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While we're at it - one advice - I left upwork (it was odesk back then) many years ago, because, as everyone knows, it is race to the bottom. So next step for y
by zerr 11y ago
While we're at it - one advice - I left upwork (it was odesk back then) many years ago, because, as everyone knows, it is race to the bottom. So next step for you could be to eliminate the middle man. Reach to clients directly. Try searching gigs on sites such as wewrokremotely, wfh.io, SO remote jobs, etc.. Even if you find interesting work on upwork, and posting includes contact details - contact the client directly, outside upwork. And no need to mention upwork in your CV. You can mention your past clients/companies and relevant work.
Regarding the product - I guess if you had enterprise pricing separately (maybe as "Contact us") you could've arranged better deals with those AAA shops... not sure :)
- anovikov 11y agoIn fact, i sometimes did the reverse: found clients outside of Upwork and brought them in. I am even more likely to do it now since June 1 when the commissions drop from 10% to 5%. Upwork provides guaranteed billing... It is extremely difficult to extract payments when nobody does it for you. Enterprise pricing page - good idea, i will tell Maxim (owner). upd: he said that in fact decisions on buying it is usually taken by IT department heads who then massively rework the system for their own needs, so a higher priced sale would be impossible, in many cases they already prefer open source. In fact, even selling whole company failed through - interested buyers who definitely had money, eventually refused to pay even $100K. Working on Upwork has definively been way more productive activity.
- zerr 11y agoI'm freelancing almost 10 years now and so far I've never had any single issue with payments - I just send PDF invoices and get funds through bank/wire transfer. Even when I was on odesk - I've only logged offline time, i.e. haven't used that spying/monitoring desktop client.
- anovikov 11y agoWhat kind of clients do you pitch to? Is your manager/main contact typically a business boss or technical? Lastly, how much do you charge? That sounds interesting because in my experience people don't pay unless they are forced to (some system does it for them, or they need something more from you so forced to pay for the previous work to get that done, etc.)
- zerr 11y agoI've only worked with established companies/startups and maybe this is the reason. Usually, after initial talks I deal with tech people (CTO, lead engineer, etc..). I don't want to comment exact numbers here, but usually I charge 3-figures per hour for short term tasks, somewhat less for long-term. I have to say, I've tripled my rate since I left odesk... :)
- anovikov 11y agoAh then you are a different category from mine. There is no way i could charge that money. Or at least i don't have ways to approach clients that pay as much. I don't know who it can potentially be and why any work i could do may worth as much.
- zerr 11y agoNot on upwork, that for sure... As an experiment, when you reach to your next client directly (outside upwork) - double your current rate. That is feasible with proper clients e.g. from Germany, UK, North America, etc...
- anovikov 11y agoI can't imagine a repeatable way to get clients without Upwork. How do you find them?
- zerr 11y agoAs I mentioned: HN, weworkremotely, wfh.io, SO, you can even try googling (with "remote" keyword).
- anovikov 11y agoI think most of these places contain people who actually know what they are doing and understand programming matters well. No 'walk-in consumers with cash to spend who think they can build their own startup'.