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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

#31

Post by projectramo »

skeeper wrote: post #21
projectramo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Integrity and vision are great, but I wouldn't want 14 million people to depend on it.

For example, if someone else feels the potential is underutilized, they could offer to buy it and then bump up rates.

How do you structurally make sure that the motive is different?

Some kind of collective idea might work. The model should be the stock market. Trading costs are getting lower, transparency is going up etc.

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

#32

Post by projectramo »

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 might work. Or something like the NYSE. Lower trading costs, better transparency etc.

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

#33

Post by ccozan »

mooreds wrote: post #27
ccozan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You are right, but the same can be done over current Upwork; once I trust a freelancer, I can deal outside the Upwork range, using a normal contract.

However, the most freelancers get short jobs and many clients, as in the original article is specified, so this just simply works.

EDIT: it seems that as currently implemented, even Upwork is bumping in a search the ones with many hours/money earned. So cheating would be a bad decision, since it may drastically affect your visibility on the site

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

#34

Post by ccozan »

skeeper wrote: post #26
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?

You need money to provide a reliable service.

You can adopt the Wikipedia style and ask for donations, or just make a company behind it, with decent people ( as opposed to a corporation, with stakeholders, etc).

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

#35

Post by nfriedly »

Back when it was called elance, I was getting annoyed that it would bill clients automatically but then leave the money sit in my elance account - there was no way to automatically send income to a bank account. So I wrote a bot that logged in on my behalf every day and initiated a bank transfer if there was any money available.

I don't believe this violated the ToS at the time, and Elance never said there was anything wrong with it. But once I posted it to the forums, my account was suspended within a day for a couple of silly things like having a reference to my personal website in one of my example images.

I quit putting much faith in the company after that.

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

#36

Post by ndarilek »

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."

Make it a co-op. Build restrictions into the corporate bylaws such that classes of members can check and balance acts like this. Implement profit-sharing, so not only would that 1% increase in fees help fund development, but it would also be returned in part to platform members. Of course it may be necessary to increase fees once you've got an actual idea of what your expenses will look like, and profit-sharing may necessitate a larger increase, but then everyone has incentive for the platform to succeed.

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

#37

Post by skeeper »

nfriedly wrote: post #35

Back when it was called elance, I was getting annoyed that it would bill clients automatically but then leave the money sit in my elance account - there was no way to automatically send income to a bank account. So I wrote a bot that logged in on my behalf every day and initiated a bank transfer if there was any money available. I don't believe this violated the ToS at the time, and Elance never said there was anythi…

They seem to be getting some profit by keeping YOUR money on their accounts.

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

#38

Post by skeeper »

ndarilek wrote: post #36
projectramo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Make it a co-op. Build restrictions into the corporate bylaws such that classes of members can check and balance acts like this. Implement profit-sharing, so not only would that 1% increase in fees help fund development, but it would also be returned in part to platform members. Of course it may be necessary to increase fees once you've got an actual idea of what your expenses will look like, and profit-sharing may n…

Some smart people really think alike. +1 on that!

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

#39

Post by skeeper »

projectramo wrote: post #31
skeeper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Integrity and vision are great, but I wouldn't want 14 million people to depend on it. For example, if someone else feels the potential is underutilized, they could offer to buy it and then bump up rates. How do you structurally make sure that the motive is different? Some kind of collective idea might work. The model should be the stock market. Trading costs are getting lower, transparency is going up etc.

"offer to buy it" meaning investors would come in? That could sabotage the vision down the road.

If bumping up rates would benefit the community, why not?

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

#40

Post by skeeper »

ccozan wrote: post #22
projectramo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"If such a decency level would be available, I would be their customer" I guess others would too.
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