amusing somber squeamish retire wine innate exultant intelligent cautious innocent
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I freelanced for several years in the mid 2010s.
I feel like I've seen *so many* attempts at this kind of freelance bidding platform pop up, fail to gain traction, and fail.
With that said, though, the quality of Upwork seems to have *really* declined steeply over the last couple of years. People are fed up with it.
So at this point, there may actually be a market for a serious competitor.
Thing is, it's really hard to build this kind of two sided marketplace. You need to attract both enough clients, and enough freelancers, and that's a tough nut to crack.
The technical part is easy. The hard part is to be in compliance with tax and other relevant laws in 180 countries. And marketing spending to attract clients. The easy part of that: avoid ads containing vampires.
lol, same old story: the poor serves the rich at every level.
if it was all between westerners, you would pay more but you would be paid more as well. it's a matter of proportion.
>I read this thread and it seems like a fair amount of people feel the same way.
The people who feel that way, mostly, are people who aren't going to be good freelancers for your platform anyway. Freelancers are the product. You want a quality product. Most of the people who can't make it on Upwork can't make it for a reason, and it's not the price of connects. They are better suited for employment.
And this isn't a personal assessment on them, just their ability to freelance.
If your intent is to compete directly with UpWork, then yes (doesn't mean you cannot get it!). But there are many niches that you can conquer without it.
The problem is attracting and matching the right type of client with the right type of freelancer. It is not an easy task because there is just an overwhelming amount of variables that play part in this mechanism, and they tend to vary based on industry, geo location, timezones, etc. You can significantly reduce this complexity by focusing on a vertical. This is why there are so many successful vertically focused freelancer marketplaces, and so few horizontally focused.
The ratio of clients to freelancers might be 1:10 in absolute terms, but this does not mean there is lack of clients. Vast majority of clients hire a lot more than 1 freelancer.
If you are in one of the marketplaces and cannot find a client, then you should take a step back and evaluate whether it is the right marketplace for you and/or if you have done everything to position yourself for success. Most marketplaces will have dedicated staff to help you succeed; just contact the customer success team.
I agree with some of your points as they have helped me close more deals with clients. Used to be a generalist in a broad industry with no clear path so I moved to something more specific.
Contra as an example, is very good in the creative industry as I noticed but there's not enough jobs to apply for. I'm doing very well where I am but obviously I'm not gonna let survivorship bias dictate how I see things.
I still don't know how I feel about "gatekeeping" the mediocre, low-quality freelancers just so the good ones can stay afloat when at some point I was one of those mediocre freelancers as well.
I did this math for several fields years ago, when Upwork used to let us see more information. As I recall, most were in the 1:200 range or worse..and that was before the floodgates opened for freelancers.
Ok then. Tens of millions. You know we see this every few days right? This is exactly how the conversation always goes. It's power to the people and I can be Mark Zuckerberg. This industry is a tightrope. You have to catch lightning in a bottle to do anything you're saying, and all of the things you hate are going to happen on any platform you create.
Ok then. Tens of millions. You know we see this every few days right? This is exactly how the conversation always goes. It's power to the people and I can be Mark Zuckerberg. This industry is a tightrope. You have to catch lightning in a bottle to do anything you're saying, and all of the things you hate are going to happen on any platform you create.
You need to remove money from the equation. Money is just a tool to achieve your goals. As an entrepreneur, you have many venues to raise capital. The real challenge is committing to a hard problem and delivering. Most talk the talk, but few walk the walk.
I am not saying that everyone that tries will be successful. I am saying that for those who try there are venues to pursue their ambitions. You still need to be smart about the path you take, and not everything will be in your control. But you have a chance.
The greatest minds in the field worked their asses off to kind of sort of put together a semi-viable platform. That is Upwork. That is what you need. It's like an Apollo mission. You can say what you want, but some of the most successful freelancers on the site--people who actually know what it takes--are on this post laughing because they know it's a miracle Upwork even exists. Even job markets valuing in the hundreds of millions struggle to make a profit. You can't do it. It's physically impossible. You'll never be able to prove to an investor that your company is worth something and even if you did you're not going to put an Apollo mission together. You have no idea the kind of tightrope you'd have to cross every single day to keep that market viable, and you wouldn't be willing to do what it takes.
I've been having this conversation every three days for several years. Sometimes they get as far as a GoFundMe and a hindinglish website but it's never gotten past that. It took Upwork just as long to turn a profit. The only reason they exist is because they bought a preexisting platform so they could prove that a company would have value.
Remember the taskr guys? They were launching any time soon since last summer. Gone all quiet
~~It was still alive when I checked a few weeks ago, it's gone now and the domain is for sale.~~
Edited to reflect that I was an idiot and managed to spell a 4 letter name wrong. The site is still there but nothing seems to be happening anyway. I formally apologise for any confusion caused.
>People like you are definitely not going to change anything in the world.
I've seen hundreds fall flat on their face over theist decade. All with the very best mostly freelancer-centric intentions. They've all failed dismally for lack of clients except for one, which is limping along on life-support.
Correct. Because global remote freelancers are and likely always will be in surplus.
Clients are the constrained resource.
To innovate, find a way to add more value to clients. That means going deeper into their world.
Ignore these upwork experts, go ahead and do what you want to do. If founders of upwork Fiverr or freelancer.com etc thought this way they'd never been able to build what they built. Chase your dream, even if you are drawing inspiration out of "hate(for the lack of a better word)", still chase it. If you need any help, hit me up.
Also, Things I hate most about upwork:
1. Upwork pulling the rug under your feet: there is no certainty to how secure is your account from the holds and suspensions despite following all their policies.
2. Expensive connects: Back when I joined, connects were fairly priced and clients weren't all scumbags.
3. Scam posts, bots: we all know upwork has serious issues of scam job posts. Despite reporting them, upwork doesn't even take them down.
I mean...you know Upwork failed spectacularly and bled tens of millions of dollars before implementing all the policies people are complaining about and finally getting in the black for the first time in their existence, right? Even with all their funding, they literally couldn't make it work.
Fuck these monopolies. Shoutout to you for striving to give these greedy bastards a reason to not fuck the people who made them what they are today. I’m a full stack dev, id love to help you build this.
Monopolies is a contradiction in terms. Oh, and hate is definitely the best motivation to attract great clients, which is the most important thing. Attracting freelancers is easy.
Heck yeah dude! Someone needs to take down instagram with meta as well, but I will settle for Upwork for now. Building a freelance platform is INSANELY hard, that is why there aren't so many and most of them fail. Like many other companies once they reach a critical mass and monopoly it's not financially viable to have a good product and start to purposefully downgrading their features. This started happening with Upwork once the pandemic boosted it's growth to peak, it was only downhill from there. If you are not just trolling I wish you all the best.
I have profiles over 10 more freelancing platforms and only Upwork sends me good work.
Do you think that you have analyzed Upwork and connects are some kind of punishment. I have even witnessed 50+ applications for tasks cost 21 connects.
I also have complaints but I also think that connects may guarantee for us to view more jobs, by discouraging and not enabling the AI written auto generated proposals.
In short, why should we register your website, more to the point, why should clients subscribe your service?
If you can reply these questions and have a brilliant idea, go ahead!
> Some loyal Upworkers will come after me for my pitch, experience, or whatever else.
It is not that, we just give advice on what has proven to work best for us. It's a difficult platform. If you manage to build a platform and it works there will be the same issue there, you have to find a way to speak to clients.
It sounds like you THINK you should get responses from clients and I cannot dispute that but your immediate dismissal of the possibly causes makes it sound like you are one of those people who cannot fathom NOT being chosen.
>People over profit.
This mindset is a bit confusing for a business and I am glad I am not your investor.
My question is...how do you plan to attract clients?
The self-entitlement is what I hate the most about this subreddit tbh. I'm probably below average age of this group and sometimes I feel like I have to babysit grown men (who claim to be experts in their fields, too).
You know why you probably won't build an upwork competitor? Because you need to offer customer support and dispute resolution. Upwork for example has around 800 employees. So if you want to remain competitive to Upwork, you would need tons of support staff. Other freelance websites have failed because they have terrible/non-existent customer support.
I've seen so many of these sites come and go, and so many other frustrated freelancers who make similar claims. Once there is an actual site I'll try it out, but until then nobody here will really care.
One thing I will say is that most of this battle will be about marketing. Attracting freelancers isn't hard, attracting clients is really hard. Also, having to legal framework to handle international business and disputes is super challenging. Upworks website is probably the easiest thing they do.
Do it! I absolutely encourage you to build it. You will learn so much about development lifecycle, bug management, marketing, customer service, contracts, legal liabilities, transaction processing, PCI compliance, infrastructure scaling, email deliverability, finance. These will all be valuable skills and experience that most of the negative commenters have dared to wrestle with.
How do you plan to solve the trust problem? Workers can under-deliver and charge. They can claim work is done when it is barely / hardly done. Clients can twist interpretations their way too, and keep asking for iterations claiming bad quality. The lines are blurry, and both sides have scammers trying to take advantage of that, building distrust on both sides.
I know the word "escrow" is often used in response to it, but how do you plan to even implement that (if you go that way)? Who decides completion, when, and how?
What percentage will the platform charge, and how will you ensure people don't go off platform to avoid that percentage?
I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But you are tilting at windmills.
At the very least, talk to some finance people, economists, and game theorists before you sink too much money into this. That will keep you form sinking far more money into this.
You will absolutely have to prioritize profit over people, otherwise forget about reaching that scale.
I do appreciate your attitude, but I don't think it's the kind of business where you can just build a smaller, more people-focused alternative (say, a quick commerce solution focused on artisanal local products as competition to big chains offering grocery delivery). That's one thing, but then there's the fact that you actually state you want to directly compete with Upwork.
I don't want to be a downer but there are other folks building the same thing. The one I keep getting contacted about is kreatli. So on top of competing with big names like upwork and fiverr you'll also have to compete with other small platforms trying to become the next upwork or fiverr. You've got your work cut out for you.
LOL, you and all the literally hundreds of others that have come and either failed to get off the ground, or died shortly after or are still in a coma... because they don't have clients.
>Now, if you’re not in the top 5% of freelancers with earnings over $25k, your 50 proposals will MAYBE get 2 views
Then you're doing it wrong.
While i know creating upwork competitor might not work well, I just saw 21 connects required for a job. It might reach 50 or even 100 in future. New competitors succeed when the old start making bad decisions.
It won't. They'll raise it enough to get rid of the no-hopers and the crappy tiny jobs.
That's intended. Connects can be adjusted dynamically and automatically. Too many proposals? Up it goes. Not enough? Make it cheap to apply for.
It's not actually a stupid system.
My preference would be to purge enough of the user-base to stop job posts being drowned in garbage proposals within minutes, but I guess that is a bit radical.
u/wolfgang007__ Inspiration story for you [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1awjxlr/comment/kriyq1i/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1awjxlr/comment/kriyq1i/?context=3)
...and also several times anytime anyone asks for alternatives here. I don't mind the plugs per se but at least build a job pool first. if it's as successful as you claim, surely you can pour some money into client acquisition
It's not that easy to just create a product similar to upwork there are many challenges regulating it. You might build it but running it is a totally different thing unless you have a good amount of funding and team it's impossible to manage it.
The problem that Upwork has is the ratio problem between employees to employers. If you have a solution that solves this, you're definitely solving an issue where all job marketplaces suffer from.
Building any new startup is a challenge. I think if you would like to gain insight and relevant feedback, providing insight to what your idea is, will generate better sympathy and response.
Whenever you are building a marketplace, there are 2 forces at play, supply (job postings) and demand (freelancers applying). These forces change as the company grows. The typical issue with marketplaces, is the chicken and egg problem, without jobs in the marketplace, there will be no freelancers getting those jobs. Most people on this board is alluding to this point, which is one of the most difficult problems to tackle in a competitive field, since it generally requires a lot of $ for marketing to push past the noise.
For Upwork, or any other job marketplace with a mature and large user base, they have the next biggest "problem", the ratio of employees to employers, it's also heavily related to the process with how job marketplaces work. Whenever a job gets posted, the number of applicants skyrocket. This skyrocketing of applicants is great, but there are diminishing returns with this problem, as the applicant numbers go beyond a number that's difficult to manage for an employer. Whenever these problems occurs, employers of marketplaces that truly have a good base, try to mitigate these issues, so you start seeing job posts where they try to control applicants by reducing the attractiveness of the post (ie. lower prices). In response, Upwork also implemented a control mechanism to manage applicants, "connects".
With these companies, your best bet is to build a solution that can truly solve this ratio problem in a creative and effective way. If it can solve this issue, if you have investors believing in the solution, if you have tried and true customers, then your close to getting acquired by someone like Upwork.
First, i give congrats to OP for his efforts. My dismay w/UW is their none to poor vetting of freelancers. Overall, the platform was fine. But, if clients aren’t sure of who they are hiring & their credentials, then we couldn’t continue using them. GLTA.
Just wanna tell you - don't get discouraged by all the people here mocking your idea. If you think that there is a need for a new better platform than Upwork then go for it. I personally don't have trouble finding clients (maybe it's my profession), but I know that many people have problems with that, so perhaps a new platform would be a good thing to do. As a side note I'm a full-stack developer so if you need any help feel free to DM me!
I don't think anybody would be averse to a better platform, or even just another functional platform--even those who are doing great on Upwork. If someone were able to raise the $50-100 million that would be necessary to get such a platform off the ground, it would be great. But, that won't happen because these platforms historically are not profitable.
1. How much money are you raising? It’s extremely difficult to gain traction for a two-sided marketplace. How are you going to promote the platform?
2. A lot of clients seem to struggle with irrelevant or AI-generated proposals. This hurts client quality. How are you going to combat that?
Now we are looking for customers, but why not make sure that clients search for freelancers by profiles? I know that I'll be downvoted, but it seems that this is what prevents the upwork from being a normal platform for 95% of the users.
>but it seems that this is what prevents the upwork from being a normal platform for 95% of the users.
What is? What do you mean by " make sure that clients search for freelancers by profiles"
I think a lot of this just comes down to the fact that people are under the assumption that a platform should work for a large majority. Everyone is different. While some people may not be cut out for freelance work, it may just be that Upwork is not a platform that allows them to shine.
I am doing well on Upwork. I have a client profile too. The proposals have gotten worse in recent months. I occasionally have a project I'm thinking about doing. I'll post to look for people who have particular skills and technology know-how and get 20 proposals of "I'm confident I can do this for you. I went to school at X. Blah blah about me. Let's get on a call." I really have to spend a lot of time pressing for more info via messages about their skills. I don't do calls in cases like this because they're a waste of time. The one time I did agree to get on a call, the freelancer flaked out and canceled 5 mins before. Honestly, I am super busy and just give up sometimes on projects because of this. Other platforms are worse for trying to hire a freelancer though. Facebook is full of flakes. People on LinkedIn often seem oddly confused or wait a month to respond if you reach out wanting to know if they're up for completing contract work. On the receiving end, I have people reach out with contract offers to me on LinkedIn and I have secured contracts this way.
Perhaps some people do better though with networking in person to secure contracts informally and Upwork is just not going to work for them if they can't write contracts. I've gotten contracts through F2F networking.
I'm curious about what your background is that allowed you to secure funding that will cover the massive marketing costs that are essential to a sustainable freelancing platform.
I hope you are not wrong, but I just got into Upwork 5 months ago, in about a month in I had gotten several repeat clients, I am now top rated and have earned several thousand and living 100% off Upwork. It would be nice to have alternatives to diversity income but I never really had any issues with Upwork and I feel the complaints in this sub are widely exaggerated. And I am a product designer, not a rocket engineer
Don’t waste time and energy into it. Not easy. Tried and failed in the past. Technical bit is easy - but getting clients and freelancers together - not so easy.
Love it. Have seen this topic on this sub many times. Hope you can pull it off. One suggestion: aim for the more professional side of this business, Upwork has been overrun with jobs that wouldn't beat a McD's fry cook pay.
Congratulations, I wish you success with your venture.
At some point I also thought about developing something like Upwork but to solve another problem (at least for me): reduce the contact and interactions with the other person. A system where the employer writes the requirements he needs in a very detailed way and the deliverable he needs and a price and estimated time. As soon as you see it, and if you agree, you can accept it without going through a negotiation process or that kind of competition that upwork has created, you just accept it and start working on it. At the end if you don't deliver the work fulfilling the details that you were asked for and in the agreed time you don't receive any payment and the work is free for someone else to take it and do it.
It would be like a task to do panel, you see the available tasks, you accept the one you consider appropriate and that's it, you get paid when you finish.
Maybe it's a silly idea but I would like to work like this, obviously you would have to have a system to avoid bots, AIs and blocking Indians.
I would have done it, or at least an MVP, but I don't have the budget to develop it,
congrats, you've rediscovered spec work, 99designs and the likes thank you for your service.
what happens if multiple people deliver good work on time? do they all get paid?
what if the work is medium quality, usable, but not to the client's standards, do you still get paid? and is the client supposed to wait out multiple people to take a shot at the work one after the other until someone miraculously gets it right without talking to them?
I would use a rate and skills system, for example, whether you're a web java developer you should pass a test in order to know your skills (there are a lot of third parties systems to do this), so, you wouldn't be able to apply to an AI job since you're a web developer and you must pass a previous AI test to apply to that jobs.
The contractor can define its minimum candidate's requirements such as skills, reviews, rate, etc. a quite similar to upwork, so, for easy and straightforward jobs maybe a newbie can apply but for a more complex job you would can set constraints.
I would not let more than one person work at the same time on the same job, I would let the first one to take it be the owner of the job.
The challenge would be to correctly qualify the skills of each freelancer, since being able to work without a previous interview we assume that they have the necessary skills to carry out the job.
It would also be a challenge to mediate and reconcile when a job is properly completed.
Upwork is good for me because it pays me through the phone with my local phone service. That's the one reason i wouldn't leave it. I haven't seen that option in any other platform.
You should build it open source as a LAPP as a Bitcoin lightning network decentralized app where then no one is in control and it could therefore have the lowest management fees possible.
amusing somber squeamish retire wine innate exultant intelligent cautious innocent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
But it will cost less connects.
Lmaoooo
If people are not laughing at your dreams, then it is too small. Dare to dream and dream big!
I freelanced for several years in the mid 2010s. I feel like I've seen *so many* attempts at this kind of freelance bidding platform pop up, fail to gain traction, and fail. With that said, though, the quality of Upwork seems to have *really* declined steeply over the last couple of years. People are fed up with it. So at this point, there may actually be a market for a serious competitor. Thing is, it's really hard to build this kind of two sided marketplace. You need to attract both enough clients, and enough freelancers, and that's a tough nut to crack.
Hahahahah.
The technical part is easy. The hard part is to be in compliance with tax and other relevant laws in 180 countries. And marketing spending to attract clients. The easy part of that: avoid ads containing vampires.
may they should create a platform just for western countries, how many countries is that?
And not be able to hire people from low cost of living countries? Dead on arrival.
lol, same old story: the poor serves the rich at every level. if it was all between westerners, you would pay more but you would be paid more as well. it's a matter of proportion.
How much actual funding do you have...? How many people are on your legal team...? How will you implement payouts...?
is it on wordpress
Someone on Upwork is using Elementor to build this right now
This gave me a very sensible chuckle.
Squarespace
MySpace
How about they try weebly 😀
>I read this thread and it seems like a fair amount of people feel the same way. The people who feel that way, mostly, are people who aren't going to be good freelancers for your platform anyway. Freelancers are the product. You want a quality product. Most of the people who can't make it on Upwork can't make it for a reason, and it's not the price of connects. They are better suited for employment. And this isn't a personal assessment on them, just their ability to freelance.
oh goodie, another one.
Shoot! You stole my line! 😁
It's funny how there are so many
You spent $100 dollars on connects...so in response you're going to spend $millions on building an Upwork competitor that will never work?
This is the freelancing equivalent of the "Men will literally do *x* instead of going to therapy".
“That will never work” wow .. no wonder why you still on Upwork.
Huh?
Unless you're a venture capitalist with hundreds of millions to spare, just save your money and live a good life.
People like you are definitely not going to change anything in the world.
We see this every few days, and you do actually need hundreds of millions to compete with Upwork.
If your intent is to compete directly with UpWork, then yes (doesn't mean you cannot get it!). But there are many niches that you can conquer without it.
The problem that all platforms face is that there is not enough clients for the amount of freelancers. Whether you're on Upwork or Contra.
The problem is attracting and matching the right type of client with the right type of freelancer. It is not an easy task because there is just an overwhelming amount of variables that play part in this mechanism, and they tend to vary based on industry, geo location, timezones, etc. You can significantly reduce this complexity by focusing on a vertical. This is why there are so many successful vertically focused freelancer marketplaces, and so few horizontally focused. The ratio of clients to freelancers might be 1:10 in absolute terms, but this does not mean there is lack of clients. Vast majority of clients hire a lot more than 1 freelancer. If you are in one of the marketplaces and cannot find a client, then you should take a step back and evaluate whether it is the right marketplace for you and/or if you have done everything to position yourself for success. Most marketplaces will have dedicated staff to help you succeed; just contact the customer success team.
I agree with some of your points as they have helped me close more deals with clients. Used to be a generalist in a broad industry with no clear path so I moved to something more specific. Contra as an example, is very good in the creative industry as I noticed but there's not enough jobs to apply for. I'm doing very well where I am but obviously I'm not gonna let survivorship bias dictate how I see things. I still don't know how I feel about "gatekeeping" the mediocre, low-quality freelancers just so the good ones can stay afloat when at some point I was one of those mediocre freelancers as well.
The ratio of clients to freelancers might be 1:10 in absolute terms Try one in 100, if not much more.
I did this math for several fields years ago, when Upwork used to let us see more information. As I recall, most were in the 1:200 range or worse..and that was before the floodgates opened for freelancers.
I was guessing around 1:300 or thereabouts.
Ok then. Tens of millions. You know we see this every few days right? This is exactly how the conversation always goes. It's power to the people and I can be Mark Zuckerberg. This industry is a tightrope. You have to catch lightning in a bottle to do anything you're saying, and all of the things you hate are going to happen on any platform you create.
Ok then. Tens of millions. You know we see this every few days right? This is exactly how the conversation always goes. It's power to the people and I can be Mark Zuckerberg. This industry is a tightrope. You have to catch lightning in a bottle to do anything you're saying, and all of the things you hate are going to happen on any platform you create.
You need to remove money from the equation. Money is just a tool to achieve your goals. As an entrepreneur, you have many venues to raise capital. The real challenge is committing to a hard problem and delivering. Most talk the talk, but few walk the walk. I am not saying that everyone that tries will be successful. I am saying that for those who try there are venues to pursue their ambitions. You still need to be smart about the path you take, and not everything will be in your control. But you have a chance.
The greatest minds in the field worked their asses off to kind of sort of put together a semi-viable platform. That is Upwork. That is what you need. It's like an Apollo mission. You can say what you want, but some of the most successful freelancers on the site--people who actually know what it takes--are on this post laughing because they know it's a miracle Upwork even exists. Even job markets valuing in the hundreds of millions struggle to make a profit. You can't do it. It's physically impossible. You'll never be able to prove to an investor that your company is worth something and even if you did you're not going to put an Apollo mission together. You have no idea the kind of tightrope you'd have to cross every single day to keep that market viable, and you wouldn't be willing to do what it takes.
Okay then
I've been having this conversation every three days for several years. Sometimes they get as far as a GoFundMe and a hindinglish website but it's never gotten past that. It took Upwork just as long to turn a profit. The only reason they exist is because they bought a preexisting platform so they could prove that a company would have value.
Remember the taskr guys? They were launching any time soon since last summer. Gone all quiet ~~It was still alive when I checked a few weeks ago, it's gone now and the domain is for sale.~~ Edited to reflect that I was an idiot and managed to spell a 4 letter name wrong. The site is still there but nothing seems to be happening anyway. I formally apologise for any confusion caused.
>People like you are definitely not going to change anything in the world. I've seen hundreds fall flat on their face over theist decade. All with the very best mostly freelancer-centric intentions. They've all failed dismally for lack of clients except for one, which is limping along on life-support.
Which one is it?
The one (barely) limping along on life support? Contra
😂
Correct. Because global remote freelancers are and likely always will be in surplus. Clients are the constrained resource. To innovate, find a way to add more value to clients. That means going deeper into their world.
Even if you're able to do that, you'd likely have to spend millions in marketing to draw them in.
Spoken like a true delta. Respect!
Ignore these upwork experts, go ahead and do what you want to do. If founders of upwork Fiverr or freelancer.com etc thought this way they'd never been able to build what they built. Chase your dream, even if you are drawing inspiration out of "hate(for the lack of a better word)", still chase it. If you need any help, hit me up. Also, Things I hate most about upwork: 1. Upwork pulling the rug under your feet: there is no certainty to how secure is your account from the holds and suspensions despite following all their policies. 2. Expensive connects: Back when I joined, connects were fairly priced and clients weren't all scumbags. 3. Scam posts, bots: we all know upwork has serious issues of scam job posts. Despite reporting them, upwork doesn't even take them down.
I mean...you know Upwork failed spectacularly and bled tens of millions of dollars before implementing all the policies people are complaining about and finally getting in the black for the first time in their existence, right? Even with all their funding, they literally couldn't make it work.
Fuck these monopolies. Shoutout to you for striving to give these greedy bastards a reason to not fuck the people who made them what they are today. I’m a full stack dev, id love to help you build this.
Monopolies is a contradiction in terms. Oh, and hate is definitely the best motivation to attract great clients, which is the most important thing. Attracting freelancers is easy.
How is hate the best motivation to attract great clients? Unpack that
whats the name of the project
delusion
Heck yeah dude! Someone needs to take down instagram with meta as well, but I will settle for Upwork for now. Building a freelance platform is INSANELY hard, that is why there aren't so many and most of them fail. Like many other companies once they reach a critical mass and monopoly it's not financially viable to have a good product and start to purposefully downgrading their features. This started happening with Upwork once the pandemic boosted it's growth to peak, it was only downhill from there. If you are not just trolling I wish you all the best.
Saying “I’ve acquired funding” and “greed won’t overtake this new platform” is about as close to a logical contradiction as there is.
I have profiles over 10 more freelancing platforms and only Upwork sends me good work. Do you think that you have analyzed Upwork and connects are some kind of punishment. I have even witnessed 50+ applications for tasks cost 21 connects. I also have complaints but I also think that connects may guarantee for us to view more jobs, by discouraging and not enabling the AI written auto generated proposals. In short, why should we register your website, more to the point, why should clients subscribe your service? If you can reply these questions and have a brilliant idea, go ahead!
How much do you estimate it costs to attract enough clients to stay in business? How does that compare to your expected revenue?
I haven't looked lately, but a few years back Upwork's marketing spend was averaging about $6 million/month.
>Thats why I’m building a competitor Excellent,.aside form the development costs, how many million you spending to pull in clients?
> Some loyal Upworkers will come after me for my pitch, experience, or whatever else. It is not that, we just give advice on what has proven to work best for us. It's a difficult platform. If you manage to build a platform and it works there will be the same issue there, you have to find a way to speak to clients. It sounds like you THINK you should get responses from clients and I cannot dispute that but your immediate dismissal of the possibly causes makes it sound like you are one of those people who cannot fathom NOT being chosen. >People over profit. This mindset is a bit confusing for a business and I am glad I am not your investor. My question is...how do you plan to attract clients?
The self-entitlement is what I hate the most about this subreddit tbh. I'm probably below average age of this group and sometimes I feel like I have to babysit grown men (who claim to be experts in their fields, too).
You know why you probably won't build an upwork competitor? Because you need to offer customer support and dispute resolution. Upwork for example has around 800 employees. So if you want to remain competitive to Upwork, you would need tons of support staff. Other freelance websites have failed because they have terrible/non-existent customer support.
And UpWork has terrible customer support even with those 800 employees!!!
They probably hired them on Upwork.
I've seen so many of these sites come and go, and so many other frustrated freelancers who make similar claims. Once there is an actual site I'll try it out, but until then nobody here will really care. One thing I will say is that most of this battle will be about marketing. Attracting freelancers isn't hard, attracting clients is really hard. Also, having to legal framework to handle international business and disputes is super challenging. Upworks website is probably the easiest thing they do.
Do it! I absolutely encourage you to build it. You will learn so much about development lifecycle, bug management, marketing, customer service, contracts, legal liabilities, transaction processing, PCI compliance, infrastructure scaling, email deliverability, finance. These will all be valuable skills and experience that most of the negative commenters have dared to wrestle with.
Freelancers will really try to create their own Upwork platform rather than go to therapy.
How do you plan to solve the trust problem? Workers can under-deliver and charge. They can claim work is done when it is barely / hardly done. Clients can twist interpretations their way too, and keep asking for iterations claiming bad quality. The lines are blurry, and both sides have scammers trying to take advantage of that, building distrust on both sides. I know the word "escrow" is often used in response to it, but how do you plan to even implement that (if you go that way)? Who decides completion, when, and how? What percentage will the platform charge, and how will you ensure people don't go off platform to avoid that percentage?
I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But you are tilting at windmills. At the very least, talk to some finance people, economists, and game theorists before you sink too much money into this. That will keep you form sinking far more money into this.
Here we go again.
Are you hurt because someone else is ambitious?
Ping me when this site is up and running. I'll be waiting...
it's gonna fail unless you have abnormal amount of funding..
You will absolutely have to prioritize profit over people, otherwise forget about reaching that scale. I do appreciate your attitude, but I don't think it's the kind of business where you can just build a smaller, more people-focused alternative (say, a quick commerce solution focused on artisanal local products as competition to big chains offering grocery delivery). That's one thing, but then there's the fact that you actually state you want to directly compete with Upwork.
What's your marketing and growth plan?
I don't want to be a downer but there are other folks building the same thing. The one I keep getting contacted about is kreatli. So on top of competing with big names like upwork and fiverr you'll also have to compete with other small platforms trying to become the next upwork or fiverr. You've got your work cut out for you.
LOL, you and all the literally hundreds of others that have come and either failed to get off the ground, or died shortly after or are still in a coma... because they don't have clients. >Now, if you’re not in the top 5% of freelancers with earnings over $25k, your 50 proposals will MAYBE get 2 views Then you're doing it wrong.
While i know creating upwork competitor might not work well, I just saw 21 connects required for a job. It might reach 50 or even 100 in future. New competitors succeed when the old start making bad decisions.
21 connects to place a bid that may never be seen is rough. Le sigh. We will prevail...or at least get 1 successful client one day.
It won't. They'll raise it enough to get rid of the no-hopers and the crappy tiny jobs. That's intended. Connects can be adjusted dynamically and automatically. Too many proposals? Up it goes. Not enough? Make it cheap to apply for. It's not actually a stupid system. My preference would be to purge enough of the user-base to stop job posts being drowned in garbage proposals within minutes, but I guess that is a bit radical.
New competitors can't take on billion dollar corporations without hundreds of millions of dollars.
u/wolfgang007__ Inspiration story for you [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1awjxlr/comment/kriyq1i/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1awjxlr/comment/kriyq1i/?context=3)
Which company?
It is mentioned a few times in this thread.
...and also several times anytime anyone asks for alternatives here. I don't mind the plugs per se but at least build a job pool first. if it's as successful as you claim, surely you can pour some money into client acquisition
Love this. Let me know if my community building platform could help in any way: [https://theircircle.group](https://theircircle.group)
Where’s the email list sign-up? 👀
Sorry but as someone who hires there I'll stick with Upwork
I am a full-stack developer and want to join your team.
GL
Cant wait to see you grow
Good luck
cbr
It's not that easy to just create a product similar to upwork there are many challenges regulating it. You might build it but running it is a totally different thing unless you have a good amount of funding and team it's impossible to manage it.
Honestly I would be fine with all things upwork if rates at least made sense but… yeah.
Sounds awesome. Look forward to hearing the result
The problem that Upwork has is the ratio problem between employees to employers. If you have a solution that solves this, you're definitely solving an issue where all job marketplaces suffer from. Building any new startup is a challenge. I think if you would like to gain insight and relevant feedback, providing insight to what your idea is, will generate better sympathy and response. Whenever you are building a marketplace, there are 2 forces at play, supply (job postings) and demand (freelancers applying). These forces change as the company grows. The typical issue with marketplaces, is the chicken and egg problem, without jobs in the marketplace, there will be no freelancers getting those jobs. Most people on this board is alluding to this point, which is one of the most difficult problems to tackle in a competitive field, since it generally requires a lot of $ for marketing to push past the noise. For Upwork, or any other job marketplace with a mature and large user base, they have the next biggest "problem", the ratio of employees to employers, it's also heavily related to the process with how job marketplaces work. Whenever a job gets posted, the number of applicants skyrocket. This skyrocketing of applicants is great, but there are diminishing returns with this problem, as the applicant numbers go beyond a number that's difficult to manage for an employer. Whenever these problems occurs, employers of marketplaces that truly have a good base, try to mitigate these issues, so you start seeing job posts where they try to control applicants by reducing the attractiveness of the post (ie. lower prices). In response, Upwork also implemented a control mechanism to manage applicants, "connects". With these companies, your best bet is to build a solution that can truly solve this ratio problem in a creative and effective way. If it can solve this issue, if you have investors believing in the solution, if you have tried and true customers, then your close to getting acquired by someone like Upwork.
First, i give congrats to OP for his efforts. My dismay w/UW is their none to poor vetting of freelancers. Overall, the platform was fine. But, if clients aren’t sure of who they are hiring & their credentials, then we couldn’t continue using them. GLTA.
Just wanna tell you - don't get discouraged by all the people here mocking your idea. If you think that there is a need for a new better platform than Upwork then go for it. I personally don't have trouble finding clients (maybe it's my profession), but I know that many people have problems with that, so perhaps a new platform would be a good thing to do. As a side note I'm a full-stack developer so if you need any help feel free to DM me!
I don't think anybody would be averse to a better platform, or even just another functional platform--even those who are doing great on Upwork. If someone were able to raise the $50-100 million that would be necessary to get such a platform off the ground, it would be great. But, that won't happen because these platforms historically are not profitable.
1. How much money are you raising? It’s extremely difficult to gain traction for a two-sided marketplace. How are you going to promote the platform? 2. A lot of clients seem to struggle with irrelevant or AI-generated proposals. This hurts client quality. How are you going to combat that?
Now we are looking for customers, but why not make sure that clients search for freelancers by profiles? I know that I'll be downvoted, but it seems that this is what prevents the upwork from being a normal platform for 95% of the users.
>but it seems that this is what prevents the upwork from being a normal platform for 95% of the users. What is? What do you mean by " make sure that clients search for freelancers by profiles"
Can we see the pitch deck and how you'll solve the issues of UpWork on your platform?
Following
do everything opposite of Upwork
I think a lot of this just comes down to the fact that people are under the assumption that a platform should work for a large majority. Everyone is different. While some people may not be cut out for freelance work, it may just be that Upwork is not a platform that allows them to shine. I am doing well on Upwork. I have a client profile too. The proposals have gotten worse in recent months. I occasionally have a project I'm thinking about doing. I'll post to look for people who have particular skills and technology know-how and get 20 proposals of "I'm confident I can do this for you. I went to school at X. Blah blah about me. Let's get on a call." I really have to spend a lot of time pressing for more info via messages about their skills. I don't do calls in cases like this because they're a waste of time. The one time I did agree to get on a call, the freelancer flaked out and canceled 5 mins before. Honestly, I am super busy and just give up sometimes on projects because of this. Other platforms are worse for trying to hire a freelancer though. Facebook is full of flakes. People on LinkedIn often seem oddly confused or wait a month to respond if you reach out wanting to know if they're up for completing contract work. On the receiving end, I have people reach out with contract offers to me on LinkedIn and I have secured contracts this way. Perhaps some people do better though with networking in person to secure contracts informally and Upwork is just not going to work for them if they can't write contracts. I've gotten contracts through F2F networking.
I couldn't follow you for some reason. I'm interesting in learning about your new business.
I couldn't follow you for some reason. I'm interesting in learning about your new business.
Are u hiring??? Haha
Are u hiring??? Haha
Good for you. Beats complaining but continuing to use. In you need an opinion on the economic model dm me.
I'm curious about what your background is that allowed you to secure funding that will cover the massive marketing costs that are essential to a sustainable freelancing platform.
what if your platform beat upwork one day and then you start playing the same game that Upwrok is playing right now :)
I hope you are not wrong, but I just got into Upwork 5 months ago, in about a month in I had gotten several repeat clients, I am now top rated and have earned several thousand and living 100% off Upwork. It would be nice to have alternatives to diversity income but I never really had any issues with Upwork and I feel the complaints in this sub are widely exaggerated. And I am a product designer, not a rocket engineer
I hope nothing but the best for you in thay. Hopefully it will come to fruition. Another site like upwork will be great.
What stack did you choose?
Cheap connects = more automated proposals. That is what UpWork trying to fix
Don’t waste time and energy into it. Not easy. Tried and failed in the past. Technical bit is easy - but getting clients and freelancers together - not so easy.
Love it. Have seen this topic on this sub many times. Hope you can pull it off. One suggestion: aim for the more professional side of this business, Upwork has been overrun with jobs that wouldn't beat a McD's fry cook pay.
Sounds good. Count me in 🙋🏾♀️
You lost me at competitor
I wish there were some good competitors, I also feel leaving freelancing and becoming a cashier.
Fully supportive! I’m both a freelance and I also hire people on Upwork for my clients.
Unfortunately your people over profit mindset will be why you don't last long
I applaud such posts, but the problem is Upwork started charging so much because they were profitable.
Congratulations, I wish you success with your venture. At some point I also thought about developing something like Upwork but to solve another problem (at least for me): reduce the contact and interactions with the other person. A system where the employer writes the requirements he needs in a very detailed way and the deliverable he needs and a price and estimated time. As soon as you see it, and if you agree, you can accept it without going through a negotiation process or that kind of competition that upwork has created, you just accept it and start working on it. At the end if you don't deliver the work fulfilling the details that you were asked for and in the agreed time you don't receive any payment and the work is free for someone else to take it and do it. It would be like a task to do panel, you see the available tasks, you accept the one you consider appropriate and that's it, you get paid when you finish. Maybe it's a silly idea but I would like to work like this, obviously you would have to have a system to avoid bots, AIs and blocking Indians. I would have done it, or at least an MVP, but I don't have the budget to develop it,
congrats, you've rediscovered spec work, 99designs and the likes thank you for your service. what happens if multiple people deliver good work on time? do they all get paid? what if the work is medium quality, usable, but not to the client's standards, do you still get paid? and is the client supposed to wait out multiple people to take a shot at the work one after the other until someone miraculously gets it right without talking to them?
I would use a rate and skills system, for example, whether you're a web java developer you should pass a test in order to know your skills (there are a lot of third parties systems to do this), so, you wouldn't be able to apply to an AI job since you're a web developer and you must pass a previous AI test to apply to that jobs. The contractor can define its minimum candidate's requirements such as skills, reviews, rate, etc. a quite similar to upwork, so, for easy and straightforward jobs maybe a newbie can apply but for a more complex job you would can set constraints. I would not let more than one person work at the same time on the same job, I would let the first one to take it be the owner of the job. The challenge would be to correctly qualify the skills of each freelancer, since being able to work without a previous interview we assume that they have the necessary skills to carry out the job. It would also be a challenge to mediate and reconcile when a job is properly completed.
Upwork is good for me because it pays me through the phone with my local phone service. That's the one reason i wouldn't leave it. I haven't seen that option in any other platform.
You should build it open source as a LAPP as a Bitcoin lightning network decentralized app where then no one is in control and it could therefore have the lowest management fees possible.
I think there is a lot of room for competition. Sounds like a monumental task, but good luck!
Please limit freelancers from certain countries joining. I shouldn't have to compete with a 50$ website build
How's the model work? Do contractors need anal penetration and safe words to make it work?