Has anyone ever worked for Time Etc?

[SoftKittyWarmKitty]

I just read an article about Time Etc and I'm wondering if anyone on here has any experience of working with/for them? I work part time in an office and would like to start earning extra income on my days off - this seems ideal but I was looking to get an idea of what kind of tasks people are given and in reality how much work is offered. Also, how does the payment system work - is payment weekly or monthly? Are their workers classed as self employed? I'd be looking to work as a virtual assistant but also have marketing experience that might bring work in from them.

Any info would be great, thanks .

After just over a year I have one client that has a task about once a month. Some months I earn about £20, sometimes about £2. By the time I get a message through about a new task it's already been picked up by someone else. To start with it was good and fun and now it's pretty much a waste of time.

I agree basket I started off a couple of years ago and I had really high hopes for it. I was recommended clients suitable to my skill set and had regular contact with account managers. Now it's all automated and there is very little chance to pick up any task, not to mention an interesting or suitable one. Also, good luck with managing to get paid above their 'absolute minimum' hourly rate (unless you've managed this holy grail?!)

Hi all,

Kirsten from Time etc here :)

Thanks very much for your feedback - it really helps us to understand the challenges facing those who freelance through our platform.

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to not be able to pick up as much work as you need!

As you can tell as we've grown we've faced a few challenges matching demand to specific Virtual Assistants. We clearly haven't got this quite right yet and we continue to work hard to improve it.

Whilst there is a lot of automation in our business we're actually doing a lot more manual 'hand-matching' of clients with Virtual Assistants than we were a year ago to guarantee a great fit and relying less on our automated task-based matching systems that have, at times, resulted in a poor experience.

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that we continue to share successes with our freelance Virtual Assistants through fee increases. These are happening every month (more than ever) and happen automatically when 1) a client stays loyal to a certain assistant over time and 2) the client reaches a certain size.

Whilst we're still working on making the experience for Virtual Assistants better I'd love for you to know that we're currently supporting more freelance Virtual Assistants tha ever before and the total fees paid our to Virtual Assistants over the last year has increased by over 50%.

So there are some successes to celebrate as well as things to improve!

Thank you again for sharing your feedback. As always if you have any specific concerns or issues you'd like me to personally resolve please email me at [email protected]

Thanks

Kirsten

Juts ten, have you changed something about your algorithm for sending out tasks recently? Twice this week I've managed to pick up work from tasks that I've seen upwards of 15 ministers after my email came through. I'm not complaining, I think it's great, I'm feeling optimistic again!

Kirsten obviously, not juts ten, that's daft.

Emma - a year later - did the work pick up?

Oops sorry, please ignore my last message!

Interested to hear your story GUK1 I wouldn't go so far as to call them scammers but I do feel it is all about the client with little or no regard for the freelancer. Given that it is the calibre of the freelance that retains the client it seems a bit odd. Agree that as a way to earn when WFH it is not a viable option which is a real shame.

Hello,

GUK1 - you've made some very serious accusations there - please identify yourself so that I can investigate and verify your comments further.

It goes without saying that myself, Rach, Petra, Alex and the rest of our small team in the UK care deeply about what we do every day - the clients we help and the assistants we work with - we wouldn't do it if we didn't.

Regarding late payments - I handle all assistant payments myself within 10 days of the next month starting, as I always have done. I am not behind on these.

mrsvilliers - we care deeply about both clients and our freelancers - I don't know why it wouldn't come across that we don't but I'm sorry in any case!

It certainly doesn't reflect how we feel as a small team - a lot of the changes we make to the business are for the benefit of our freelancers (like the automatic fee increases we recently introduced) so please don't think we're not listening - we are!

Ultimately we want both clients and assistants to win - because everyone benefits when that happens.

We're pretty quick to admit that we don't always get it right and we're still improving what we do - but despite this we do support hundreds of freelancers with valuable income and have been working with many of those freelance assistants for a good number of years.

Hi All, I have worked through TimeEtc for over 18 months and have had no problems at all, a good steady flow of work with a variety of clients. I have found all of the account managers really helpful so a little shocked by some of the comments. Certainly not had any issues over payment. I think you need to be realistic that it will never be a full time income but if you are only looking for few hours a week I have found it the ideal solution for me.

Cheryl41 I too had a steady flow of work and regular clients. Then two of them left and I've found it difficult to pick up new ones via the automated system for various reasons. Prior to that happening I also would have said it was great, but the client loss and failure to pick up new ones really hit home that you are a freelancer on zero hours contract. Pleased it's working for you though.

Kirst - I would be interested to have clarification on the automated fee increases. I have had two clients for upwards of of 18 months and have not seen or even heard of a fee increase. In fact, I have asked about fee increases in the past and had the question dodged to the point that it became embarrassing for me to continue asking. I'm guessing there is no fee increase because my clients do not buy sufficient hours, but to a large extent that is to do with their own internal budgets rather than the freelancer (see point in previous post on freelancers.) Anyway, I would appreciate clarification, thank you. Please feel free to pm me if you'd rather.

Hi mrsvilliers

If you could please PM me your details I'd be happy to give you a call to talk those things through with you in detail to make sure you're happy.

I do appreciate that when a client leaves it can be a real problem and we work hard to avoid that happening when possible. With regards to your comment about zero hours - I need to point out for the benefit of other readers that Time etc isn't a 'zero hours' job but is one source of freelance work (alongside many other marketplaces) for people who wish to be a freelance virtual assistant.

We recommend that our assistants ensure that they have a diversified income and actively seek assignments in a number of different places because, by it's very nature, freelance work can be unpredictable at times.

I look forward to speaking to you soon!

Hi Kirst
Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. Of course I knew (know!) that about time.etc. I think my point is more that, as someone who has used freelancers in a professional capacity in the past, it didn't occur to me that a client would spend time building up a relationship with a freelancer, exposing them to sensitive information about their business and then just disappear leaving you back at square one. We were always terrified a freelancer might leave! As this is a thread on what it's like to work as a freelancer with yourselves I thought it worth a mention that the status quo today may well not be the status quo tomorrow. It could also well be that the freelance life is not for me :).

With regards to the fee increase, I have raised this through the proper channels and decided to leave it for the time being. If I decide to raise it again, I will do so through the proper channels. I'm just commenting on this thread as someone who had some clients through Time.etc, not to get any personal issues resolved. Saying that, it might be an idea in the interests of transparency to email this new policy to all current freelancers, just so that we know where we are.

Despite both of these two isues I raised, I do have one really lovely client through you who I really enjoy working with so that is a definite positive in my book.

I've just applied for timeetc based on this thread but been turned down - boo!

Not my skills, just they don't need me apparently.

I'll have to go elsewhere, but I did like the sound of it.

SORRY TAKE CALL NOW?

SORRY TAKE CALL NOW?

I've been with TimeEtc almost a year now and haven't had a single issue with how the team have handled me and my work.

I've lost a client or two now and they've provided good feed back and support. I've always been paid promptly and full whether I'd earned £2 or £200.

I still find the 'lottery' to bag a new client tiresome but have a couple of clients independent of TimeEtc too now that some time has passed and word is out. In fact TimeEtc have offered me The opportunity to 'bid' for work in a couple of occasions and I've got a great couple of clients off the back Of that.

I don't know who the capital letter poster is but it doesn't reflect my experience with the company. You're unlikely to make big money through them, but as Kirsten says, it's one string of the bow.

The hourly rate isn't great on the face of it but you are guaranteed payment and they find and vet the clients which is a relief. The only client I'm truly sad to have lost couldn't afford the rates. I have to admit to being shocked at how much more TimeEtc charge over and above my hourly rate. It might work
For a larger organisation who are still 'saving' on agency costs but for smaller businesses it's too much.

Oops. I wanted to add. Te the costs. Because they're high smaller businesses just might not be able to afford the hours they really need. Bear it I. Mind if you get one of them as a client.

I think that's a very valid point when it comes to costs Carl. Plus small businesses very often get very excited about having the extra help so have you develop expansive plans which when you then provide a time estimate for, you find are cut back dramatically! So always worth providing time estimates early on.

I find the hourly rate low but then I find the hourly rate low through any of these crowd working platforms. I find it bearable for good clients but for any difficult or stressful clients it's not worth it IMHO.

Hi folks,

Thanks for sharing this feedback!

Carl - really pleased to hear you've had success when specifically approached about opportunities - we're using these more and more to mitigate the competition for tasks and to create longer term relationships.

The rates for clients do come down the more hours they use - what we really try and encourage is solid long term relationships so clients pay less and freelancers earn more - everyone wins.

In terms of the hourly rate for our freelancers, many platforms require lots of unpaid bidding, proposal writing and competition against people in other countries charging less than £10 / hour - so we believe our standard rates are competitive vs these - especially considering the amount of support on offer through our team which is lacking on other platforms. That said we recently implemented automatic fee increases (as previously mentioned) to reward long term solid relationships formed on the platform.

Thanks Kirsten. I'm not unhappy with your rate actually. It's about what I used to be paid per hour in my old job. Given I have zero invoicing time and no risk I'm happy to 'lose' on the hourly rate as a balance. And as you say, as your business grows I imagine freelancers will get more perks for retaining longer term clients.

It was me that was unhappy with the rates Kristen but agree much better service when it comes to other platforms and rates out there.

I really do feel it would be worth letting the freelancers know about these automatic pay increases. Nothing wrong with giving people an aim!

Sorry for the confusion, I didn't make it particularly clear in my reply who I was replying to!

Agree 100% with letting our freelancers know - we wanted to trial it for a bit before we did that to check there aren't any "gotchas" but once we've done that, we'll aim to make it much more public!