a certain
amount of credit you'll need for each job.
So if a job represents a client who has a good hiring history or a project, that's going
to result in more money, it's going to cost you more to apply to it.
So there's no standard in terms of how much it's going to cost to apply to a job on Upwork,
whereas with guru and freelancer, you know exactly how much you're going to pay, and
that's 4.95 a month, if you want to apply up to 50 jobs on guru, and then it's $10 for
every 20, bid tokens on freelancer.
So it's actually going to wind up being much less expensive if you build your portfolio
and kind of work based on freelancer and guru, because your bids are going to go a lot further
and your money's going to go a lot further because it's going to be a lot less to actually
apply to those versus what you're looking at on Upwork.
But if you still decide, Upwork is for you, then at $15 a month, you'll get 70 connects.
And of course, who knows how many jobs that 70 connects actually represents.
So it's one of those things where you're just going to have to kind of figure it out.
But if you're on a really tight budget and you're trying to generate a part time income,
then Upwork is just too expensive.
Which leads me into reason number two, Upwork is not great if you're just getting started.
And that is because it is hyper competitive.
Part of the reason that Upwork seems to be more expensive in terms of the upfront fees
and also in terms of their token and credit system for applying to jobs, is because they're
trying to get less people to apply to jobs because they want their higher performing
freelancers to really just get the Royal treatment, get the preferential treatment.
Which makes sense if you're a client, right?
You just want to get the best possible freelancers.
And you don't really want to waste your time looking at a bunch of new people like you
and I would try, would be trying to grow our profile on the platform.
Now, in addition to the higher fees, trying to kind of push out the people who are just
getting started and really force people to only apply to jobs that they're really, really
qualified for, which means your number of occurrences are going to be very low.
The other problem is the review process itself has been changed, so that if Upwork doesn't
think that you are a good match for the job, they're actually going to put you in a separate
category altogether.
So as a client, when I scroll through and I'm looking for new freelancers, for whatever
I'm hiring, I will actually scroll to the bottom and I'll have to manually click in
order to see all of the new freelancers who have no job history, they haven't made anything.
And Upwork doesn't think they're a good fit.
I'm going to have to manually click and look at all these people.
Now, as someone who's been using Upwork for over a decade, I even used it when it was
still called freelance.
That's not a problem for me, but most new client, most clients, most people, people
on the platform who are looking to hire freelancers, won't do that.
They'll just look at it and go, “Oh, Upwork's telling me that these people suck.
So I'm not going to click on them”, which is really, really crummy because you're paying
to show up on that job and Upwork, even though you paid them is putting you in a place that
most clients just aren't going to look.
Which makes it very, very hard to break out as a new freelancer.
But once you get that first or second job, you're going to find that it gets tremendously
easier.
Just landing that first one is going to be very, very hard.
And this leads me into reason.
Number three, Upwork is not great for new freelancers.
And that comes down to the client is always right.
Something that I think is really hard to wrap our heads around is, as freelancers we are
actually not the customer of Upwork.
We're not the customer of guru, 99 designs, freelancers, or even Fiverr.
The client is the customer of these companies.
So when it comes to a dispute, they're pretty much just going to side with the client because
you and I are the product.
The freelancers are the product being offered to the customer who are the clients.
So when it comes to billing, you're pretty much 99% of the time going to lose whatever
the dispute is, which means if you're just getting started on any of these platforms,
I highly, highly recommend you only look for jobs that are at an hourly rate.
.Because number one, it guarantees that you're going to be paid.
And number two, as long as you're using the systems that Upwork, freelancer or Guru have
in place for taking screenshots and tracking your time, you're much more likely to win
some, any sort of debate of this person didn't do their job if it's at an hourly versus if
it's milestones or delivery.
Because once you have a couple of reviews, once you have a track record, you can go and
take those jobs with more confidence and you'll know that you can't be taken advantage of
as much because the client's going to see that you already have a track record.
If you sign up for a fixed job with a new client, the client can see that you pretty
much have to have this job work in order for your profile to rank any higher than it already
is because you're a zero, which means clients can take advantage of you a lot easier if
it's a fixed and it's your first time versus if it's an hourly and it's your first time.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and it just gave you some food
for thought in terms of whether or not Upwork really is the best place to start.
Freelancing is a great way to make a part time income and eventually a full time income,
if you learn how to generate your own business.
I never recommend using any of these platforms as a long term strategy or plan for breaking
out as your own business owner or freelancer.
If you want to do that, you really do need to be able to generate your own business.
So I highly recommend you check out some of the links in the description on how to come
up with a content plan and drive traffic to your own website.
So you can start generating business for yourself and getting your own clients.
So until the next video hit that like button subscribe for more, just like this and until
the next keep building the business you love.