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Nobody owes you anything.
Period.
If you haven’t heard, Upwork just changed the fees it charges to freelancers. It moved from a flat fee of 10% to a “sliding fee structure” like this:
- First $500 of lifetime client earnings – 20%
- $500+ up to $10,000 – 10%
- $10,000+ – 5%
And boy oh boy did the kids get angry!
Check out some of these comments:
“go hang yourself. I hope all your people leave and you are dead.”
“U evil. Stahp.”
“This is the worst policy any market place have ever taken.”
“Moderate your greed. (Even God has commented on this move)”
“Stop this greed.”
The most sane comment of them all (even though this person probably doesn’t quite realize what they’re saying) was this one:
“Time to collect personal clients!”
Ya think?
Funny thing is… everybody who has asked me about this only told me Upwork raised their fee to 20%. They conveniently forgot to mention the rest of the fee structure. Hmmmm. Should tell you something about their approach.
Like I said, nobody owes you anything.
Upwork offers a service for freelancers and clients and they’re absolutely within their right to change their pricing… even if it were terrible.
You don’t like it… don’t use it. No sympathy from me.
Thing is, though… it’s not terrible. At least not for me.
When I was on Upwork if this had been in place… the majority of my revenue would have quickly crossed into the 10% range. So, they got an extra 50 bucks per project. Meh. If that’s what they need to stay in business… so be it.
You should actually be excited about this.
If you’ve been listening to anything I’ve been saying… this should be welcome news. Why?
Because, it seems clearly aimed at the lowballers.
The developers that go around just lowballing project after project, giving terrible service (so the lifetime earnings with that client never break $500) and moving on to the next sucker they can lure in with their low price.
Bye Felicia!
If those people are angry and “vow” to leave Upwork… GOOD! Hell, I might even jump back on there if they really do.
But they won’t.
That’s because they don’t have anywhere else to go. They don’t have a long-term mindset, so they’re not building a real freelance business. And, they’ll find life “off” the freelance site is even less forgiving.
I tell you this all the time…
Go get your own clients. Do NOT rely on Upwork or whatever other site to bring you all your business. Because when they make changes… it hits you hard. You are at their mercy. Why do that?
Anyway, there’s a way out of all of this. I teach it in Module 3 of my course, Lightning Responsive. I show you how to build an actual freelance business… not a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, whine-when-Upwork-changes wannabe business. Get that way out as a supporting listener on Patreon here:
https://johnmorrisonline.com/patreon
P.S. If you liked the show, give it a like and share with the communities and people you think will benefit. And, you can always find all my tutorials, podcast episodes and more on johnmorrisonline.com, @jpmorris on Twitter and youtube.com/johnmorrisvideo.
