Time to set up budget bracket for each project category Upwork!

[engr_carl]

I am unsure if this is only happening in our line of work. I have been in Upwork for more than seven years. As I grow with it, I am slowly getting convinced that abusive clients are slowly killing our line of work. 

I am a 3D Artist. Arch-Viz, Interior and Exterior Visualizations, Product Visuals, Animations, etc. There is this growing thread now that Clients tend to pay a penny for an expert outcome. Imagine, I invested more than $10,000 worth of workstations, subscriptions, courses, etc just to accept a $50 worth of project that will eat weeks of my time to finish? 

Well, I know hypocrites will say "then do not get the project". Then this bigger problem occurs, some freelancers from so-called "3rd world countries" will accept the project. Then these clients will continue plaguing the platform with a penny of budget for an expert high-quality outcome. As a matter of fact, I am from a third-world country. The abusive clients will reason out to me that my cost of living is lesser than theirs so why I would charge a premium (the actual price I ask is 20-30% less than the world's average)? Each component of my workstation is far more expensive than the SRP of its origin, I'm talking about 30-50% because of import taxes.

This rant is not mainly for these abusive clients. I would like to call out to Upwork! Start fixing these issues. I know for a fact that we 3D Artists only cover a small percentage of your earnings on this platform. Surely the platform will still exist even if our line of work dies. But I know as well that this plague will continue invade even to your biggest provider. 

I'm not sure if this will reach out to the core of Upwork, hopefully, it will. Please start thinking of something, like setting up brackets for project costs/budgets. Trim down the abusive clients. Make this platform great again!