Why I Quit Freelancer And Upwork?
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- 👉Check out my course: gum.co/UGRVJ and learn everything you need to get high quality clients directly without Freelancer or Upwork.
It may seem like a rant, but in this video I explain why I quit looking for projects on Freelancer and Upwork. A friend of mine runs a really good app development company and they have a lot of projects and high-end clients. But when they created their upwork profile and applied to around a 100 jobs, they didn't get a single projects. And the prices were very competitive if not low. I have read a lot of similar stories in the last couple of months so here is my take on why you should stop looking for projects and cheap work on Freelancer and UpWork and rather invest your time in contacting clients directly and building more stable and real business relationships. Also feel free to share your experiences, I would really like to hear your thoughts on this topic.
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I just got banned on Upwork for breaking their TOS (asked a client to get paid directly.). I am now working for that client outside upwork :)
Upwork is a great but its totally Flawed in terms of Client to Freelancer relationships. To them, they OWN the clients. There is zero chance of reaching the client directly, and that is a huge red-flag for a long term business relationship. And you are so right about feeling like a Slave due to cheap prices......
Thank you for sharing your experience Jin! Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about, I had a similar experience with Freelancer a couple of years ago when I tried to enter my paypal address into a client message. Didn't work out all that well:)
when you withdraw from upwork with payoneer and then you have a payment from your current upwork client for any reason - you both get banned because Payoneer shares some transaction info with Upwork. Yes, we are "slaves")
I got banned too 12 month ago
That's why you always speak with them on the phone or on Skype. They can't ban you for that, then you tell them "I'll send you an invoice". You should no longer be talking on upwork after that. That's what I do, and upwork can be a great lead generator for your business if you have high dollar value services. You need to have 80% focus on generating clients outside of upwork (cold call, email, ads, etc) and 20% on upwork. Upwork clients can help fund your basic lifestyle, while building a genuine business outside of it.
You take on Upwork and Freelancer echo pretty much what I've seen from other users online while I was looking for reviews on both services. I initially set up an account with Upwork and noticed a number of red flags in how they operate, but the one that hit me like a brick were the fees associated with connects (or bidding for jobs). Not really trying to go broke finding work, thank you.
Does that mean that we need to have money to get the job?
Makes me feel a little better because I cant get any work for even the simplest tasks :(
The surfboard distracted me during the whole video.
What an attention span.
@@RodGibsonMusic What a sense of humor.
Damn I just paid for a subscription on freelancer. I should really research these things before I spend money lol.
Freelancer is not so bad, provided you write the most convincing proposals, and you have samples of the same kind and level of work client is looking for, now dont expect to get paid the regular fee you would charge for that kind of work, but the most important thing is to keep the work steadily flowing in .
Also be sure to create multiple milestones as you go into the project, that way, payment is guaranteed in bits and even if you dont get to finish the project you would already have some money with you, plus if client has already paid you some milestones, it becomes difficult for them to just discontinue the project since money has already slbeen spent.
Upwork might now be a little bit crowded with freelancers - you should check other freelancing platforms - Check out the Freeeup website or youtube channel - Freeeup RUclips channel we provide freelance opportunities as well.
We Only accept the top 1% of applicants that apply in the Freeeup marketplace
Thanks!!
Worked on Upwork for years. Once in a great while you get a good client that is professional and pays on time and well, mostly though it's bottom feeders that want the world cheap and are not professional at the same time. Then Upwork takes 20% off the top. I use it to fill time when I don't have work from outside clients. I would not rely on it exclusively. Regarding escrow, if it's a small job say $500.00 the client can refuse to pay then you need to go to arbitration which is almost $300.00 and that's not worth it. This happened to me once, the client balked on paying and I contacted Upwork they said arbitration was the only solution. I ended up losing the $450.00 on the contract.
Thanks for this video, this a great eye-opener and reality check, much appreciated!
I worked for a client, he asked me to edit his pictures and show him as a sample so that he can provide me with more work. He asked for 8-9 revisions in each picture and when he was finally satisfied with the results, he asked me, " I have my weddings pictures as well, can you do them?" I did them as well and he got them all and didnt give me a single penny. Such a huge waste of time!
WOW!
THANK YOU FOR THIS TESTIMONY!
I WAS WONDERING IF I'D EXPERIENCE THIS.
I knew it!...I thought there's anything else that makes you quit...same reasons, It's an open market system everyone has the opportunity to come on, even the ones who just learned from self studies and those who are have their Bachelor Degrees in respective Engineering courses aside from that it multiplies in thousands those prospects in drafting rather the clients, in the early days the salary was competitive but instead service becomes tough competitive but the value becomes lesser.
Upwork really really sucks! They were great when they were oDesk. I made quite some money when they were still oDesk (enough for my college pocket money). However, my nightmare started when they changed to Upwork. They suspended my account. They did not give me any reason why. They said I had violated one of their terms of service but wouldn't tell me which one it was because, they said, I would find a way of circumventing their detection system. This is like being arrested without being told why you were arrested.
Fine, I said. I would like to close my account. They said no, the account remains suspended. But why? I asked. They wouldn't answer. So I am suspended, absolutely no hope of getting the account reactivated, yet they have my personal information - my photo, my email address, my PayPal address, my education and professional backgrounds etc etc. Talk of corporate bullying.
Sad to hear that, but that is exactly what I was talking about and one of the main reasons I quit these platforms altogether. However I still use UpWork to hire people when I have some work to outsource. If you are a client it is a completely different story.
Iddi Ganguma really? That was rude.
I have the same issue. Upwork sucks!
Iddi Ganguma well you be able to get your info back now that GDRP has been release in EU? i live in third world so i may no be familiar with the new GDPR law.,
Iddi Ganguma I experienced the Same!! Upwork sucks big time!!
You are right - been on Freelancer for over 3 months now... and I have zero income from there. Some of the clients even pick out blatant designs that were obviously done on a logo generator website. It's fucking bullshit. Those who are thinking to go to Freelancer, well steer away.
You speak the truth! Hopefully more people see your video and drop these "freelancer" sites like a bad habit.
Upwork makes you feel cheap howsoever skilled one may be..
cool video but not the best hat for delivering this message, surely?
It is meant as a joke:) I got the hat when I was still working on freelancer, the hat is pretty cozy though:)
I thought so too
Upwork just rejected me and the reason was that they are overloaded with same skills.. :-)
Hey brother like the vlog and like the hat touch dude I'm a freelancer in South Africa keep up the good work thanks for stopping me will keep on grinding what do you think of online website portfolios to show of your work and what I got out of your vlog is there is a flaw in the payment system so we just need to get a more solid paying methed
upwork,freelancer,guru.com, Fiverr all these websites are employer centric which means they give more importance to the client looking for cheap freelancers, none of the website guarantee that you as a freelancer will get some work and these companies are so smart that they earn money from 3 ways such as asking freelancers to buy a membership plan so that you can bid on projects and same way the also charge money from employers to post projects, when the project is completed and it is time to pay freelancer then they also keep some percent of commission from your earnings and top frustrating thing is that anyone can come upon these sites and sign up and post fake projects so there are no rules for employers ...moral of the story is these companies are making profit by fooling everyone around
Also Fiverr and upwork can block your account any time
I actually bid on 20 jobs on freelancer.com and two got back to me. They said to give them my email so that I didn’t have to pay the fee but then they turned out to both be SCAMMERS and I never got paid for the job that I did. I also spent money on material that I need for the job so I lost that money, too. I feel it very unsafe to contract “clients” directly for this reason.
Same thing happened with me..!
You Must Take 50% Of The Project First Then Start Working If They Didn't Want So They Are Scammers "WHATEVER THE REASON IS"
So you worked with a client who proposed to cheat Upwork, and they cheated you? Surprise! That's like dating someone who's married and being surprised that they're cheating on you too!
i believe i got scam with the first client I accepted from India. the client does no chat since I accepted the offer. maybe I will be charged by not doing the project because the client did not give the details
How to contact clients when you don't know them?
Thank you. I really needed to hear that, because for a while I thought that I wasn't good enough, that's why clients didn't respond to my proposals. I started my profile on UpWork less than a year ago. I only had two clients who I didn't send proposals to, but they just found my profile and contacted me. You are so right, I had to build almost complete websites with low prices. Those two jobs took me few months to finish, and while I was working on them, I didn't send proposals, so UpWork changed the status of my profile to private, this happened twice, and I had to contact their customer support to bring it back to public. In the past month I did not have projects to work on, so I started to send many proposals to clients, but I did not get any jobs, so this week, UpWork suspended my profile claiming that I did not earn money for sometime, so "my skills are not needed in the market-place". Basically, my experience with UpWork has been a struggle. I learned so much from it though, I don't recommend it.
Same experience. I was idle for like 6 months, then when i was back online, i used all the connect whatever it was for bidding, then my account got suspended. Another similarity me n you is i wear hijab too and my profile picture was me wearing hijab.... do you think they possibly you know.... islamophobic or something
@@samsunghamba458 I'm not sure. Don't occupy your mind with thoughts you will never have answers to. Upwork is not everything. Move on and try other platforms and I'm sure Allah will open doors for you inshaAllah.
@@TheTruth-fully yes right, i shouldnt think so much about upwork anymore. im doing okay on fiverr but right now trying to get on freelancer. Really allocating this january whole month to study about the platform and not doing anything else, so i will not accidentally doing anything against their rules. Pray for me 🥲
You are correct. Hastiness and hunger for more work and money have destroyed quality and creativity.
I don't want to feel like slave. I can't compromise on the quality of my contents.
You have impressed me.
Thank you for sharing. A lot of freelancers struggle with this when starting out that's why I think it's important to point this out.
I used to be a freelance SEO developer charging $900 a month for ongoing backlink building. Now i do the same thing but an Indian on upwork does it for $60 a month. You have to adapt if you want to succeed. Learn how to take advantage of the market. I now have a pretty successful Australian company doing backend development and E-commerce which is purely outsourced to a third worlder on Freelancer / Upwork for 5% of the cost. Ultimately, there is no point in doing actual work when someone else will do it for next to nothing. Use what you have to your advantage.
I'm part of Upwork since it was ODesk and oh gosh, how things changed with this. I barely got any answer and even small jobs (small, not easy ones) it's all full of tricks and clients with no sense of deadlines or simply willing to pay some quarters for A LOT of work. I was always into closed caption/subtitles/translations/proofreading and stuff like that in there. Not a chance to work 12 hours a day and be paid $4 the hour, to learn that in the end, they'll rip you 10% in fees plus another 10% when you cash out the money to your account. Insane how outsourcing got rot rapidly.
The Freelancer website is pure POISON.
I totally agree, but why ain't there more ppl talking about it. I google them and all i get is positive reviews. But ppl how try it knows its shit
Race to the bottom. Stay away
And for a new account with no ratings and reviews it's really tough..
Even you have those skills of shiny polished high detail artwork (which overkill for just cheap cell-shading missed proportion, perspective, color, etc attached pic in a project).
Almost hundred bids and none of them responses my bids.
And the worst things is they said that those portofolio isn't mine even the name, email, all the artwork is same..
Funny huh? It become hard to recommend this kind of portal to all artist out there.. One word fu*ck!
I am frustrated with Upwork myself. I've had one job, and the pay was low.
There are great clients on Upwork who pay well. You just have to filter out the 90% that don't. You can definitely earn at least low six figures on Upwork if you do it right.
However, the latest policy change, going into effect at the end of June, about not being able to exchange outside contact info will probably severely destroy the platform.
You quit to earn more from RUclips channel
You kept calm to not to say about many more weaknesses and bad things of Upwork mate!
Having experience of working with it since it was oDesk until last month (though not regularly) made me agree with all you said as well as many more limitations and even disrespects that I've seen from it.
I suggest Upwork only to those noobs who'd like to find "Right & Wrong" in this business by themselves or those who are living in a really cheap country.
Holding freelancers' money for 5 to 14 days pending for an unknown reason, warning freelancers when they don't get a job even after bidding a lot (that is really Upwork's weakness not the freelancer's) and don't having a strong strategy for keeping freelancer's income safe against cheater clients and many many more.
I'll probably write a descriptive blog post about it in the future.
Thanks for letting people know about the truth of this business and good luck!
So I may call the platform " Downwork" ...blag!
Nice one:)
Just build your own client base
Actually you run Facebook ads for your portfolio you will get more change to get job .... is all about marketing make a email and whatsapp list and start contacting
Valuable advice! I worked on fiverr for a while. It's insane how low you have to go to compete. And some clients got a little rude when they realized they couldn't get an illustration with ten characters full color and shading for $5. Okay, there also were some really nice clients from all over the world, but all in all I am happy I choose to find work outside of these platforms.
Thank you Ferdinand! I pretty much the same experience with Freelancer and Upwork. It was better when the platforms were new a couple of years ago, but since then the competition and dumping prices became a real problem. So getting clients directly is the best way to go, not only online, but also in person. However I prefer online since it allows me to be location independent:)
CreativeBusinessBuild Hello how r u can I earn one lakh per month in the freelancer
Upwork changed my profile visibility to private because I haven't earned anything in 30 days. Oh well Upwork I didn't get a job. And now the connects are paid.
Thank you for your nice video, I have really learned a lot. I have kept bidding in my work and freelancer. Concentrating a lot of hrs and face rejections while some jobs come which scam your money. I was scammed from freelancer employer, where milestone was placed when I finished the job getting paid 135$, it was returned back to the client... another issue is spending too much time and getting paid peanuts.
Upwork company is just an incredible piece of shit. Someone tried or hacked my account and they suspended it. After I noticed this I tried to resolve it and for the next week I was sending them photos of my personal documents (which is a very unpleasant thing to do, never liked uploading my personal docs to somewhere) and they were like "Yeah, yeah, send this and that and we will unblock you" but after all this mess and me losing my nerves they suspended it again and decided not to restore it. After, they wanted a Video Verification again, but I was already so tired of this shitty mess so I decided just to let it go, f*ck my portfolio and my reviews I earned with hard work. So yeah, until now I'm still unemployed but have no desire to go back at all. And it looks like I would have to start a new account but it seems such as crazy hard thing to start from new, and I'm pretty sure after a while they will just block it again... ohhh I hate these guys, meh
Just finished work for logo in upwork, the price 35 fucking dollars)))For me it's too low as the price starts from 100 bucks, after drawing 8 different examples the client gave his vision of logo, and fuck) the dude just draw me a piece of shit, such logos were in early 90s, and after upworks taxes you just get 28 dollars...sad...thinking to quit with that shit called upwork
No one replied on Upwork when I tried, so now I'm just using my credits to spam "Poop." to the clients there. It's equally effective at putting money in my bank account. Fuck services like Upwork that commoditize human developers.
Thanks for this, I had so many expectations... I subscribed to Fiverr, did the damn freelance free course, I was so excited! I never felt that stupid in my whole life.. 5 dollars projects for a design? That's what drives me mad the most, because it contributes to a general distorted attitude towards freelance work...How is it even legal to be able to sell a product in a country with a different freakin currency!!! It's obvious that in some parts of the world 5 dollars are worth more, it...it's just nuts...they decided to shit on freelancers and not apologise for it whatsoever. I then subscribed to freelancer, after half an hour I reported one lady who tried to scam me and two fake projects, spent 20 dollars for nothing and have a 72 dollars amount freezed in my bank account and i DO NOT KNOW what this money is for...W T F
The reason for that is Fiverr is filled with third world folks charging only 5$ for logos, website lol
I hate this that they can throw us out any time :'( like a landlord has authority on the rented home :D I use these platform to create my image as a freelancer and always recommend personal branding.
Upwork has very poor standards towards different nationalities,that's just my opinion,I don't wanna say they are biased ,but it seems to me that,if you come from a different culture(example Pakistan),they don't consider your profile
My friend: buy yourself a good quality mic, remove those distracting things at your back, stop looking to eevery side (unless you suffer a "tic"), and throw away that hat.
I just recently joined Freelancer and was appalled by what was on offer. One project was to draw around 148 (or 184) illustrations for what worked out as £4 per illustration.
For me it was PeoplePerHour, but nice way to break it down!
All these platforms suck! We hired cheap freelancers and even highly-paid freelancers. You still will end up with issues because once the job is done nobody is responsible. If a few days or week later you find an issue in code or any work nobody is responsible. It will be a mess to finally get it fixed and you will loose a ton of time.
Wow!
Thanks you for creating this video!
I have started a freelance opportunity recently and I come to understand very quickly that the clients' projects that I have browsed don't seem as if they are professional or entrepreneurial AT ALL. In some cases, it seems as if some high schoolers or college students are trying to cheat their way out of working diligently by recruiting freelancers to complete their assignments for them. In addition, coming from the education sector, it is a disgrace that a large number of clients from the United States DO NOT have proper or professional skills of how to recruit freelancers nor how to use standard business English. WORDS HAVE POWER and how these potential clients request work to be completed is a turnoff (IT'S NOT ALL OF THEM, BUT IT'S A GREAT NUMBER OF THEM).
Again, THANK YOU FOR THIS RANT, BECAUSE IT HELPED ME TO CLARIFY A HUNCH THAT I WAS THINKING, BUT SOMETIMES I KNOW THAT I CAN ANALYZE TOO MUCH. BUT HEY, YOU CONFIRMED THE HUNCH!
THIS IS JUST ANOTHER INSTANCE TO SHOW HOW THE PROFESSIONALISM OF BUSINESS IS DIMINISHING AS SOCIETY AS A WHOLE IS DIMINISHING.
Bullshit, yeah I agree it's a nightmare when you look to be paid more than you deserve, but that's with every field isn't it? - "I was happy working with $40/hr for KIA until I found out VW pays $60/hr to their workers with same skill set."
You are spreading negativity brother, it's been 2 years and I am happy with the exposure upwork provides to my skill set, plus the compensation.
Thing is, the shitty and cheap clients are propagating from all over, even outside Upwork and Freelancer.
Good video thank you so much dear .. please keep uploading amazing video
You quit but your wearing the hat...... Endorsement for something you don't use???.... Why?
There are a lot of Indians that accept almost nothing for a lot of work.
Upwork kicked me just for i applied a lot jobs in 1 month. I was translating but had tried for a different category. There was no warning for it and i was a successful freelancer with a good profile and job success score. Now I see videos like this. Karma works?
Totally resonate with this...RIght now I'm working for a client that pays me very little for hours and hours of work. I'm building my list of clients right now and using the job to pay off some bills. Soon though I will have to quit for a better job. Cheers
stop advertising your friend's company
I was create profile on fiverr n Upwork and this is horrible
You are right! It makes no sense to work on these platforms!
I have a question for you
@t you prefer to get proposal from various freelancers who are not qualified or you would want a talent specialist to find you the best freelancer for your job and is on the budget you put?
@t you prefer to read all proposals from the freelancers or just need to find one qualified freelancer who is fit for your job?
Your answers will be highly appreciated,thanks.
How do you find clients directly? I am sending emails to websites who seem like potential clients but they do not reply / do not want to work
Totally! I hate upwork. 20% + you now have to pay for connects.
Greedy bastards. I hope they go down.
I agree with your sentiments 100%
they don't guarantee you get paid, if the client wants to take his money back they do not apply any terms they just send you to random AAA and your chances are 10% regardless the terms
Well said,anyone who wants to start freelancing should launch his/her website online and promote it with either marketing or seo.I dealt with 5000+ in real world but few days ago upwork without any solid reason suspended my profile.I faced worst customer support on upwork.
I am % agree, you can not make Microsoft Facebook google IBM like companies if you work whole life on uw or freelancer. Another loss you will also loose your personal life totally.you are not freelancer on these websites actullay you are employees of these websites and you give your 24 hours to these websites
Upwork is garbage. Ive been on it for over a year and the budgets these people have are a joke. You want 200 work hours done for 5$...go to Fiverr!
Why I Quit Freelancer.... But I will still wear a hat with their logo on xD
Haha, their portal sucks, but they do make good hats, I have to give them that:)
Freelancer is full of bum scammers trying to rent your Upwork account and Upwork is charging you to get connects that are supposed to be free and used to appear for you weekly.
Upwork is good but this new connects politic is causing it's downfall. I hope a good site comes along to compete with it or they decide to change back and give us free connects.
you are right !
This means that you are not so good in your work to compete on Upwork.
trust me it's not about you good or not. most clients just want high quality service with lowest price.
Is there anyone know any freelance websites besides upwork or freelancer?
If I am just starting out... how do I learn how to build my own client base?
Thank you for the question David! Just created a video on the topic: ruclips.net/video/vJ_0oIpCpX4/видео.html hope it helps:)
Solid advice bro. I've been using an array of these freelancer websites for the past 2 weeks to almost no avail. I landed one job with a large food franchise, however I was extremely underpaid. While I was excited that I got that job within my first few days of using these sites, it did as you said feel like slave work because of the price I accepted for the sake of landing that first job. Since then I haven't had any hits in a week, and I've applied to 20-30 jobs. Glad I found this video as it does seem like these sites are geared towards cheap and low level production and the competition is ridiculous. Within 30 minutes of a job posting there are 10-15 proposals lol, odds aren't in your favor regardless of how good your work is. Anyway.. the content is appreciated, I just subbed!
why don't you share some work rather than saying these things and take your commission I do want to freelance I want to get clients
Really good explanation ..
So true
this is great news given out, the truth isn't nice to hear but i think you shouldn't have been specific on the website you left because it will discourage others that could get a breakthrough from that site stop in as much as some wont get their breakthrough there but others will, so making the website known i think was the bad part of your message but apart from that everything was good.
@CreativeBusinessBuild
Would you be interested in doing a website review for us when it's done?
I am currently working in UpWork. So what site would you recommend if I leave?
I never liked the idea of all these freelancer sites, they were always a disaster waiting to happen, they've become saturated like bacteria in a petri dish! Its like any other market, early bird gets the worm.
These sites imo works best for ppl who lives in 3rd world countries, so if they get atleast 1 job per month they will live like kings with 150$ / month.
Another problem is that clients has no idea how to rate artists quality, for example person A offers do the job for very low amount and his portfolio is pretty high level ( like ILM, Blur Studio etc ), but the client for some reason still hires some person B who has work quality of 1month student due to person B's high review count.
I live in a third world country and I can tell you for free that $150 is money that you can't survive on.
Is there any cheating or fake projects in freelancer?
IT HAS TO BE!
I NOTICED THIS TOO!
I MENTIONED THIS IN A COMMENT ON THIS SAME POST.
THANKS-I'M NOT CRAZY AFTER ALL.
It's been 2 weeks since ive posted a job on Upwork. Havent received any reviews for it. The price was 250$. Fookin shame
i have project ongoing and they suspended my account the same happened in freelance website i worked for client he blocked i dont it is very hard get wotk there
i worked in prime focus technologies i have question i have 7 years experience in Graphics and web design
also
3d modeling and video editing
how to get a direct good clients for long term work ?
It made me thinking...
good insight!
Thanks
Do we get any mail to start the bid. I just started it and got a mail to start the bid. please reply
Hi, im from Perú(Motion Graphics/Editor), it's true, the payments are very low on Freelancer.com, Im quit, behance is better
how do you recommend one approach clients directly, what do you recommend as a great prospecting method and how do you think one should ideally showcase one's portoflio
Hi! I am interested in the cours that you are running but before I do that I want to know is it going to be useful for software as a service kind of job?
Hi buddy. I feel the same while working on upwork and freelancer. I am a full stack developer with both UI as well as server side technologies. Total exploitation by the clients there. just for 100$ they need awesome enterprise application. The only thing I am concerned is how to build own client base. How to convince and gain trust with them? Can you throw some light on that?
Hi man, thank you for the question! I actually build my own client base by getting in touch with clients directly, I explain one of the processes I use in this video ruclips.net/video/ZpA1lS4vm0U/видео.html. Regarding social proof I have built an all-star LinkedIn profile which helps a ton when potential clients do a background check on you. So basically I build social proof with my portfolio and a LinkedIn profile. And once I get them potentially interested, I also arrange a Skype or Google hangout meeting as fast as possible so they can also see me on camera and they know I'm a real person. This is all you need. I hope it helps:)
I couldn't approve account in UpWork.
Thanks for video
WTF!!
Thanks for the information! It's something I'm looking into now and this has helped.
Nice video. I recently bought upwork shares for my portfolio and thus came across this video as part of my research
Hold it to short sales cux it will be going out of business soon😒😒😒
@@luisaxu2095 Looks a good business to me and not too expensive
si ris there any option other then freelancer