Ask HN: Upwork. What am I missing?

[throwawayno596]

Has anyone used Upwork for freelancing? Is it a legitimate service? I am curious since I managed to use up my connects with no response and now they immediately hit me to buy more of them. I am relatively new to all this. Services I offer are not that unique ( data entry, web scraping, research ). It is possible I am simply outbid or doing something else wrong.

[Gustomaximus]

I hire from these sites semi regularly, so looking a bit from the other side plus peeps I talk with who work regularly on these platforms.

I suspect it is hard to start. I tend to go for proven performers and even then it's full of low quality.

Some peeps I use do very well, are full on work (full time) with ever increasing rates.

I think the best strategy is to bid low, like crazy low. Yeah it sux but it's like starting your career again. You need to build reputation and take whatever job you can to get in the door. Make sure you get 5 stars. If you get a bad rating first few jobs I'd kill the account and start again as these are damaging without quality references to offset.

Approach with the restart mindset. Experience people who think they can join and get their real life career rate off the bat are likely dreaming. It seems a multi year commitment to build a network, and in the same way I filter 5-10 freelancers to get a decent one I'll keep working with, you likely need to do the same with clients.

And if I was trying to hack it, I'd ask existing clients if they mind using me on said platform to help build reputation faster.

And if your truly looking to work for top dollar, it's the wrong environment.

[tech4all]

Upwork is a dumpster-fire. I have used it (to hire specifically-skilled software professionals) several times in the past six years and these are the problems: 1) too many people bid on your project even if they clearly do not have the desired experience. 2) "firms" that bid on your projects, again, without the experience. 3) vendors "having trouble with upwork...can we just switch to paypal?" 4) Upwork suddenly stopping vendors "for violating our terms of service" (almost certainly due to #3).

I hope to never use Upwork again to hire. The last three times i clearly put in the job posting: "Once you begin work: all work and payment will and must contine with the original upwork account! We will not switch accounts, we will not switch to paypal."

There MUST be better services!

[sergiotapia]

It's a legitimate service, and I owe them a lot. From allowing me to work with clients overseas up to finally bringing my family over to the states. Back then in bolivia, the only work available was PHP or C#/Java for offshore companies.

They were called odesk back then though.

One thing that's TERRIBLE about them though is that any contract that finishes, if your client forgets to leave any review or feedback, it'll count negative towards your score.

You could have worked a $25,000+ contract with a client, and if they just say thanks and forget to leave a review, it will impact you negatively. It's something I wish they would change.

[muzani]

You'll actually have to bug clients for a review. I think this is actually a best case because I've had one or two horrible contractors and the system punishes clients leaving low reviews.

[saluki]

y, those market places make it tough to win work and find good clients. It's a race to the lowest price and those aren't the type of clients you want to work for.

Reach out to your network and let them know what services you are offering. You're going to find more success and better clients with in your network.

You can win jobs on Upwork, but it will take some money upfront and effort to build your history of work and you need to make sure clients are totally happy so you get good reviews to get more work.

The best clients and projects will come from people you know, reach out to your network.

[Nextgrid]

You're not missing anything.

Beyond the fact it's a rat race, the other problem is that there's zero moderation nor penalty to weed out the monkeys who will bid unsustainable rates to every single job (regardless of their skillset - which is nonexistent btw but I digress), and then find a way to get a good rating despite delivering shit (if delivering anything at all). I've read stories of some freelancers withholding the deliverable until the client leaves a good rating.

It's difficult to compete by offering quality when every single task post is swarmed by these monkeys. For an unexperienced client they look like very good deals and the good rating makes them feel at ease. Of course, they'll end up disappointed, but at that point they'll either leave the platform for good, or not have any more time or money to pay someone better to try it again. In the end, everyone (but the monkeys) lose.

[muzani]

I'm not sure when the last time you used it was, but now they allow limited applications per person. Someone swarming won't get very far. A lot of people are quite high quality, and I feel the rating system does the trick. Downside is they rate you back, so if someone did a shit job and you say so, they'll do the same on you. If anyone has lots of high ratings, it's likely that their bad work isn't being rated.

You can choose to withhold payment until the deliverables are delivered. IMO the bigger risk is that a lot of people on there are doing it part time and slow or absent. I've had a few people who also choose to back out. The system works great for small tasks (make me a map marker feature), not so great for bigger tasks (make me an app).

[muzani]

I've used for both hiring/outsourcing simple parts and getting work. It's worked fine, but you have to really deal with the mess that is interviewing.

The downside is that there's some lock in with how they process payments and visibility. It's not terrible, but enough to put me off. I'd rather do something like Toptal to find work.

We always had about 30+ applicants for any posted jobs, with about 5+ of them really talented people. The only reason I stopped doing it was because I found it mentally tiring to reject all these nice people, and it feels a bit like a meat market.

[jamil7]

It's legitimate, I found my best client there, but I did some research on their job listing and emailed them directly and begun working with them, side-stepping upwork altogether. I don't feel bad about it since upwork's whole model seems to be squeezing and exploiting freelancers.

If you want to get noticed then you will need to fill out your profile completely, do the verification over video chat.

[gtirloni]

Upwork is a race to the bottom.

[muzani]

I've seen people make a good living, like $150 an hour. I've got some good work from there too (one with a FAANG, that paid well above what I expected). But generally most listing sites are poor sources of work.

[throw51319]

What type of work was it for the FAANG? Just curious why a company like that would go on Upwork.

[seiji-san]

Yeah, this pretty much sums up most freelancing sites

[Trias11]

Connect with few freelancers and then deal with them directly.