UPWORK: Can't you require posters to be more specific about money?

[#1]

So many times, I run into posts that are very unclear. Like a post that said the guy would pay $30 for writing six articles. It can be a big waste of time trying to deal with them when it's unclear whether they mean $30/hour, $30 per article, or $30 for the whole project. I'd like to know before I invest time in a proposal whether this is one of the many cheapskates who want a lot for nothing--or a reasonable person.  It wouldn't be so hard to build into the form some specifity as to what they are willing to pay for how much work.

Will you do that?  Thanks.

[#2]

They do:

But they can't make people write well-described job posts. 

[#3]

Yes, they can.  Budget:  $X per  hour   per piece, per project.  They make us before specific...why not do the same for those posting the jobs?

[#4]

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Steve F wrote:

Yes, they can.  

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 Not without putting clients off.

Simply skip job posts that contain less detail than you personally require and leave those with vague requirements to those of us who will ignore the set budget anyway and who bid what they would do the job for.

[#5]

Petra,

Do you work for Upwork? I've only seen a few of your posts, but your comments seem to take the side of Upwork against freelancers.

You say we're going to drive posters away if we require them to pay more than $1/hour. We're going to lose people if we require specifics about how much they're willing to pay.

I don't understand why it would be so difficult to require posters to say whether they want to pay $60 per hour or $60 for the whole project.

Why put freelancers in the position of having to choose between passing over jobs that sound interesting OR wasting time and money bidding jobs that turn out to be from one of the give-me-lots-of-work-for-nothing "employers?"

[#6]

If the job is interesting to you and you need more info, just send a proposal and ask questions. That's all it takes to get answers.

[#7]

Yes, but those proposals cost us time and they cost us money

[#8]

Steve:
What you seem to be forgetting is hat a job proposal is just the beginning of a conversation.

Clients often have no idea about the money, or about other details. They just know that they want help.

If you are the right person for the job, then they will want to work with you, and you will be the one who makes all the decsions about the money. That happens after you have sent in a proposal and been introduced to the client.

Are there clients who have a very specific pay/rate in mind? Yes, but they will typically be more adept at explaining this in their job posting. So if the job seems vague about the money... it probably IS flexible about that.

[#9]

Some truth to this. On the other hand, I don't want to waste time with tightwads. Like the guy who said he wanted eight articles done for $X.  Now, $X would've been reasonable for one article, but he was only willing to pay that amount for doing 8 articles.  So the dollars/hour shrunk by a factor of 8. Total waste of time.