Introduction:
I once thought that freelancing platforms like Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr were a blessing for those seeking remote work opportunities. However, after years of being part of these platforms, I've come to realize that they're far from ideal. In this post, I'll share my personal experiences with these platforms and why I decided to quit. Spoiler alert: Turned out, the best don't rise to the top, Upwork; the best actually close their Upwork account and move on with their life.
The Grind of Freelancing:
For me, the biggest challenge was keeping up with the constant flood of fake OnlyFans and PDF job postings. To secure just 40 freelance jobs, I had to send over 400 proposals while working around the clock for a mere $3,500 (-$700 in fees) in 45 days, and I barely slept 5 hours a day. It wasn't sustainable, and my work-life balance suffered immensely. Mind you, this was a one-time thing, meaning that even when I tried to slave away again by buying another 150 dollars worth of Upwork Connects, most of them were spent on the Availability Badge; either that or they expired. Believe me when I say, the system is rigged. All Upwork cares about is taking money from clients and freelancers, that's why its CEO is so out of touch, promoting AI slop on LinkedIn while everyone is frustrated by the plethora of bad decisions in the comments section like, forcing freelancers to spend connects even after getting invited, note that most of the time, no matter how good you are, you end up spending both time and money looking for work while getting nothing in return. It's basically gambling with extra steps; more about that below.
The Pay-to-Play Predatory System:
These platforms use a “pay to play” system that is both predatory and exploitative. By charging freelancers fees just to submit proposals, these platforms create an illusion of fighting spam. In reality, they're ensuring their own financial success at the expense of hardworking individuals like yours truly. I still don't get why their token gatekeeping isn't considered a scam, but that's the thing about shady companies; they always find ways to scam unsuspecting people in a subtle way to make it harder for people to think to themselves, “Wait, how is this any different from a scammer exploiting the elderly?”
Wasted Investment and Time:
For instance, I spent anywhere between $1.8 to $3.0 on each proposal on Upwork, only to be ignored most of the time. Even after investing additional funds in hopes of recreating my previous success, I got nothing in return, which felt like gambling. I was lucky that some previous clients appreciated my work enough to hire me directly without using these platforms.
AI-Generated Job Posts:
The quality of job posts on these platforms leaves a lot to be desired. Many job postings feel like they were written by AI or bots way before AI became a thing. It was like the client saying, “Since I didn't even bother to read this garbage I posted, how do you expect me to read your proposal, O skilled freelancer?”
A Rigged System:
These platforms claim that there is competition among freelancers, but in reality, most of them struggle with English and aren't capable of delivering quality work. Like Paul Tittel (Awesome guy!) from Surpass Solutions once said to me when I told him that a disgruntled female client left me 1 star for communication, “1 star for communication? Dude, you communicate better than all of Upwork!” Most people settle for less due to time constraints and lack of alternatives. The system is rigged in favor of the platforms themselves, exploiting both clients and freelancers.
The Power of Self-Hosting:
Ever since I went the self-hosting route, in general, every time I find myself at the mercy of a crappy platform like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer, I realize how much of an idiot I was for spending a single second working there. Self-hosting opens your eyes to all the greed, the blatant disrespect that's all around you when you're a slave to such godforsaken platforms. It's about time we removed the “beggars can't be choosers” feature from our mental firmware, so to speak.
The Future Is Not on These Platforms:
I no longer care about being “top rated” (stopped caring years ago but anyway) or having a perfect rating on these platforms. Instead, I focus on building long-term relationships with clients who trust me for their IT needs. By doing so, I've found more fulfillment and satisfaction in my work without relying on the exploitation of freelancing platforms. I make way less money this way, sure, but let's be real, most of the time, the problem is your spending habits, and not how much money you make. It goes without saying that there are always exceptions. All in all, I'd rather have less money and more time for fun stuff (i.e., actually living) than more money and no time for anything at all, which is utter blasphemy in this capitalistic world we live in, I know. My Oxytocin levels don't mind being anti-capitalist, so who cares? Hehe
Conclusion:
It's time to acknowledge that Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr are not the ideal solutions they claim to be. They're designed to benefit their owners at the expense of both clients and freelancers. By breaking free from these platforms, I've found a more meaningful and rewarding career in freelancing where I don't feel like I'm a lost sheep in search of nothing. If you feel trapped or undervalued by these platforms, consider exploring alternative ways to showcase your skills and establish lasting connections with your clientele. Be your own platform. Yes, I know it's hard to earn strangers' trust, but as long as you're not a sneaky scammer, there will always be people willing to take a chance on you. Just think about it, if scammers have the confidence to fuck people out of their own money, why should you, as a decent human being, feel any less confident about providing an actually good service? At least that's how I see it. Whenever there's a platform that gamifies the crap out of everything, it's not worth using at all.
UPDATE 1:
Thinking back, despite the horrible gacha game system that platforms like Upwork implement, it's a miracle that I managed to become Top Rated multiple times with almost $10,000 total earnings (-$2,000 in fees) and a 100% Job Success Score in the span of 5 years on and off. By the way, I closed my account a few hours ago. I tried to close it before, but Upwork was vague about why it wouldn't let me close it, which meant I had to figure out why on my own. Turned out there were 3 active contracts that I had to end, so once I did that, it did finally let me close the account without throwing a vague error. However, the reasons/options I was given for closing the account were very limited, and did not include “Other”, which goes to show they're not ready to hear real feedback; they'd rather just trick their shareholders with inaccurate data like, “30% of freelancers who close their account state that it's because they have a duplicate account. 20% claim they're working directly with a client they met thanks to our platform.” Anyway, the last time I got a fake invite from a fake Upwork recruiter, I just replied with, “Fuck you”, and then for some reason, my Job Success Score went from 88% to 100%, note there was no reason for it to go to down to 88% in the first place. It's like these companies are allergic to transparency while they also thrive on seemingly random-yet-predatory business tactics. What a joke!
UPDATE 2:
And by the way, it's not just a “race to the bottom“, most job posts get abandoned or remain open for months and nobody ever gets hired, which gives the impression that the entire platform's sole purpose is to make you waste your connects, so it can “dark-pattern” you into buying more. Talk about one of the scummiest business models on the Internet!
UPDATE 3:
The fact that most clients don't even know how to use Upwork means that even when I get the job done literally within minutes, I still have to wait 14 days for automatic approval, since telling them what to do is pointless when the likelihood of being ghosted is near 100%. I sometimes even offered free solutions due to how frustrated I was with how painfully slow some clients can be. If they're a decent human being, they end up paying me after the fact, while others just disappear into the Ether. There's also a 5-day security lock + 1-3 days depending on the payment method used to withdraw earnings. All in all, Upwork, like the others, is an abomination of a platform that shouldn't exist, because it treats people like literal insects, and I hope to God they go bankrupt. Evil businesses like this should have no place or impact on the world whatsoever, and overpaid CEOs should be the first to feel ashamed of themselves, assuming they have any empathy left after all that sweet, sweet cash.
As for subcontractors, I only came across one that's actually a decent human being (already mentioned in this post). The rest would walk away as soon I'm done helping them or come up with some bullshit story about their client not wanting to pay them. I once traced an Upwork subcontractor's Egyptian client back to Freelancer.com. The subcontractor from Nepal or some other godforsaken country claimed that the client accused us of messing with his server in a malicious way, note that I not only fixed his high MySQL CPU usage error but also removed a special kind of malware designed to fill up disk space with dummy ZIP archives; an issue neither the client nor the subcontractor knew about, which is pretty common, because almost 90% of the time, I'd have to fix a million things along with what the client wanted without charging them a penny more then their already insultingly low budget. In my experience, talking about money in any way triggers people so hard it makes me wonder whether I'm a human or a fucking goblin, but I digress. Turned out, the Egyptian client had already paid the Nepali subcontractor $30, and left him a 5-star review on Freelancer.com, and the sneaky subcontractor stuck to his bogus story. What I did next was send him a screenshot of the 5-star review the Egyptian client left him with an overlay text of his lie in red, then blocked his ass on every imaginable platform he tried to contact me from. In other words, I never ever waste my time trying to get revenge on some scumbag nor do I have the the time or energy to listen to them lie some more. Their behavior was disgusting enough the first time.
UPDATE 4:
Turned out, Upwork's plan all along was to make enough profit off of the backs of us freelancers, fire 25% of their staff so that upper management can take all the cash, and then focus on only sucking the limp dicks of the repulsively overrated Fortune 500 companies. Man, this appalling Machiavellian approach that these businesses adopt is getting old. I mean, I get it. You love money so much, you lack empathy, and you're proud of your clinical psychopathy. Good for you, I guess? Although I'm an apatheist, you make me wish that a special kind of hell existed for greedy thieving assholes like you. Oh, and fuck Bill Gates for contributing to unfairness in the world where talentless losers make money they don't deserve, and actual decent talented human beings make pennies.
UPDATE 5:
When I started freelancing around 6 years ago, I started on Fiverr using my cousin‘s Level-One account, which I got to Level-Two in no time. My first gig ever there was helping a guy from Iceland fix a duplicate line issue in his eBook; I attached a fixed version of his eBook in my job proposal, and yet he still decided to place an order and leave a 5-star review after the fact. I also built tools for other clients to use, so they wouldn't have to hire me to do the same work for them over and over (like decrypting game files or something like that). My point is, in my mind, as a decent principled opinionated human being, it didn't even occur to me that I could object to these platforms' draconian terms of service (payment delays, 20% off of even tips, platform siding with clients even when they're objectively wrong, etc), and decide not to use them at all. After all, I had 14 more years of experience in real life, so it's not like I was going to starve to death without these mediocre freelancing platforms. In fact, before I started freelancing, I made over $10,000 from Google AdSense in like 4 months, and before that, I helped people in my city with their IT problems (teachers, musicians, civil engineers, etc.) Everyone would praise me for my dedication and conscientiousness, and it's not something I can fake or give up on; it's who the fuck I am. My main weakness, however, was the fact that I used to tolerate a lot of shitty behavior, give millions of chances to those who didn't even deserve a first chance, and worst of all, the inability to say no to the point where I would guilt-trip myself into saying yes, and no manipulation from others was necessary. That's how terrified I was of being seen as a heartless person who doesn't want to help people in need. However, the older I get, the more I realize that setting boundaries is crucial to one's mental health. Otherwise, some people would have no problem eating you alive. Nowadays, I don't mind if people see me as the bad guy after not falling falling for their blatant manipulation. Why do you think I don't play by the rules? Why do you think I don't use AdSense on this blog anymore? I simply don't want to be controlled by any person or corporation for scraps. I'd rather just say my piece, and move on. The catharsis from doing so is priceless. You know what else is cathartic? Never applying for jobs, i.e., never giving assholes the satisfaction of seeing me as a number to ignore, which is why I'm kind of ashamed that I let myself be duped by these platforms, so while I still saw myself as a freelancer even though I still have to “apply for a job” on those wretched platforms. Heck, I would even flat-out tell rude bossy self-entitled clients to fuck off at the risk of getting suspended when they get out of line acting like their 5 or 50 dollars is going to buy me a house in my home country or something. I'm more of a “catch flies with honey” kind of person, so negative reinforcement and all that tough love crap is a surefire way to make me go all Lucifer on your ass. In other words, I would move heaven and earth to help you with your shit as long as you're being respectful, appreciative, and cool-headed. Otherwise, I don't give a fuck who you are or how much you make or what country you're from. I've worked with people from all over the world (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Norway, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, China, etc), and 99% of them were well-adjusted respectful people that I had a blast helping out with all kinds of tech problems, so you might think that because I curse a lot, my attitude is bad, therefore the quality of the services that I provide would automatically be bad, but you'd be dead wrong, and I got over 80+ positive reviews to prove it. If you think that any of those reviews are fake, you can reach out to any of those people, and ask them about me; that's how much I'm confident that I made a great impression. I'm the kind of person that wouldn't even use cheat codes in games because the real fun in getting better at the game. I apply the exact same rules in real life, meaning that I'd rather fucking die before making up a story or lying about a review or doing any kind of shady shit. Over and out.