Yes, it is. I don't care about the connects, just make a subscriber fee and be done with it. Then maybe people would stop whining about not getting connects back and learn about being self-employed.
A subscriber fee is an interesting idea, but what about the mechanics of it? You still need to set the barrier to entry high enough that it generates turnover among the extraneous supply of new freelancers. A low barrier to entry and low turnover is no better than bottomless connects.
We all get ghosted. This is a business.
That is true, and it is a fact of business. People change their minds. People are chaotic and unpredictable. A business owner needs to adapt and overcome or get out of the way. However, this is still a site where people spend money to have access to opportunities.
While I personally understand that there are a certain number of zombie job postings, others have paid for access with the expectation that those zombie postings are being managed in some way. Upwork is basically a brokerage, and at some point a customer still expects a brokerage to provide access to a certain level of quality.
No, that makes no sense. There are too many unskilled freelancers. Giving away more connects only allows them to annoy and harass clients who will never, ever, hire them.
I agree that there is likely an oversupply of unskilled freelancers. Even when I started on the site, I can remember job postings regularly and consistently showing 5-10 proposals. Now, its regularly and consistently 20+ proposals and I havent been here that long.
I disagree about annoying and harassing clients though. Submitting a proposal isn't harassment and it shouldnt be an annoyance to the client. After all, the client is the one soliciting the interactions. Proposals can only be submitted once, unless the client initiates multiple job postings - in which case they are soliciting a greater response from more freelancers.
Its my understanding that once a freelancer submits a bid and proposal, they are no longer able to continue bidding and are knocked out of the pile if they are outbid by someone else. One proposal, once chance to bid, unless this is incorrect.
Equity? This is a business, not a social experiment. It would be nice if the whole world was on the same page, but I don't see that happening. When you are in business for yourself, there is no whining about business costs. You either spend what you need or lose out.
Sure, and I can mostly agree with that. However, my specific point is being missed here. The point is the perception of equity among the least productive, lowest performing, lowest skilled freelancers. The chaff. The extraneous volume of freelancers that need to be purged from the site in order for the site to be succesful.
One of the tough realities of being a business owner is conceding to people for the sake of maintaing good relationships, access to business opportunities, and sometimes closing the deal itself. Sometimes, as a business owner, we have to bite our tongues and just finish the work to appease difficult customers.
With that in mind, this is why I use "severance by proxy" and "equity" as specific terms within my comment. In corporate america, severance is given as a way to make an amicable split. If the connects are being spent either way, the idea is to let those most likely to NOT succeed, do so with a smile on their face. From a business perspective its better to calm the challenging customer with a free pen then it is to let them go off into the world and run off a big spender in the parking lot.
The comment is not about employees and is not about freebies or endless supplies of connects. Its about how the lowest performing freelancers talk about the site once they are gone. Customers (freelancers, for the sake of this comment) remember how they are treated.
No one promises fair in life or business. Every freelancer started online with no money and no clients. Why should I or any freelancer who is following the rules and working hard, be burdened with unskilled freelancers who put up a photo of their cat and claim to be bilingual when they can't write in their own language? This clogs the clients feeds to the point the clients give up and leave. No, do not give anyone any extra benefits, including connects. I'm getting very tired of those who want their path made suddenly easy and simple. Be an adult and treat freelancing as self-employment with responsibilities or find another path.
You are correct, and I agree that there are no promises. I get it, I do.
Unfortunately, this site thinks up features like connects, boosts, refunds, etc. Given that this is the reality of this site, I am simply making a talking point within those operational boundaries. If it were up to me, I would probably agree that a moderate subscription fee and open competition is the best model to generate turnover and maintain a healthy pool of freelancers and clientele - but thats not what we have.
