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.
Comments
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.