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frederick_steve
Community Member

Living Wage! Tell Upwork to Get Rid of the Cheapskates--Living Wage!

I can hardly be on Upwork without getting ticked off. I'm assaulted by postings by people who want a lot of work for no money--like this guy who says he wants a 2,000-word article written for $10. 

 

I complained to Upwork myself, and they said they have a minimum of $3 per hour (!!!!), as that is better than the minimum wage in some countries. That hourly is insulting, but they obviously aren't even enforcing that.  $10 - $2 for Upwork's 20%, and some freelancer is doing all that work for $8.  Unless you're superman, you're not going to research and write a 2,000-word article in under 3 hours. Some of these projects don't even pay $1/hour. **Edited for Community Guidelines** Upwork. Upwork needs to hear from a lot of us that things have to change. Send them a note today!  

 

Upwork is shooting themselves in the foot as well. They only get $2 for a project of that size. 

 

 

 

28 REPLIES 28
jared_k
Community Member

Life can be tough bro, and sometimes the freelance game be real tough....

Really, "Bro?" So we should just put up with people who pay $1 an hour? 


Steve F wrote:

Really, "Bro?" So we should just put up with people who pay $1 an hour? 


No. You should choose not to work with them and scroll right on by like all successful freelancers do.

Still, its not right. You have to support freelancers as well as employers. 

I support freelancers by spending many volunteer hours helping them understand how to run their businesses like businesses and focus on the things they can control. What some client you would never choose to work with chooses to pay a freelancer you don't know who is happy with that rate doesn't impact you. In fact, it's really none of our business at all. 

 

petra_r
Community Member


Steve F wrote:

Upwork needs to hear from a lot of us that things have to change. Send them a note today!  

Please don't...

 

Willfully wasting Support time we all pay for with our fees is somewhere between completely pointless and downright malicious. 

 

Don't like a job post? Skip it or bid your own rate. Right now I have an offer sitting here at nearly 10 times the posted budget.

 

The less Upwork gets between client and freelancer the better for all of us! 

sphenn
Community Member

Minimum of $3 doesnt make any sense at all. Theres an idiom - "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Raising the minimum would result in a higher standard of work. It would also attract more talent.
tlsanders
Community Member


Sphenn S wrote:
Minimum of $3 doesnt make any sense at all. Theres an idiom - "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Raising the minimum would result in a higher standard of work. It would also attract more talent.

There have been roughly 3,768 threads on this topic. A lot of freelancer agree with you. A lot of freelancers don't want Upwork making those decisions for us and feel perfectly capable of setting our own standards. A lot of freelancers are happy to get work at $3/hour and would really appreciate it if you stopped trying to destroy their only source of income.

 

At the end of the day...dozens or hundreds of posts later...Upwork maintains the same minimums it has for years. 

petra_r
Community Member


Sphenn S wrote:
Minimum of $3 doesnt make any sense at all. 

It doesn't for you, so you may ignore such job posts.It doesn't for me, so I ignore such posts.

Some Freelancers in countries where people work 2 full days for $ 3 think it's a pretty good rate to be earning in one hour.

 


Sphenn S wrote:
Raising the minimum would result in a higher standard of work.

Not really, it doesn't work quite like that.

 


Sphenn S wrote:
 It would also attract more talent.

Upwork needs more clients. It neither needs nor wants more freelancers.

What do people think would happen if Upwork forced a higher minimum wage? That these clients would suddenly start paying more? That's not going to happen. These clients are paying this much either because they are profiteering or because it's what they can afford to pay. They'd just take their business elsewhere if forced to pay more.

You could ban them, but what would that achieve? All that would happen is that there would be (FAR) fewer jobs on the platform, but still the same number of freelancers. How is that going to cause an increase in what freelancers can charge individually? 


Jamie F wrote:

 They'd just take their business elsewhere if forced to pay more.


and they'd take their better and well paid jobs with them....

atreglia
Community Member


Petra R wrote:


Upwork needs more clients. It neither needs nor wants more freelancers.


Then why are there "thousands" of new freelancers "every day"? 


Anna T wrote:

Petra R wrote:


Upwork needs more clients. It neither needs nor wants more freelancers.


Then why are there "thousands" of new freelancers "every day"? 


Good question. Prolly because their stupid auto-approval algorithm sucks and also because it's full of loopholes.

 

 

 

 

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Of course Upwork wants more freelancers. They want all they can get. After all, we pay them money to bid for jobs and they get (an outrageous) 20% of our money. I don't think they really care all that much about freelancers.


Steve F wrote:

Of course Upwork wants more freelancers. They want all they can get. After all, we pay them money to bid for jobs and they get (an outrageous) 20% of our money. I don't think they really care all that much about freelancers.


Corporations don't have feelings and if they were to care about anything, it would be profit. 


Steve F wrote:

Of course Upwork wants more freelancers. They want all they can get. 


Nonsense.

 

Why would they be rejecting the vast majority of new profiles if they wanted "all they can get?"

atreglia
Community Member



Steve F wrote:

Of course Upwork wants more freelancers. They want all they can get.

 

Petra wrote:

Nonsense.

 

Why would they be rejecting the vast majority of new profiles if they wanted "all they can get?"


They may be rejecting most but they are still letting in "thousands" of freelancers "every day".  This conflicts with "neither needs nor wants" more freelancers.  That said, it would be safe to say that no one here really knows what goes on at Upwork and all any one can do is guess.


Steve F wrote:

Of course Upwork wants more freelancers. They want all they can get. After all, we pay them money to bid for jobs and they get (an outrageous) 20% of our money. I don't think they really care all that much about freelancers.


That doesn't really make sense. More freelancers doesn't make them more money unless there is a shortage of qualified freelancers for the jobs being posted. In fact, it likely lowers the prices clients pay (basic supply and demand) meaning that Upwork's fee is smaller.

 

Of course they don't care about freelancers. It's not their job to care about freelancers. They care about running a profitable business.

sphenn
Community Member

The more freelancers upwork has available, the higher the competition for jobs there is.

Higher competition means more competitive rates and more choice for the clients (they get more choice for lower costs).

This makes upwork far more appealing for clients.

So yes, it makes sense. It's in upwork's best interest to attract more freelancers.
tlbp
Community Member


Anna T wrote:

Petra R wrote:


Upwork needs more clients. It neither needs nor wants more freelancers.


Then why are there "thousands" of new freelancers "every day"? 


Why do millions of people buy lottery tickets?

atreglia
Community Member


Tonya P wrote:

Anna T wrote:

Petra R wrote:


Upwork needs more clients. It neither needs nor wants more freelancers.


Then why are there "thousands" of new freelancers "every day"? 


Tonya P wrote:

Why do millions of people buy lottery tickets?


Using your analogy there is a big difference between millions of people buying lottery tickets and one person buying millions of lottery tickets.  So, I'm not sure what you mean.

sphenn
Community Member

Upwork certainly needs more freelancers. It makes job bidding more competitive (something very advantageous for clients).

Since upwork caters to clients (using freelancers as products), attracting more freelancers would reduce clients costs with more competitive rates while offering them more to choose from.

This is partially why we see people working for $3 an hour.
rsamborn
Community Member

It absolutely works that way. You get what you pay for. In all industries, you pay more for higher quality. The problem with Upwork is that they don't vet the clients and treat the freelancers like dirt, despite freelancers being their source of revenue.

Obviously some countries have lower minimum wages than others. If that's the case, then Upwork should have geographically based platforms. 

And by the way, Upwork allows jobs that are far below $3/hour. I've seen jobs posted for $7 that would take a whole day. And Upwork takes 20% off the top.

And it's not a simple matter of "scroll through it, bro." When clients post jobs (I'm a client too), they look at comparable jobs and see what the budgets are. 

Allowing such low paying jobs brings the quality and incomes  down for everybody. People in countries that have lower minimum wages want to make as much as possible, too.

dsmgdesign
Community Member

Steve, it looks like you have completed projects at $40 and $50 an hour. So, you're doing pretty well.  I think also sometimes we freelancers can forget that Upwork is a global platform.  So $3/per hour can go very far in many communities outside of the United States, even with Upwork's fee. 

 

As freelancers we set our own rate, are able to search for clients who are willing to pay our rates (and there are thousands upon thousands of them), and manage our business in a way that makes for us. Upwork plays no role in that, other than providing us with a pool of clients to connect with. 

 

I used to get ticked off too, until I learned how to master the search filters. If you don't want to work for $10 on an article, that can easily be filtered out. Start with setting your filters to only expert, and set your budget to the level you want to work at when searching posts. Find a search filter that works for you. I think you'll find it will clear out alot of the low-paying riff-raff noise out of your search results.

I love how some people routinely forget that other countries exist.

$5/hour is pretty **bleep** good in Luzon or certain parts of India. Upwork is catering to the global freelance community.

Plus, a minimum wage is unenforceable as long as fixed-price contracts exist. I'm sure people will end up creating makeshift time tracking using screen recordings and will end up billing the same low rate anyway.

Dave,

How do you set these filters? I don't see them anywhere. Thanks in advance. 

 


Steve F wrote:

Dave,

How do you set these filters? I don't see them anywhere. Thanks in advance. 

 


Under the Find Work menu - select saved jobs 

Select the search tab 

The Filters button is to the right of the search bar as seen in this screen capture. 

 

tlsanders
Community Member

There are no wages here. You're an independent businessperson and you set your rates. This is a global platform and Upwork isn't going to tell people from other areas around the world that they're not allowed to charge what is a living wage (or a great wage) for them because it offends you to see their jobs posted. A $10 job for 3,000 words isn't for you. Continue to scroll. 

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