I was thinking from the perspective of fees. If you giving $10k+, you almost trust the person, so why even introduce middleman and give 10% to them? Do they really bring that much value?
Because otherwise i wouldn't sign. I put 12 years into my Upwork account and i am not going to lose it because of one unhappy client who first pays me outside of Upwork than reports me to them so both me and him are banned (this is asymmetric as hell because my account is a lot more important to me - it is literally millions of dollars worth - than a client account is for almost every client).
If you email companies outside of Upwork or build a real life network, you can likely get similar contracts.
Worst case you'll have to do an interview (nothing too crazy, outside of FAANGs). A couple of hours of your time is cheaper than paying X% of a year long contract.
You're paying a lot for what's essentially a reputation manager.
I just have a nice website for my software consultancy: past clients, team page, how we work, a few blog articles, etc.
I don't think people go to my website and think "Oh, this testimonial is not a review approved by Upwork.com, it's probably fake and these guys didn't even work for these companies".
I used to be pretty big on freelancer.com when I was still working solo and I stopped using it when I started having a few business contacts I could leverage repeatedly (including some that started as freelancer.com). Finding a job, as a software consultant has never been particularly hard.
Sadly i only ever had 2 clients outside of Upwork, both purely randomly (having a website etc), and Upwork makes me $600K a year with very little effort... Also i have an agency, i don't work myself, plus i am in EU not US, and have a Russian passport with no right to work outside of my own company. So i really can't imagine how it might work. Any client i could potentially meet with in person is already someone who can't pass my client pre-vetting filter.
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Why not? My average contract is $50K+ and i had $250K ones.
I was thinking from the perspective of fees. If you giving $10k+, you almost trust the person, so why even introduce middleman and give 10% to them? Do they really bring that much value?
Because otherwise i wouldn't sign. I put 12 years into my Upwork account and i am not going to lose it because of one unhappy client who first pays me outside of Upwork than reports me to them so both me and him are banned (this is asymmetric as hell because my account is a lot more important to me - it is literally millions of dollars worth - than a client account is for almost every client).
If you email companies outside of Upwork or build a real life network, you can likely get similar contracts.
Worst case you'll have to do an interview (nothing too crazy, outside of FAANGs). A couple of hours of your time is cheaper than paying X% of a year long contract.
You're paying a lot for what's essentially a reputation manager. I just have a nice website for my software consultancy: past clients, team page, how we work, a few blog articles, etc.
I don't think people go to my website and think "Oh, this testimonial is not a review approved by Upwork.com, it's probably fake and these guys didn't even work for these companies".
I used to be pretty big on freelancer.com when I was still working solo and I stopped using it when I started having a few business contacts I could leverage repeatedly (including some that started as freelancer.com). Finding a job, as a software consultant has never been particularly hard.
Sadly i only ever had 2 clients outside of Upwork, both purely randomly (having a website etc), and Upwork makes me $600K a year with very little effort... Also i have an agency, i don't work myself, plus i am in EU not US, and have a Russian passport with no right to work outside of my own company. So i really can't imagine how it might work. Any client i could potentially meet with in person is already someone who can't pass my client pre-vetting filter.
For me, Upwork === addressable market.