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Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a freelancer, finding work mainly on Upwork, and I loathe them now.

What started as a 10% commission was upped to 20%, and they tried to do various tricks on both clients and freelancers to a point that I stopped doing freelance work altogether.

It was a great platform, and I don't think a 10% clear cut wasn't enough for them for an organic growth.

Another thing I loathe is LinkedIn. I'm sure many people find their next job through LinkedIn, but it baffles me why LinkedIn would even exist today, being an social network, communication platform, a portfolio, and all of them in a very awkward position, and not being very good at any of them. Now they want to be a freelancer market place too?

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Yeah, what I dislike about Upwork is that after they take thousands of dollars from me for their service, they still want me to pay for applying for new work.

I’m the one that spends time filtering through their cluttered job list, I’m the one trying to convince people to hire me, I’m the one doing the work, they process the payments and they still milk me massively. Eventually I deleted my account and went working just on Toptal.

There I have no idea how much they earn from my work but at least I get dozens of offers every time I become available.

I think Upwork just has to deal with too many disputes on low budget jobs and because of that their processes alienate high earning devs.

I work through Arc.dev [0] and I like them. From what I understand Arc asks no commission, so I am not sure how they actually make money. You set your own rates and that's what clients pay. Perhaps clients pay a one-time fee upon finding a suitable contractor?

There doesn't seem to be a race to the bottom on Arc.dev with regards to rates. There's a vetting process, but not as difficult as TopTal imo.

You can get an idea on the rates of freelancers on Arc by reading the following: https://arc.dev/remote-developer-salary

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[0]: https://arc.dev

Arc takes ~15-30%, they just take it from the client's side instead of the freelancer; but your rate isn't the one the client is paying.

I do like them a lot though and have gotten clients through them (and codementor; though that last one is, too, getting polluted with very-low-level coders just randomly accepting jobs they do not have the skills for; having used it as a client recently, I've been less impressed)

They take 20% for up to $500. Then between $500 and $10K they take 10%. Anything above $10k is then charged as 5% only. And this applies to same client spanning multiple contracts. That means once you get paid $10k, regardless of current or future project(s) from same client they only take 5%. Upwork encourages long term relations between freelancers and clients.

On the other hand Fiverr takes always 20%, regardless of how long the relation between freelancer and client is. That's why Fiverr is 10 times smaller than Upwork.

This always struck me as really unfair. If you're taking projects that bring you <$500, you probably really need that money and 20% is a large chunk of it.

The platform overhead is much higher for those jobs I suspect due to disputes, fraud, etc, etc.

It's interesting, ~20% now seems to be the norm. (Not just for developer platforms.) 10% is pretty reasonable. I also used to work for a few years through upwork, sill when it was elance. I kind of remember that the rate was around 10%, maybe higher for smaller projects. Again, pretty reasonable.

A few years ago I've co-founded a platform for remote psych counselling and I remember my partner was pushing for a 30% commission. I told him that's how you motivate your users to try to get around you and not keep paying in the long run.

They just wanted to weed out small time freelancers. The fee is 5% for >$10K customer-freelancer relationship... My average fee is about 7-8%, or about 10% including what the customer pays.

Yes. But that's what market places are for, to reach out new customers. If you have a relationship with a client for more than 10K, why continue to pay 5% on top of payment fees?

They messaging software is not very useful, and time tracking feature is hostile for many.

A more comparable feature would be for the client to pay a fixed fee to post, and allow them to work outside upwork.

Messaging part is indeed absurdly awful. Here i agree with you.

Otherwise, Upwork is just great, to the point that i wouldn't even talk to a client coming from outside of it just because all of them turned out to be little but spam.

> why continue to pay 5% on top of payment fees?

Because without Upwork weekly charges clients might “forget” and “postpone” and “delay” payments. 5% is ok to know that money will be paid by the schedule.

It's not just that. If you made a million or two on Upwork, it makes you stand out making further deals easier. These 5% are money well invested, not just spent.

Sounds like we are/have been in the same boat. Are you working full time now? If so, was the pivot motivated by your dissatisfaction with the client acquisition process?

How specifically, do the commission fees work on a per contract basis?

I'm a bit hazy on details. Their commission is per-client. If the total payment between the client and freelancer is less than $500, the commission is 20%. It gets lower to 15% and 10% when you earn more. But it never teaches zero, and that is in addition to payment fees. You pay a fixed fee for withdrawals, or the bank withdrawals offer 3-5% low rates compared to market currency buying rates.

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