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I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly

I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly people and companies from the developing world who work for less than minimum wage or close to it in developed countries... and the expected cost matches these sorts of rates. So it does not make sense for anyone other than the most desperate people in the first world to try to get work on these sorts of sites. As such that sort of labor is easy to exploit. They have no bargaining power and are already working for peanuts.

cornellwright 8y ago
It probably depends on the domain - I've hired people domestically across a few different fields for rates in the $50 - $150/hr range when I was looking for specific expertise that I wasn't able to find in my network. It's sort of niche and I don't know if they were making a full time living from it, but I think we paid fair and got what we paid for.
mistercow 8y ago
I did vworker for a big part of my income years ago. Almost all of my business came from a tiny number of repeat clients (in fact, mostly one) who had already learned the pain that comes from optimizing only for cost. The money still wasn’t great (although I could have made it better if I were assertive enough to raise my rates on existing clients), and there’s no way in hell I would have done it if I’d had to use tracking software, but it was sort of kind of feasible.
lemonghost 8y ago
It's definitely a race to the bottom but it also represents a good opportunity for junior developers even in developed countries. I've gotten $35/hour jobs before which isn't great but it isn't peanuts either.
x0x0 8y ago
We're paying approx $45/us hour to someone in a developing country. I'm pretty sure that goes pretty far there.
- devoply 8y ago
  Can you elaborate on the sort of work and what you would be paying locally for the same sort of work... i.e. is it something that requires quite a bit of specialization, etc.
  - x0x0 8y ago
    rails + ruby + a bit of frontend. It's not super specialized but rails can easily become a huge mess if you don't know what you're doing. So we're definitely interested in more senior talent, ideally someone that has made all the new rails eng mistakes in someone else' codebase. We would pay more locally, but we're mostly not on upwork because of money. We just needed someone we could get soon. I will say that what $45/h gets you on upwork is far more than what you get in sfbay.
fipple 8y ago
"Not in San Francisco" and "easy to exploit" are very different. I had great, professional work done in Russia on Upwork. It didn't cost $200 per hour, but it didn't cost $2 per hour either. The engineer who did the work was the vendor, and I was the client, so I was definitely the boss and treated as such, but he was clearly not hurting for work and if I started behaving inappropriately he could have easily dumped me and found another client. I don't know how far his salary went where he was living, but there are many places in this world where 20 US dollars per hour can sustain a very nice lifestyle.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  20 US dollars per hour is already more than I make as a full-time SaaS salesman in New York City, and I'm not even hurting for cash either!
  - jerry40 8y ago
    Do not forget about Upwork taxes: Specifically, Upwork charges the freelancer a fee of: 20% for the first $500 billed with the client. 10% for lifetime billings with the client between $500.01 and $10,000. 5% for lifetime billings with the client that exceed $10,000.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      God that's horrid. Not to mention the slew of taxes one pays by being a 1099 contractor. And it's not like the clients one attracts on Upwork are particularly good.
  - austhrow743 8y ago
    Are you working constant 80 hour weeks? Is everyone lying about big city costs? Or do you consider 3 housemates and a 2 hour commute to be not hurting for cash? Something has to be up here.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
gamerDude 8y ago
I make 75 to 150 per hour on upwork. The biggest thing I find is a lot of clients are uncomfortable with a 150 per hour contract, but very happy about a fixed price 3k project that takes me 20 to 25 hours. I have to be pretty diligent about thinking through how long it will take but it works out. Additionally, I've gotten multiple clients with constant work. Was getting paid 8k per month for about 20hrs a week. They've scaled back a bit so its 5k for about 14 hrs a week now. Not all clients are good clients though. Still figuring out how to interview them up top.
- lemonghost 8y ago
  What kind of work are you doing? If you don't mind my asking...
  - sidlls 8y ago
    He's an outlier at best. Just search through the listings: the vast majority of them are extremely low paying jobs with vague or outlandish requirements.
    - gamerDude 8y ago
      This is most definitely true. Most aren't great. But I need to land a couple jobs a month and there are ~250 new a day in looking for US Devs only. Even at 1% thats 2-3 relevant decent jobs a day. And when I last checked I get about a 40% response rate to proposals and ~25% of those convert to doing the project. I probably apply to about 20 jobs a month and each initial proposal takes 10 or so minutes. Which seems about right since they give you "proposal" credits each month and I've never run out. At the end of the day, I'm only spending a few hours on cold sales per month.
    - lemonghost 8y ago
      Back when they were oDesk, I lived in a remote area with no technology jobs. I ended up working for oDesk for a 6 mo stint (Actually for oDesk not a third party). So I'm familiar with the ecosystem. I was just wondering if it was web dev or something more specialized.

cornellwright 8y ago

It probably depends on the domain - I've hired people domestically across a few different fields for rates in the $50 - $150/hr range when I was looking for specific expertise that I wasn't able to find in my network. It's sort of niche and I don't know if they were making a full time living from it, but I think we paid fair and got what we paid for.

mistercow 8y ago

I did vworker for a big part of my income years ago. Almost all of my business came from a tiny number of repeat clients (in fact, mostly one) who had already learned the pain that comes from optimizing only for cost. The money still wasn’t great (although I could have made it better if I were assertive enough to raise my rates on existing clients), and there’s no way in hell I would have done it if I’d had to use tracking software, but it was sort of kind of feasible.

lemonghost 8y ago

It's definitely a race to the bottom but it also represents a good opportunity for junior developers even in developed countries. I've gotten $35/hour jobs before which isn't great but it isn't peanuts either.

x0x0 8y ago

We're paying approx $45/us hour to someone in a developing country. I'm pretty sure that goes pretty far there.

devoply 8y ago
Can you elaborate on the sort of work and what you would be paying locally for the same sort of work... i.e. is it something that requires quite a bit of specialization, etc.
- x0x0 8y ago
  rails + ruby + a bit of frontend. It's not super specialized but rails can easily become a huge mess if you don't know what you're doing. So we're definitely interested in more senior talent, ideally someone that has made all the new rails eng mistakes in someone else' codebase. We would pay more locally, but we're mostly not on upwork because of money. We just needed someone we could get soon. I will say that what $45/h gets you on upwork is far more than what you get in sfbay.

fipple 8y ago

"Not in San Francisco" and "easy to exploit" are very different. I had great, professional work done in Russia on Upwork. It didn't cost $200 per hour, but it didn't cost $2 per hour either. The engineer who did the work was the vendor, and I was the client, so I was definitely the boss and treated as such, but he was clearly not hurting for work and if I started behaving inappropriately he could have easily dumped me and found another client. I don't know how far his salary went where he was living, but there are many places in this world where 20 US dollars per hour can sustain a very nice lifestyle.

anoncoward111 8y ago
20 US dollars per hour is already more than I make as a full-time SaaS salesman in New York City, and I'm not even hurting for cash either!
- jerry40 8y ago
  Do not forget about Upwork taxes: Specifically, Upwork charges the freelancer a fee of: 20% for the first $500 billed with the client. 10% for lifetime billings with the client between $500.01 and $10,000. 5% for lifetime billings with the client that exceed $10,000.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    God that's horrid. Not to mention the slew of taxes one pays by being a 1099 contractor. And it's not like the clients one attracts on Upwork are particularly good.
- austhrow743 8y ago
  Are you working constant 80 hour weeks? Is everyone lying about big city costs? Or do you consider 3 housemates and a 2 hour commute to be not hurting for cash? Something has to be up here.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago

gamerDude 8y ago

I make 75 to 150 per hour on upwork. The biggest thing I find is a lot of clients are uncomfortable with a 150 per hour contract, but very happy about a fixed price 3k project that takes me 20 to 25 hours. I have to be pretty diligent about thinking through how long it will take but it works out. Additionally, I've gotten multiple clients with constant work. Was getting paid 8k per month for about 20hrs a week. They've scaled back a bit so its 5k for about 14 hrs a week now. Not all clients are good clients though. Still figuring out how to interview them up top.

lemonghost 8y ago
What kind of work are you doing? If you don't mind my asking...
- sidlls 8y ago
  He's an outlier at best. Just search through the listings: the vast majority of them are extremely low paying jobs with vague or outlandish requirements.
  - gamerDude 8y ago
    This is most definitely true. Most aren't great. But I need to land a couple jobs a month and there are ~250 new a day in looking for US Devs only. Even at 1% thats 2-3 relevant decent jobs a day. And when I last checked I get about a 40% response rate to proposals and ~25% of those convert to doing the project. I probably apply to about 20 jobs a month and each initial proposal takes 10 or so minutes. Which seems about right since they give you "proposal" credits each month and I've never run out. At the end of the day, I'm only spending a few hours on cold sales per month.
  - lemonghost 8y ago
    Back when they were oDesk, I lived in a remote area with no technology jobs. I ended up working for oDesk for a 6 mo stint (Actually for oDesk not a third party). So I'm familiar with the ecosystem. I was just wondering if it was web dev or something more specialized.