What Freelance Platforms Want…
Here’s another quick topic.
Recently, PeoplePerHour updated their fees.
They used to take a commission percentage based on the work a freelancer did on a monthly basis. So if you earned $500 ,they would take 20% and above that, they’d take 5%.
Now, they do this on a per client basis.
This means that if you have a lot of clients who you make $500 from per month, you receive 80% of the billable amount.
Here’s What Freelance Platforms Want…
Freelance platforms want to be in charge of an army of workers that they don’t pay for. They want to gobble up the entire freelance marketplace so that they are the only game in town for outsourcers.
And they want to skim off the top for every transaction.
In short, they want to reduce freelance workers to a commodity and basically become the Amazon/Alibaba of human outsourcing.
Are you going to let that happen?
How To Get What You Want
Presumably as a freelancer you want the opposite.
You want to get paid a lot for your services. You want a direct relationship with your clients and you don’t want some anonymous freelance platform sucking a hefty percentage when you do all the work.
If you work 40 hours a week and a freelance platform takes 20%, then you are working 8 hours for them and not yourself.
Here’s how to leverage these freelance platforms and have them work for you and not the other way around:
Use them as lead generation services.
If a client is spending $500+ a month with you, then you should have a trustworthy relationship with them. If they are paying you $5000+ a month, the idea that you should need or rely on a third party to take a cut manage the finances is absurd.
At that point you need contracts and to deal with your own relationships. Jesus Christ.
Use freelance platforms to vet new and low end clients. Then move them off the platform once you’ve established that they’re trustworthy and you want to continue the relationship with them.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t anything new for the regular readers among you, but it bears repeating in simple, truncated terms.
You are your business.
A freelance platform cares about your business in so far as you are their workhorse. They’re useful to a certain point, but you shouldn’t and don’t need them permanently.