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joansands
Community Member

Freelancers doing work for free ....

I have been talking with a potential client about doing editing for a book. Now she just informed that she found another freelancer on Upwork who is going to do the job for free because she is new to Upwork and has not gotten any jobs. That is quite discouraging since I paid $2 for a proposal to this woman.

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feed_my_eyes
Community Member

Report this.


Joan S wrote:

I have been talking with a potential client about doing editing for a book. Now she just informed that she found another freelancer on Upwork who is going to do the job for free because she is new to Upwork and has not gotten any jobs. That is quite discouraging since I paid $2 for a proposal to this woman.


Report it to Upwork, and you might want to mention to the client that working for free is a violation of the TOS.


Christine A wrote:

Report this.


Joan S wrote:

I have been talking with a potential client about doing editing for a book. Now she just informed that she found another freelancer on Upwork who is going to do the job for free because she is new to Upwork and has not gotten any jobs. That is quite discouraging since I paid $2 for a proposal to this woman.


Report it to Upwork, and you might want to mention to the client that working for free is a violation of the TOS.


Requesting free work is a violation. Technically, a freelancer can voluntarily work for free if that's what they want to do.

 

Joan, did you somehow send $2 to the client? Or do you mean you spent 2 connects? If Upwork sees fit to cancel the job, you'll get the connects back.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

No - I did not send any money to the client. I paid for some extra connects.

My understanding is that the client did not request free work. A new freelancer made a proposal and offered to do the work for free because she had not gotten any jobs - and the client accepted the offer. I guess it remains to be seen what kind of work she will get from the new freelancer. But it makes it difficult for someone like me to get jobs when others are offering to work for free.


Joan S wrote:

My understanding is that the client did not request free work. A new freelancer made a proposal and offered to do the work for free because she had not gotten any jobs - and the client accepted the offer. I guess it remains to be seen what kind of work she will get from the new freelancer. But it makes it difficult for someone like me to get jobs when others are offering to work for free.


The fun part of this is that the new freelancer clearly thinks she or he is working for good feedback.

He or she will have a rude awakening when they realize that "nothing paid" contracts do not appear as feedback and are actually counted as a negative factor.

 

To be honest, any client who goes for something like that is ultimately the sort of client you would not want to work with for so many reasons anyway.

 


Petra R wrote:


The fun part of this is that the new freelancer clearly thinks she or he is working for good feedback.

He or she will have a rude awakening when they realize that "nothing paid" contracts do not appear as feedback and are actually counted as a negative factor.


And I'll bet you anything that if this freelancer does manage to become successful in any way, in a few months' time they'll be all over the forum complaining about other freelancers who work for little or no money. It's the circle of life.

Since I am fairly new myself, I did not realize that contracts that don't have a paid fee do not get to leave feedback. The client's job post does not show a contract for this free freelancer - so the client probably just sent the book file to the freelancer without any contract. Since the client said she will have other books, this new freelancer is probably hoping she will get those. But once you work for free, how is she going to get paid in future. It seems to me that any client who wants to exploit someone and get free work is just a cheap person and not worth working for. Personally, I strive to do good work that I want to get paid for but I also want to be appreciated for what I do.

That is so frustrating! What the freelancer who is doing that does not realize is that they are also hurting their future prospects by contributing to such freelancer culture. This person is essentially saying the type of work that they do is not worth much.

In my opinion:

Any freelancer who offers to work for free in return for good feedback should be removed from the platform.

 

That kind of behavior drags things down for the rest of us.

 

It certainly doesn't help Upwork.

As Petra pointed out, it doesn't even help the freelancer.


Preston H wrote:

In my opinion:

Any freelancer who offers to work for free in return for good feedback should be removed from the platform.

 

That kind of behavior drags things down for the rest of us.

 

It certainly doesn't help Upwork.

As Petra pointed out, it doesn't even help the freelancer.


I'm extremely surprised that it's not against the TOS - "free work in exchange for feedback" was a violation on Elance, I seem to recall?


Christine A wrote:


I'm extremely surprised that it's not against the TOS -


if the work is free, there will be no visible feedback, so the whole thing is pointless.

 



I'm extremely surprised that it's not against the TOS - "free work in exchange for feedback" was a violation on Elance, I seem to recall?


 

It isn´t?? wow... that´s shocking.

2f5ff562
Community Member


Joan S wrote:

I have been talking with a potential client about doing editing for a book. Now she just informed that she found another freelancer on Upwork who is going to do the job for free because she is new to Upwork and has not gotten any jobs. That is quite discouraging since I paid $2 for a proposal to this woman.


I don´t know if this kind of freelancers will keep on doing that once connects have a cost, i mean, besides working for free, then they would have to pay to work, and that´s like kind of dumb, but then again, everything can happen.

Putting aside ALL QUESTIONS of ethics and rules...

 

Successful project owners know that they can't afford to have people working for them for free.

 

You may get away with it once in a while, but generally speaking, you get what you pay for. And having people on your team working for free simply means dealing with people who aren't serious, and who are not providing the level of quality your project deserves.

And I said exactly that to that potential client - that it is often true that one gets what one pays for. Personally, I think that when you pay nothing, you get nothing but lots of people apparently still think it's a great idea to pay nothing.

Anonymous-User
Not applicable

When people get something for nothing, they often treat it like it's nothing. 

These two are zeroing each other out. Client will get a horribly edited book which people will comment on in their book reviews, and the "free"lancer will be here crying next week that the client stole their work. 

 

Neither of them value their own worth. Sad.  

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