Upwork Review 2019: Advantages and Disadvantages Freelancers must know
What are Upwork positive and negative features that a freelancer must know?
Over the months lots of my readers at freelancefront and facebook have been asking me the tips to get the account approved at upwork. Most of them were rejected from upwork so they wanted to know if there is any way they can join upwork as it is no doubt one of the top freelance jobs marketplace and has thousands of jobs in 100’s of categories.
This is not a surprise for me if upwork account approval rate is getting significantly lower than before but it was expected because there was a huge crowd of individual freelancers as well as freelance agencies that came from Elance.com and existing Odesk.com so the two giant websites merged and so as their users.
Comparison of upwork with Elance. Was Elance better than upwork?
I have been running a freelance agency over Elance and it was a painful news to me that Elance will be no more just because Elance was a favorite marketplace with great buyers and comparatively high earning rate so moving from Elance to Upwork was a great compulsion and that is the reason I didn’t work on upwork for 4 months after my account was moved to upwork.
One of the big reason was the different interface of upwork and a bit complicated as compare to Elance. It is similar to odesk interface so I’m sure odesk users must love that interface because there are small changes but the whole layout and look was already known to them.
Why choose Upwork for freelance jobs?
Millions of Clients and Jobs:
Upwork is the top freelance jobs marketplace that emerged after a merger of odesk and elance so the crowd is more than double and finding the best individual as well as freelance agencies now a days an easy job for the clients. Since upwork has a huge clients database infect in millions, the jobs are posted every second so there are lots of opportunities to get hired in your particular category. Also as I told you before that after merger the client list is also turned into a monster database so no shortages of jobs for anyone.
Jobs every minute:
The Freelancers have choice to select the best suitable jobs to apply for. It is recommended that a freelancer should not apply for every job but for the selected jobs that is appropriate according to the skill level and expertise otherwise it is just waste of connects. Since there are literally jobs coming in every minute, the freelancer has time to select the easy jobs specially when s/he is a newbie freelancer.
Search options and filters to search the suitable jobs:
There are many options to search the category, jobs with high prices, hourly and fixed price jobs etc so lots of reasons to check and use the options with filters to apply on the best suited jobs and make money with easy and selected jobs.
Upwork Disadvantages that take freelancers away
After the merger, millions of freelancers both from odesk and elance forced to join upwork so there is a very high competition now between the freelance service providers and it seems only the established freelancers and agencies could get the quick jobs.
Upwork Negative Impression’s reasons in Freelancing
The disadvantage of this merger is emerging as very low price jobs offered now a days from the client just because there is millions of freelancers and every one trying to get the job but the clients are not enough to pay the price like they were paying at Elance and odesk previously.
Increasing ratio of the Lowest Price jobs from the Clients
So the job prices are lowered even upto $5. Yes it is $5 not per hour but fixed price jobs and you can check upwork newly posted jobs. You will see that over 30% jobs are too low in price offered as compare to the previous prices at Elance and odesk.
Upwork Shocking decision of 20% commission
Another shocking decision from upwork was to increase the commission rate upto 20% that means if you get hired for a $100 job, you will earn $80 only. Furthermore, when you withdraw the money to your local bank or through Payoneer Master Card or even Paypal, you have to pay service fee so if you withdraw the funds through Payoneer Master Card you should remember that a withdrawal fee of $2 from upwork then $5.00 Payoneer Card Load fee for immediate load. Otherwise 2, 3 days will be required to get your card loaded with the funds you withdrew.
Not only this, but when you go to ATM machine in order to get cash, there is a currency conversion fee as well as bank service charges as well. So in the end, you will get around $70.00 only
Just calculate the charges:
Solid Earning: $100 – (commission) $20 – (withdrawal fee) $2 – (payoneer card load) $5 – (bank charges) $3 (minimum)
This situation is worst for the new freelancers who want to start their career and take upwork as their marketplace to get started. Most of the “freelancers” are not happy and leaving this platform just because of the high commission rate.
I asked several freelancers who left upwork and joined other marketplaces and they all told me the reason exactly the same I stated above. They are disappointed and finding the other ways to make money and the best possible solution they supposed to have is freelancer.com and guru.com but mos of them joined fiverr.com as it is very easy to join and start earning through freelance services.
