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rahulbangar786
Community Member

What if a client is offering commission based payment?

There are many clients on Upwork who don't want to hire freelancers on hourly or fixed price projects. Most of these clients don't have sufficient money for hiring freelancers and they say we will pay you if you meet this target etc.

 

Is it not against the terms and conditions of Upwork?

 

 

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prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "Is it not against the terms and conditions of Upwork?"

 

Short answer:

You are correct. Commission-based payment violates Upwork ToS.

 

Longer answer:

It is possible to use Upwork's hourly or fixed-price contracts to pay freelancers some kind of base pay and then offer commission-based payments on top of that.

 

Generally speaking I advise commission-interested clients that Upwork has very specific payment/contract models, and commission-based pay is not one of them. Therefore, they may be better off using a different platform or service which has product offerings and functionality specifically geared toward handling commission-based work.

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7 REPLIES 7
ronlorraine
Community Member

If you are getting many like this you need to start flagging the projects. Upwork is either fixed or hourly price only. Do the many also want to talk with you on google hangouts by the way?

prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "Is it not against the terms and conditions of Upwork?"

 

Short answer:

You are correct. Commission-based payment violates Upwork ToS.

 

Longer answer:

It is possible to use Upwork's hourly or fixed-price contracts to pay freelancers some kind of base pay and then offer commission-based payments on top of that.

 

Generally speaking I advise commission-interested clients that Upwork has very specific payment/contract models, and commission-based pay is not one of them. Therefore, they may be better off using a different platform or service which has product offerings and functionality specifically geared toward handling commission-based work.


Preston H wrote:

re: "Is it not against the terms and conditions of Upwork?"

 

Short answer:

You are correct. Commission-based payment violates Upwork ToS.


No. It does not.

Commission-based contracts can be, and usually are, set up as milestone-based fixed-rate contracts with milestones equating to whatever the commission is to be paid for. No violation of the terms of service at all.

 

Or as hourly contracts with a base rate for the hours worked and bonuses as commission.

 

Neither may be very profitable for the freelancer, but neither is against the terms of service.

a_lipsey
Community Member


Petra R wrote:

Preston H wrote:

re: "Is it not against the terms and conditions of Upwork?"

 

Short answer:

You are correct. Commission-based payment violates Upwork ToS.


No. It does not.

Commission-based contracts can be, and usually are, set up as milestone-based fixed-rate contracts with milestones equating to whatever the commission is to be paid for. No violation of the terms of service at all.

 

Or as hourly contracts with a base rate for the hours worked and bonuses as commission.

 

Neither may be very profitable for the freelancer, but neither is against the terms of service.


And, building on what Petra said, you better hope your client is extremely trustworthy that they won't hide from you how much they made off your project, and, therefore, they honestly pay you the full commission you are due. If you try to do commission payments using a fixed-price model, you have to trust the client actually makes good on giving you the commission, since you have no way to track revenue that the commission is based on. Personally, I would never do it. (Besides it being against the code of ethics of the Grants Professionals Association, of which I am a member.) 

If a freelancer sees a job posting that involves commission-based pay:

As long as a client's job post doesn't clearly violate any ToS, then freelancers should not flag these jobs.

 

But I wouldn't recommend applying to such a job. Upwork freelancers are accustomed to being paid in a much more straightforward manner.


Preston H wrote:

If a freelancer sees a job posting that involves commission-based pay:

As long as a client's job post doesn't clearly violate any ToS, then freelancers should not flag these jobs.


Then why do you declare in your previous post, and knowing it to be untrue because it has been explained to you on more than one occasion previously, that commission based job posts are in violation of Upwork's terms of service?

 


Preston H wrote:

 

But I wouldn't recommend applying to such a job.


Nor would I, but posting lies is not the correct way to explain to freelancers why it is or is not a good idea to apply to them.

Most of the clients who offer only performance base payment are very over smart and don't pay much. I always avoid such clients.

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