Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
support.upwork.com
Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
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Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#2That's a huge tax
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#3I've had a good experience with Upwork as a buyer of Development, DevOps and Design Services. There are a lot of unreliable providers there, but also some really talented, dedicated and professionals too who seem to make a good living if they live in slightly lower cost regions.
We had a fairly complex client project, and it worked really well for bringing in fractional skills. 20 hours of a Spark expert, 60 hours of an Azure expert, 5 hours of someone to help install a certain tool etc. Better than hiring a generalist for a longer period.
I imagine it is challenging as a freelancer, but it's a decent platform from the other side and adds value.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#4I have been using Upwork for years to outsource tasks. I'm still not sure what to think of them.
On the one hand, I keep coming back because I usually find the better freelancers on Upwork than elsewhere.
On the other hand, paying them 10% means a freelancer who works for me for two weeks works one whole day just to pay the Upwork fee. And there are other fees on top of that. Upwork's overall take rate is over 15%.
And what is super annoying: For every freelancer you work with, they send you 12 (!) PDFs per month. For each week, they send you: a) The invoice of the freelancer b) An invoice of Upwork 3) A receipt for your payment.
Even if you worked with a freelancer for years, there is no way to switch to monthly invoicing.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#5Meh, that's a dishonest title.
Yes, Upwork are moving everybody on the 10% fee. But they previously had a progressive fee:
* 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client
* 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned
* 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned
Those figures are per client. Start a new job with someone else, you start from the lower bracket again.
So they were basically living off short term contracts and low paid freelancers. Now it penalises everyone the same, but 10% is much more reasonable than 20%
I've been trying to stay afloat in this terrible hiring market through Upwork, and I'm ambivalent. Without it, I'd pretty much be broke. But even with a profile that has been created in 2012, has $50k billed, I've only been able to find short term consulting or sysadmin jobs paid terribly, and lost 20% off each of them because of the prohibitive lower bracket.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#6Wow, I thought they would honor the 5% charge till the end of the contracts but it seems they will go to 10% by the end of the year.
Since Upwork theoretically locks you in for 2 years with a client, I’m expecting there will be a small exodus of people with long-term projects . I’d much rather sort out invoicing myself and get paid through Stripe than lose out on extra 5%.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#7I have been using Upwork for years to outsource tasks. I'm still not sure what to think of them. On the one hand, I keep coming back because I usually find the better freelancers on Upwork than elsewhere. On the other hand, paying them 10% means a freelancer who works for me for two weeks works one whole day just to pay the Upwork fee. And there are other fees on top of that. Upwork's overall take rate is over 15%. A…
Absolutely. Additionally they have a power to de-platform an individual.
This move will potentially hurt lot of indie & freelancers who were working with long-term clients through Upwork.
This is like forgoing your 5% net income.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#8I've had a good experience with Upwork as a buyer of Development, DevOps and Design Services. There are a lot of unreliable providers there, but also some really talented, dedicated and professionals too who seem to make a good living if they live in slightly lower cost regions. We had a fairly complex client project, and it worked really well for bringing in fractional skills. 20 hours of a Spark expert, 60 hours of…
Yes, it is great platform to discover talent.
It has a medium talent density, as a buyer there are lot of protections & power to switch.
As a Freelancer, you similarly have challenge of working unreasonable clients.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#9I have been using Upwork for years to outsource tasks. I'm still not sure what to think of them. On the one hand, I keep coming back because I usually find the better freelancers on Upwork than elsewhere. On the other hand, paying them 10% means a freelancer who works for me for two weeks works one whole day just to pay the Upwork fee. And there are other fees on top of that. Upwork's overall take rate is over 15%. A…
> works one whole day just to pay the Upwork fee
If they have any sense they pass the cost of the fee on to you in their hourly rate or project cost or whatever.
Re: Upwork removing 5% commission bracket and moving everyone to 10% bracket
#10This is in addition to the % fees they also charge the buyer.
As a very long time user of Upwork since before the days of oDesk and Elance, don't understand the greed here. They used to at least offer discounts on the rate when you had over $10K billings with a client.
This just increases prices across the board as contractors will raise their rates to account for the fees.
Silly as it gives their users motivation to give competitors a look, as well as a competitor to rise that doesn't want to be as greedy with the now common Airbnb style of charging all sides fees.
Surely they got jealous of all the 20-30% fees relatively new services like Uber, GrubHub, Fulfilled by Amazon charges and figure they should get in the game as compared to their legacy thinking...
Wish they'd provide additional value and services for additional revenue, rather than continue to squeeze both sides of the transaction.