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Qoute: "In the Fall of 2017 I'd done a ton of freelancing on the (garbage) website Upwork. Upwork is a bit of a grind. User's can search for a skill they'd like
by unnouinceput 6y ago
Qoute: "In the Fall of 2017 I'd done a ton of freelancing on the (garbage) website Upwork. Upwork is a bit of a grind. User's can search for a skill they'd like to freelance in ( Cisco Networking, Python programming, Painting Dogs, whatever) and apply for job's via proposals. The crappy thing about Upwork is that once a job is posted, the heat is on to apply. The longer you let the job sit, the more likely that other freelancers will apply for it and get the work. Being early was an extreme advantage, even if you are the best.
After googling around a bit, I found that Upwork had no way for user's to get alerts on new jobs, even though many user's requested it. "Hmmm, I thought, a market need". There were, though, countless forum posts and low-quality YouTube videos explaining how to set up alerts via IFTTT and Upwork's RSS feeds feature. "
As a long time Upwork freelancer (12 years now) - short answer would be that you're not cut for freelancer's market. Long answer is harder to stomach, so skip next paragraph:
1 - Being early is disadvantage actually. Being early means your bid gets dumped in job poster's email along with the others. You want to be 1st (hard to be and you'll never have the guarantee even with a fast notification) or let it sit for 24 hours.
2 - Rant about not having notifications then answering yourself about using RSS. If RSS is hard for you to make it work then I'll have to wonder about the rest of your skills as programmer. Personally I didn't like any RSS feed apps out there so I wrote my own, customized to my needs. You could've done the same, instead you made a Saas out of it thinking you'll strike gold.
- stetsonator 6y ago1 - maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Freelancers can find success on Upwork but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a garbage website 2 - I don’t think I ever said RSS was hard to make work. My app is essentially a feed reader. I am also a shit developer, covered that one already Thank you for reading and your feedback, though!
- unnouinceput 6y agoThat garbage site is providing opportunities for millions of developers and clients, and personally feeding my family for over a decade. I tried freelancer.com, rentacoder.com, elance.com (before merging with odesk and the 2 of them becoming what is today's upwork), fiverr, peopleperhour and toptal. Of them all upwork is the best. Maybe you can make a better one, huh? where is dang when you need him, eh?
- stets 6y agoI don't know who dang is. The site is fine but their ToS is atrocious. Have you read it? Freelancers are expected to pay $3000 USD to take a client off of Upwork. This doesn't refer to initial work being done on the platform. If you do work for a client and get a call back, Upwork expects you to work through Upwork. I'm sure that few do this but WHAT. They recently changed ToS so maybe it is different now... I'm also not a big fan of the dog-eat-dog nature of the site, which my tool ironically encourages. I'm glad it works for you. I don't want to be a freelancer, I want to make tools/SaaS products.