I signed up for Upwork, a couple of years ago. I knew a few people that had used the platform to hire freelancers, and they raved about it.
I never got even one legit lead. Not one.
I did, however, get quite a few scammers. One was quite scary. It was a local person, with a crazy project proposal, that kept trying to get me to meet them in person, in remote locations.
I nuked my Upwork account, months ago. Even though I hadn’t been on it for months, I would still get occasional scammer contacts. Most were pretty transparent. They didn’t make much effort to hide what they were about. Basically 419 approach.
Cofounders has been similar, but scammers try to get me to contact them outside of the system, and Cofounders has been quite responsive to my reports. I have kept my Cofounders account, as I have received legit contacts (none of which have panned out, but that’s the nature of the beast).
I did try TopTal, a couple of years ago, but that didn’t work out. I won’t get into it, but I don’t think we’re a particularly good “fit.”
Just a few days ago, I had to report a scammer on LinkedIn that had declared themselves to be one of my employees. It took LI three days to do anything, and they never acknowledged my increasingly frantic reports.
Like so many of these types of outfits, they provide no way to establish a way to actually contact people. You just have these one-way, opaque “Report” buttons, with no acks.
Scammers are very clever. I expect them to game this quite quickly.
It’s bad times. I pine for the “good ol’ days,” when there was some Honor to be found, but there’s no putting the candy back in that piñata.
In case anyone's forgotten, there was also that story where Upwork cut off a freelancer with no explanation, and falsely told the client they had to upgrade, on the pretense that Upwork had to comply with the California law about contractor status.
(Which is indeed an issue with CA's contractor laws, but in no way requires them to ghost you or you to use their payroll service.)
Scams aside, were you using Upwork as a freelancer or client? The experience is very different depending on which side you are on. It’s a client market currently as there a glut of freelancers for your picking right now. Lots of competition.
As a freelancer. All the rave reviews were from clients.
After the fact, I asked around for friends that had tried it as freelancers, and they all had similar stories to mine.
It seems that Upwork is really a platform for offshore work. Some of these folks are undoubtedly good, but it's probably a crapshoot, which, to be fair, is also the case for local talent. With cheap offshore work, you can try out a couple of outfits, and not lose your shirt, if things go South. I will say that the people who told me it was good, had quite positive experiences (as clients), and they had all settled on offshore talent.
It's been years since I was on Upwork (started w/ Elance) and I felt similar frustrations. Then I signed up as a buyer, posted a job similar to the ones I was seeking, and analyzed the patterns of freelancer pitches and how the system was structured.
I started noticing missed opportunities. As a buyer, you only see the first few sentences of a proposal unless you hit the See More option. Most freelancers weren't maximizing this space. NOBODY used video. There was minimal personalization. And so on.
So I would make a personalized video for every pitch and reference it in the first sentence. Short, nothing with production or anything like that. Mostly I wanted the buyers to get a vibe for me. I'd do light research on the buyer and look at his/her feedback and reviews for other freelancers they've worked with, then I used that language to demonstrate that I had the same characteristics and skills they value the most.
This all increased my interest and close rate tremendously. I also learned which gigs to never bid on, which is a little art and a little science. You can tell by how the project descriptions are written which ones to avoid.
The same thing that would make me pass over a resume/cover letter for a job I'm hiring for: vagueness. The more specific and transparent a posting is, the more confidence I have in the buyer knowing what they need and who they need to achieve that goal. You get a lot of amateurs/first-timers on these sites, and that's often a recipe for misaligned expectations.
You need to learn to game the system like the most popular freelancers and agencies seem to learn to do; you're not getting kicked off the platform as a freelancer/agency even if you engage in blackmail/extortion for 5 star ratings - even when there's proof - as I have experienced.
It's like you need to start to create some fake accounts, or friends to signup, give you projects - worth a lot or not, or hidden, but with a great testimonial left. Then you'll increase in the rankings, get more attention from legitimate people, etc.
Freelancers on Upwork are mostly always listed as available, even if they aren't - the trick being you're listed for $x-xx higher than your previous rate - so you're getting a revenue increase if you take new jobs.
Personally I'd be too honest to trick people like that, but people who are open to dishonest or bad actions on the platform seem to do well.
> Personally I'd be too honest to trick people like that, but people who are open to dishonest or bad actions on the platform seem to do well.
Yeah...not for me. Personal Honor and Integrity are a big deal for me.
It's funny. I'm open and extremely honest. Scammers see that as "gullible," but I've been swimming with some of the world's nastiest sharks for 40 years. It's actually kind of difficult to scam me.
I've just learned that I don't need to use nukes to enforce my boundaries. Even scammers react well to simple respect, and it's quite possible to discourage them without being a prick.
I've also learned that it's not a good idea to antagonize crooks. They can often be a bit vindictive.
>Scammers see that as "gullible," but I've been swimming with some of the world's nastiest sharks for 40 years.
This makes me think of the proverb, "You can't cheat an honest man". It sounds strange on the surface, but I think there's something to the idea that if one is too honest to be tempted into dishonesty by avarice that most scams fall apart.
If you are hiring, you have to have tasks of staggered difficulty and pay by the hour. Risks still include a skilled worker being swapped out later. If you have a project with a multi-week timeline, the final product delivered at once, you are setting yourself up to get fucked.
* referring to software development. Other tasks are an order of magnitude easier to hire for.
Some want a freelancer account that is registered in US or Western Europe. I guess it’s easier to get a high-paying client if you have a local face behind your proposal.
I get hit with these constantly because I'm a US based Toptal freelancer. "Hey, if you take the meetings and let us use your account, we'll do all the work and give you 20%!".
So basically some folks just told you how you can be the CEO of InfoClone? How big are these deals, how skilled are the folks and how many people do they have?
That’s what I’ve heard. They may lead you on to keep you on the hook in case they need you without even getting work from you. This isn’t really a scam; it’s just about them wasting your time. And there are so many suckers that they can be picky about who they do this to.
If you really want to freelance or have a startup, you have to be able to differentiate these people from legit opportunities. That can be extremely difficult; someone that seems like a scammer could be ready to pay a great rate or invest in your company; someone else that sounds legit could be wasting your time.
Yes, for some, but I never followed up enough to find out more.
I think the scary one may have been legit (in their own world), but they were clearly unhinged, and I didn't want to have anything to do with that.
Since the approach is often pretty much equal to a 419 approach, I suspect that there would be a point where you give them some sensitive financial information, or pay "licensing fees," or something. Maybe they would send you one of those wonderful "more than the agreed-upon amount" third-party checks.
I never got even one legit lead. Not one.
I did, however, get quite a few scammers. One was quite scary. It was a local person, with a crazy project proposal, that kept trying to get me to meet them in person, in remote locations.
I nuked my Upwork account, months ago. Even though I hadn’t been on it for months, I would still get occasional scammer contacts. Most were pretty transparent. They didn’t make much effort to hide what they were about. Basically 419 approach.
Cofounders has been similar, but scammers try to get me to contact them outside of the system, and Cofounders has been quite responsive to my reports. I have kept my Cofounders account, as I have received legit contacts (none of which have panned out, but that’s the nature of the beast).
I did try TopTal, a couple of years ago, but that didn’t work out. I won’t get into it, but I don’t think we’re a particularly good “fit.”
Just a few days ago, I had to report a scammer on LinkedIn that had declared themselves to be one of my employees. It took LI three days to do anything, and they never acknowledged my increasingly frantic reports.
Like so many of these types of outfits, they provide no way to establish a way to actually contact people. You just have these one-way, opaque “Report” buttons, with no acks.
Scammers are very clever. I expect them to game this quite quickly.
It’s bad times. I pine for the “good ol’ days,” when there was some Honor to be found, but there’s no putting the candy back in that piñata.