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by tigroferoce 1869 days ago
I’d like to do something similar too. I’ve seen many enthusiastic posts on the upwork Twitter account, but every time I’ve tried to look there I’ve seen just very underpaid gigs and some fierce competition from places where cost of living is very low.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about this, just nothing that upwork might be a difficult road, at least until you get enough reputation.

Another possibility is to join things like toptal. It shouldn’t be too difficult, given your experience

1 comments

I tried that a few years ago and was able make a semi decent go of it. But not since they started to charge to bid on projects.

What most people don't realize is you are playing a completely different game. People want the cheapest and good. Most of the work involved quickly understanding what the project needed and wording it in a way that could get a conversation going and then the real work of selling yourself, defining the project and trying to justify why you need so many hours when the 5 dollars an hour guy says no problem we'll do it today.

The biggest problem is upwork ranks people by score, salary and/or specialist creds they give. You need to respond within minutes or be cheaper.

The work required to make things work and the rewards don't add up. I'm old enough to remember rentacoder and freelancer. These platforms startoff paying well and slowly turn into something else as supply increased. What happens is the quality drops so the best clients move on and you are left with vague requirements and impossible tasks like the $100.00 build me a google search engine project and it becomes unusable.