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sergioh89
Community Member

What's with all these "jobs"?

I've read similar threads, so I know this is not a new problem and to be honest I'm doing okay in the platform, but lately every time I'm trying to find new clients I run into a countless of incredibly abusing "jobs".


I'm a video editor and I simply cannot understand how people are willing to recieve 5-10 USD for postproduction that will take hours to complete if not days, it is incredibly underpaid and don't know how the platform allows that kinds of posts to even exist.

 

It only allows more unprepared people to "work" on the platform (as a hobby, maybe?) and some clients truly believe that they are paying a fair price, others I'm sure are just abusing freelancers to get the job done for less than a Starbucks coffee.

 

Therefore, I truly believe that these 5-15 USD "jobs" in certain categories shouldn't be allowed, and I know that this has been suggested many times.

 

Because personally it wasn't a problem, I used to ignore those "jobs" and move on, but now all my feed is filled with 5 USD "jobs", even my Best Matches.

 

If this happens in Design and Creative areas I can only imagine the huge problem for other categories. Is there something that we as professional freelancers can do about it, or just suck it up and move forward?

 

Don't misunderstand me, I love to work on Upwork, but it's getting harder to find real clients, also I just needed to vent out after scrolling through my job feed.


Thanks for reading me and have a great week you all!

 

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allpurposewriter
Community Member

There are 17 million Upwork members and there's a competitor who has almost twice that number. So, I guess whatever damage low-paying gigs have done to freelancer job market has already been done. But maybe not.

Regardless, even here in Upworkland, there is a natural selection process in which clients separate those with skills from others by giving freelancer reviews. If you get great reviews, it is still concerning (for a number of reasons) that some jobs are paying hysterically low wages, but I'm not sure how much that affects any one person's ability to do well here. On paper, it seems incredible to me that all those $2 per day jobs haven't collapsed the freelance market completely, but they haven't.

 

Do those jobs make it harder to make a decent income? Probably. But they haven't yet sounded the death knell for skilled freelancers.

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3 REPLIES 3
allpurposewriter
Community Member

There are 17 million Upwork members and there's a competitor who has almost twice that number. So, I guess whatever damage low-paying gigs have done to freelancer job market has already been done. But maybe not.

Regardless, even here in Upworkland, there is a natural selection process in which clients separate those with skills from others by giving freelancer reviews. If you get great reviews, it is still concerning (for a number of reasons) that some jobs are paying hysterically low wages, but I'm not sure how much that affects any one person's ability to do well here. On paper, it seems incredible to me that all those $2 per day jobs haven't collapsed the freelance market completely, but they haven't.

 

Do those jobs make it harder to make a decent income? Probably. But they haven't yet sounded the death knell for skilled freelancers.

tlbp
Community Member

You can use the advanced filter settings to create a search that excludes gigs that are below your desired budget. 

 

 

sergioh89
Community Member

Thanks Tonya!

 

I know about the feature but I don't use it frequently because it's inneficient, it narrows my search and doesn't solve the problem.

 

Sometimes clients are not sure how much their project is going to cost, but they are willing to pay a fair price, so they put a low price, making emphasis in the description that it's only a placeholder.

 

Other times, abusive "clients" place an absurdly high number in their job posts but the description reads "5 USD per video, only experts with showreel, otherwise you will be ignored", as a really professional and nice punchline.

 

So the point here is to find a solution to the problem, not a workaround.

 

But I do appreciate the answer, thanks and have a great week!

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