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Out of the 9-5, we as freelancers or self-employed are all facing same problem: the ups and downs of the workload. And if you, like me and others, are counting
by michaellu 5y ago
Out of the 9-5, we as freelancers or self-employed are all facing same problem: the ups and downs of the workload. And if you, like me and others, are counting on the steady stream of income to cover expenses, those gaps/downtime are horrible.
For the past several years, I've been relying on Upwork for work, and found that it's actually not that bad. Just like in the talent pool there are great freelancers and mediocre ones, there are high end clients with good projects and pay, and they try to stand out from the pack as well.
Think about it, the kind of agents that you are thinking about, who can broker work/projects between a certain type of freelancer(skills, pay, etc) with a matching type of clients, are going to be expensive and perhaps in high demand. That would be another problem you need to solve.
That's the problem platforms like Upwork is trying to solve. For me, they have a good enough solution for me to use their service. They are the agent for me.
- mittermayr 5y agoThanks for sharing your Upwork experience, I have used them many times as a buyer but always felt it must be relentless to survive as a bidder there. I probably underestimate the work available that is not just optimizing on price when looking for a freelancer.
- b20000 5y agoi wonder how succesfull you can be charging good rates above $400 hourly through that platform.
- ishjoh 5y agonow I'm curious, are you charing more than $400 per hour for software development/architecture?
- Nextgrid 5y agoSoftware architecture sounds doable but only if clients value it. I’ve seen (or made) mistakes before that I could warn you about and it would save you orders of magnitude more than paying a few dozen hours at that rate.
- gregjor 5y agoUpwork works more like an auction than an agent. They don’t look after your best interests. Upwork doesn’t vet the buyers or sellers, instead relying on a reputation system that people learn how to game. I think it’s very hard to get a good rate on that platform because competition is always most fierce at the low end. I’m sure it’s possible to make a decent living on Upwork but you would have to put a lot of effort into that.