Warning: Upwork

I have heard people on Upwork complain that Upwork is saturated. I have also heard that Upwork may refuse your profile if they believe they have too many freelancers offering the same thing.

I don't know of any other freelancing website that refuses your profile solely because they think their market is saturated in that skill set. The only reason Upwork would have for doing this is because they want their top earners to keep making them more money. They don't want to take a chance on new freelancers getting jobs for less money to build their profiles and potentially upsetting employers by turning out sub-par work.

However, at the same time, I am sure they have realized they need some new freelancers, so they carefully vet only those who ARE going to work around the clock to earn Upwork its money and only allow those in who have skills that won't displace the freelancers already maintaining their cashflow. This video seems to support that theory--Upwork gives freelancers more "leads" if they are submitting more proposals.

As you know if you have been following me a while, I work exclusively on Guru. I have been thinking about using Upwork simply because job postings are down, and I have been struggling to find steady work. However, since I have always wanted to do my own work instead of slaving for other people, I am not to upset about this. I understand the overall job market sucks right now, so that being reflected on Guru is not surprising. With AI being promoted as the next writing, editing, get-rich-quick-without-investing-a-time deity, it isn't surprising. Perhaps I will post a video on my YouTube about the inside story on these "get rich quick with AI" schemes.

That said, I was looking into expanding onto Upwork, but I have always known Upwork makes it more difficult for new freelancers. It used to be that the less you made on Upwork the bigger the percent they took out of your pay. Now, it seems they have a flat 10% fee for freelancers, but they also charge employers a percent fee as well. This could actually be a good thing since employers have to be serious if they are going to pay to hire someone. The down side is that employers can pay a higher fee to automatically screen out 99% of the freelancers on the website. That's right, the highest paying employers can choose to not see your proposal if you aren't in the top 1% (presumably income-wise). That filters business to top earners and "freelancing" businesses.

Considering all these changes, it seems to have become an exclusive country club instead of a realistic freelancing website. For that reason, I decided against trying to branch out onto that platform.