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Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

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Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#21

Post by skeeper »

projectramo wrote: post #16
ccozan wrote: post #10

There is not necessarily a need for 100% community effort. What is needed a simple, decent service, with reasonable rates ( from 1% to 3% from a transaction ) and keeps up with the requests. Such a service could be run by a max 5 person company and I believe everyone could profit. I worked with Upwork and I liked the concept, but the implementation was a bit to complicated. With this changes, I really hope new such s…

But once you have 14 million users, what prevents the 5 guys from going: "Hey, you know what? If we just bumped up rates to 6%, we'd make a lot more money and we won't lose too many people. We're providing a great service and a lot of the customers are happy to pay that amount."

This is where integrity and vision come into play. If you want to bump it into 6%, you should explain why. It should not be all about profits. If it is, then such platform won't be different from Upwork.

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#22

Post by ccozan »

projectramo wrote: post #16
ccozan wrote: post #10

There is not necessarily a need for 100% community effort. What is needed a simple, decent service, with reasonable rates ( from 1% to 3% from a transaction ) and keeps up with the requests. Such a service could be run by a max 5 person company and I believe everyone could profit. I worked with Upwork and I liked the concept, but the implementation was a bit to complicated. With this changes, I really hope new such s…

But once you have 14 million users, what prevents the 5 guys from going: "Hey, you know what? If we just bumped up rates to 6%, we'd make a lot more money and we won't lose too many people. We're providing a great service and a lot of the customers are happy to pay that amount."

I would agree such a change if this would be justified transparently, like we need extra servers or we need to hire an extra guy for development of your most voted features, and so on. If such a decency level would be available, I would be their customer.

Remenber, once you fragment this market ( maybe 10s of such online freelancing services ), the market rules apply and prices will be kept down.

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#25

Post by skeeper »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #19
projectramo wrote: post #17

One word: Non-profit. Okay, it is a hyphenated word.

It does strike me some kind of worker owned co-operative would suit this type of organisation.

That's possible too. I think a few companies (in other industries) have taken this path.

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#26

Post by skeeper »

ccozan wrote: post #10

There is not necessarily a need for 100% community effort. What is needed a simple, decent service, with reasonable rates ( from 1% to 3% from a transaction ) and keeps up with the requests. Such a service could be run by a max 5 person company and I believe everyone could profit. I worked with Upwork and I liked the concept, but the implementation was a bit to complicated. With this changes, I really hope new such s…

"There is not necessarily a need for 100% community effort." Why do you think so? Can you explain?

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#27

Post by mooreds »

ccozan wrote: post #20
PeterisP wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% to 3% won't even cover the direct costs of being an intermediary for payments if you e.g. accept credit cards. Such levels of pricing is not sustainable unless you're burning money to provide the service at a loss while you gain market share and network effects. I agree that 20% fee seems excessive, but as soon as you're handling other people's money, 1-3% are not reasonable rates, they are unrealistically low, no…

of course, 1%-3% doesn't make sense if you want to be in the control of the transaction between the freelancer and the client. But you don't have to be. The client should pay the freelancer as he see fits, in euros, pounds, bitcoin, shells or giant round stones. If you can leave that aside and just charge the freelancer with that 3%, let's say. If this doesn't make sense, you can always set a minimum charge, like 5 e…

If you don't have your hands in the transaction, then you'll be cut out if the transaction as soon as both parties are comfortable with each other.

That may be ok, but is definitely far less sustainable, as you have to keep creating new matches (as opposed to being paid for an existing match continuing).

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#28

Post by aedron »

skeeper wrote: post #11
ccozan wrote: post #10

There is not necessarily a need for 100% community effort. What is needed a simple, decent service, with reasonable rates ( from 1% to 3% from a transaction ) and keeps up with the requests. Such a service could be run by a max 5 person company and I believe everyone could profit. I worked with Upwork and I liked the concept, but the implementation was a bit to complicated. With this changes, I really hope new such s…

They seem to be alienating certain groups of freelancers deliberately.

Agreed - this new pricing structure hits hard for freelancers that do smaller jobs for many different clients, whereas for freelancers that bill larger amounts and have a longer client relationships, this will save them money (5% vs. 10% fee).

I guess the small-jobs-for-new-clients-each-time take up a disproportionately large amount of support work for Upwork.

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