People per hour

[marblesgoing]

Hi.
Not an Aibu however as a long term person I know the work pages don't get as much attention as this one so am posting here for traffic.

I'm considering joining as a freelancer and wanted to ask any of you knowledgeable posters if you have ever used pph or are freelancing in the site yourself a few questions.

Any responses would be fab thank you

Are you qualified in the particular field you freelance in?

What skills do you feel have made it a success for you?

Any tips or cautions I should be aware of?

Yeah I tried it, it was pretty cutthroat. I have up.

I did although have recently returned to a permanent position for a few reasons. However for me it was ‘successful’.

I can return later to post more but have to get up for work now!

I had experience. I was doing exactly the same job for a company that I freelanced in when I left.

I have an editor friend who did but stopped after a while like the pp. Loads of competition, nobody wants to pay much, scrappy pieces of work and overall more hassle than it was worth.

I used freelance sites but as others have said: it's cut throat and depending 9n the industry, the specs received can be a little "light". Also, depending on the site, you'd need to several dozen jobs to get established as reputable before being considered for the "good" work.

I found working with an agency a lot more lucrative at building connections and getting freelance work. You need to be hot on your networking too. Most of my work is through my professional network

I used it for a while and gave up as well. Far too many people willing to work for ridiculously low prices. I was working as a freelance copywriter - I refused to compete with offerings like “A 500 word blog post for £10” (at that price it’s either terrible quality or they’re working for a pittance). So I didn’t get any work.

I refused to compete with offerings like “A 500 word blog post for £10” (at that price it’s either terrible quality or they’re working for a pittance). So I didn’t get any work.

Sometimes you're competing with people outside the UK who can work for about £1 an hour. I should be paid at least £20 ph for my skillset - I'm qualifed and experienced. It is very difficult to get this. IME sites like Guru and Upwork are great for topping up a regular part time wage but just too cut throat for a full time wage. The proportion of paid work to bidding for work just doesn't make it worthwhile. It may depend on the area you work in though.

I use it very selectively (as in, I won't bid on low priced jobs. I also make it clear I'm British with over ten years experience in every pitch.)

I will bid on a range of jobs I have experience in but I'll only use the free credits or bid if invited so it's free.

My main issue with the site is the EXTORTIONATE FEES! 😱

Does anybody recommend any other freelancing sites they prefer? I've been meaning to check some out.

I do take clients from there but I will say that after first contact I mostly work with them off-site and I'm very selective about the jobs I put bids for. They are always States, Australia or Europe based and higher value. I focus on quality and as PPH only represents perhaps 10% or less of my business I can afford to be. Depending on the niche you work in there are other options such as for the UK there is Bark where you pay for leads but you aren't competing with non-UK freelancers so there's a bit more parity and they tell the client the range of expected prices for the job. I have noticed a move from clients on PPH back to stating UK freelancers only on jobs (doesn't stop others applying but they simply won't be considered) this I have been told from the clients I've had come through is down to quality and communication issues mainly from non-European freelancers who although they say they speak English etc often do not have a thorough enough understanding to competently complete a job. Also in my field of design there are quite a few regional variations in what is considered good design so what works in India doesn't necessarily pass here. Many non-Euro designers have a habit of using templates and logo generators to cut costs too so that is an issue I've had flagged by clients to me.

Upwork has recently had issues with scammers, I can off because I lost money to one, not a great deal but enough, a contact of mine has lost over £1000 to them recently on there too. Guru I've never managed to get a gig but I probably don't bid enough, same with Freelancer.com and as above they are very cut-throat!

The advice I would give is work and advertise through LinkedIn and a few selected platforms, if you're a writer there are ones for you, same with design. 90% of my work is referrals and building a reputation is important. If you need help with LI there are a few coaches on there who do free challenges which can help you build a profile and start getting connected which are very useful!

Good luck!

Agree with pretty much everything sporting says.

It really depends what field you're in as to what your "competition" is. If you're a graphic designer or database person, spoken/written English might not be such an issue. My niche is website content writing so perfect English is essential. Because of that, when I started I was really only competing against other UK freelancers because non-native speakers just aren't up to scratch. Doesn't stop them bidding on jobs though and it must be frustrating for clients to have to wade throguh the masses of crap to get to the decent bids.

Also agree that I have made initial contact with my two biggest clients on PPH then moved elsewhere when I have developed a relationship with them. That's not allowed though and you need to be careful because if you're explicit about it, they'll ban you. It's not against the rules to give a client your email to send stuff through to though, for example. Now my two biggest clients pay me through paypal or bank transfer.

Fees - PPH are constantly tweaking their fees. When I joined first it was something like 15% on the first £150 in a month and then 3% on everything after that. They changed it so that they now take 20% on the first £500 you earn with a particular client then 5% on everything else, plus VAT. If you're working with one or two clients regularly not a problem but if you're picking up little pieces of work here and there the fees really mount up. However there is the escrow facility which protects you somewhat.

Not so many scammers as on other platforms as there are more hoops to jump through to register with PPH as a buyer, I think tehy make you register a credit card. That doesn't stop clients demanding the moon on a stick for £5.. I only work for UK businesses at the moment, in the past have worked for American, Australian and Western European countries too. Would never work for a client in Africa or Asia as they are only prepared to pay local rate which is incredibly low.

Absolutely agree, except for the English being something you can get away with as a designer, it's more or less impossible to proof your work accurately without it. Many clients I've come across say this and I've seen it myself - glaring typos etc, also the communication, if a client is trying to explain an idea and you just don't have the language skills to understand what they're saying you won't do a good job! I actually work with translations agencies to set and design in other languages and you need an eye for detail second to none, if you're being paid peanuts there's no incentive to develop that!

Yes if your English is so poor that you can't get ideas across or understand what's being asked of you, you have a problem!

On the flip side, I've picked up a few "rescue" projects from clients who have commissioned a writer in Bangladesh or somewhere to do a batch of articles for 37p and funnily enough have received garbled nonsense.

Rates - well it depends on the topics, doesn't it? I have a regular client who commissions batches of 20 blogs all on the same topic. After six months I know the topic inside out and back to front and can rattle off 3 per hour. So even at £10 I'd still be earning £30 per hour which is decent for sitting at home on the sofa. I also do a lot of rewriting work for one client who sends me links to blogs on various sites and I rewrite in my own words to make it unique for google. Very easy and no research required.

Obviously on other jobs where you have to research the topic first you charge more.

Agree with previous posters - it is cutthroat and there are a lot of jobs with low rates, plus extortionate commission. That said I got my first clients on PPH when I started freelancing as a translator, then moved to other sites and direct clients, although still do jobs from PPH very occasionally. It’s ok if you need to build up a portfolio of work, and you are selective about which jobs you apply for, but IME you can’t use it as your main income.

Also, they don’t help if you have a problem. I had a client who didn’t pay (and still hasn’t over a year later!) and PPH sent him one email. They refused to do anything else due to GDPR and I still see the guy posting jobs now. I don’t know how many other people he owes money to !

Are you qualified in the particular field you freelance in?

Yes - something niche that requires excellent written English and plenty of experience. Not that that stops everyone and their dog bidding, but I do tend to get jobs from clients who value my experience etc. I've been on there for years and am "top cert". I charge about £50 per hour before fees. Have been nominated for pph awards and profiled on their main site, which also led to a spike in interest.

What skills do you feel have made it a success for you?

As above - something niche, with experience, where being based in the UK/US/Oz and fluency in English is critical.

Any tips or cautions I should be aware of?

Ask for the full amount to be held in escrow, so that the client can't bugger off after releasing only half but taking all the work. Prepare for a slog to get work for the first 6 months at least, imo.

Happy to say more if you need.

IME you can’t use it as your main income

I've always followed a "don't put all your eggs in one basket" strategy since I started working for myself. It's always wise to have a range of options. Companies disappear, freelance sites are bought by other websites, clients change their requirements.

I agree OtraCosaMariposa you need a range of clients - it’s difficult to say how many exactly, but basically you don’t want any client to represent so much of your income that losing them would be a disaster. Although there are probably areas where it would be normal to work on one large project at a time, then move onto the next one.

Depends on your skill level, what you expect to get paid and the kind of projects you're looking to work on.

PPH is full of people based in countries where there is a lower cost of living, who produce average quality work for about 5-10% of the cost of getting someone decent in UK. If you're willing to compete with these people then it's a good place to start, along with getting a website and advertising locally.

If you have a decent CV in the field and a portfolio of work you're better off looking at UpWord or Fiverr. This is where my work find their freelancers as the quality of people is MUCH higher.

What field is it in? And what level of experience do you have?

I used to be on Odesk - the precursor to Upwork - and found exactly the opposite. It was awash with developing world freelancers happy to work for $1 per hour or less. I did get some work through there but haven't tried it for ages.

In my quiet periods I also sometimes pick up work from Tips for Trips - german based travel writing content mill. Basic fee is around 12 or 15 euro per 500 words, but there's a quality and quantity bonus on top of that. Given that the pound is so weak against the euro at the moment it keeps me ticking over on days I don't have much to do. And it's all writing about holidays and travel!

Yeah lots of competition from India and China. My field, translation, they were charging a couple of pence per word. But of course what kind of quality was it?

I didn't find fiverr any good either. It's five dollars. Fantastic Dave Gorman skit about it.

Slivers of time was equally useless as I didn't get any work.

Also signed up to an online tutoring agency giving lessons via Skype. Went through an interview and stuff to get on then had to give free tasters. I had people taking a free hour then when I said - ok would you like to sign up for lessons, they said oh no, my a level is tomorrow, I just wanted a quick revision session. Thanks!

A lot of the cheap translators just run it through Google.

I have done translation in the past but only into English from Spanish and not the other way around. My Spanish is fluent, but I don't kid myself that I am as good as a native speaker.

One of my other jobs though was taking content written in German and translating it into English, I don't speak German and made that clear. But the client was insistent. What he got was properly written English with the assistance of Google translate - but whether it bore any relation to the original text I have no idea.

Ha! OtraCosa I was awful at German to English translation at uni and I was doing a degree in it!

I use it regularly for stuff I'm rubbish at - making diagrams, powerpoint presentations, newsletters, formatting training documents etc. I can spend hours trying to get a picture into the right position in text - it makes sense to pay someone else for a much better result!

I always pay more than what is asked - because I'm usually very impressed with the work. Don't think I'd be comfortable paying less than £30 per hour as my own rate is way higher than that.

I have found a few long term clients on there. Once we've done the initial project we've worked directly together outside of PPH. I use it as a passive means of advertising. Set up your profile, set your price and see what happens. I certainly wouldn't go chasing people who want something for nothing, and there are people out there who want to connect with people from the UK and pay UK prices. I have a part-time job and use it as a top-up to my income. Definitely don't put all your eggs in one basket. There are lots of ways to get work.