Upwork contractors - what did you switch to now that Upwork is dead?

anovikov

Some just retired, some started product business, what did you do?

Alexandra

anovikov What did I do? Well,...seeing as I'm only getting invites for "mystery shopping" and "voice recording", I decided to backtrack and start at the beginning again, going for the small change and building up contacts in a piecemeal fashion. The only trouble is that other platforms are becoming more enticing, making me feel more welcome. (Because who in their right mind would not advertise their talent by honouring past achievements with the top-rated badge, for example?)

Helgindy

Nothing, there is no close replacement for it in my field, plus the economy is bad everywhere, and hiring is being limited to locals only in all counties.

anovikov

Helgindy It's totally not the case. Hiring is not the economy. Look at stock market returns. GDP growth is also from "just barely OK" to "very good" everywhere, no major country appears to be a downturn.
Economy wise, things are a lot better than 2-3 years ago, or 6 years ago (hard to compare anything to the covid era because it was a time of major distortions). It's just the hiring that's the problem. Economy isn't jobs, it's what being made with people doing the jobs.
As for me, i consider myself retired - maybe temporary if good offers come about, but i'm ok if this is permanent, too. Working on my own startup but it's a moonshot, it's unlikely to work, so a healthy way to look at it is that it's a hobby.

anovikov

Helgindy besides, even the hiring seems to be OK: unemployment isn't high anywhere and is not visibly growing. It's just that offshore coding seems to be out of vogue for tax reasons (OBBBA) and because of LLMs.

JessicaKay

I signed two new contracts on Upwork within the past two weeks. The clients are professional, pay well, and the projects are interesting. I don't think Upwork is dead but to each their own!

It's always smart to diversify income streams, so I actually did start a digital product business almost 2 years ago. Last month it brought in a whopping $33, which isn't much but it pays my phone bill and a taco or two. I sell on Teachers Pay Teachers, but I always see people talking about Gumroad, so maybe that could be a good place to sell a digital product, too.

I'm curious to see what other people are up to!

rlatief

Still freelancing, without 'brokers'. I’m also starting a company, again, with a friend, hopefully this one goes well😅

A client in New York is building (big renovating) their office, which I'm quite certain is a big spend.
I have two other clients currently in contact with, in Virginia and Dubai, they seem to be doing well.
Some mutual funds in my country went down briefly during a riot a couple weeks ago, then returned to normal.

So I believe economy is ok. Not sure in the future, partly because of Trump's recent moves 😄

anovikov

rlatief this is what makes me especially scared. This is my third major downturn. First in 2002 was because of dotcom bust, all coding fields were in shit, it was explainable. Second in 2009, was during GFC, then all economy was in shit, not just coding. Now though, coding seems to be dead while the rest of economy flourishes... and that creeps me out because it provides no hope for recovery.

rlatief

I again have to insist that coding isn't dead (yet) 😁 Coding might be dead, in the future, but programmers will not. In Star Trek, people create programs by talking to the computer - prompting. Programmers would still be the best people to do that rather than anyone else, wouldn’t they?

Currently, as a programmer, AI helped, as in "search helper", or "assistant", it now integrated into some IDE including Android studio, but not in a sense of "create me this module" (let alone a complete program) and everything will be done, as it's not possible, yet.

Talk about creating programs through prompting, another “fix my AI-created project” came to me about a week ago. Someone had a social media site built with Base44, the UI & UX looked great, but basically nothing worked. After testing the service, I concluded that ‘handcrafted code’ is still 100x better than it and I cannot "fix" it. I then Googled, and found many similar thoughts on TrustPilot from people who unfortunately have already paid for the service.

Regarding economy, I've been thinking, although I'm not a crypto person, should it be safer to have money in it, "digital" and "no boundary"? In the case of WW3 for example, maybe having crypto is even better (more convenient) than having (physical) gold, assuming active/surviving servers can still support it. 🙃

AA168

Upwork may not be totally dead in all fields, however, I've noticed during the last week or so, the number of project notifications to my email inbox have decreased drastically. Who knows, maybe some of the fake postings are no longer being posted. For discretion, I'd rather not mention my fields of expertise. However, Prior to this past week, I was receiving twice as many project notifications in my email inbox. I am bummed about the drastic change with Upwork because the projects that I got off of Upwork filled the gaps when my own business was slow. As of this writing, I have not found another freelancer site that works for me. 3 months and approx. 60 proposals later, I still have not secured another project on Upwork.

AA168

Alexandra Backtracking, starting at the beginning again, going for the small change...that won't really work for me. While I have considered bidding on some projects that offer much less than my preferred minimum, I prefer not to do that. I am very selective with the projects that I bid on these days. I've had to puchase more connects because a few months ago, I went through nearly 800 connects rather quickly bidding on projects that were likely fake, and maybe 2-3 of those proposals were viewed. I am not a fan of continuously purchasing and using connects with no ROI (return of investment).

AA168

I've registered with Freelancer.com and Fivver. However, I have not landed anything on either of those platforms yet. I registered with those platforms maybe a month ago. I am aware that there are other freelancing sites out there, however, I have been focusing my energy on other work that I do outside of Upwork. I guess I got spoiled from Upwork, and now it is hard for me to let it go, even though the last 3 months have not been fruitful for me on the site.

Alexandra

AA168 I never quite figured out what Fiverr is about. When I registered many years ago, I thought it catered to quick and simple jobs costing "a fiver". I left after a while.

Alexandra

Right you are! I'm not keen on lowering my fees either, but with the widespread use of AI (for translations, transcriptions, etc.) amongst my clients (before they ask what it would cost to have the work done by a human being!), I am forced to shift my focus more towards correcting, editing, and cleaning up stuff that the machines botched, which means that my fees automatically decline. I'm booking it under "training" and "advertising", both of which I am no longer consuming from providers as a consequence. (Not much ROI, probably. More like a downward economic spiral.) 😒

AA168

Alexandra AI is affecting every service industry and unless we jump on the bandwagon to find ways to keep our fees at a liveable rate, a reduction of fees might be the only alternative. I am in the process of learning as much as I can about AI and looking into AI training positions in my field.

AA168

Alexandra I am not sure that Fiverr is a fit for me either. As previously mentioned, I recently signed up on the site.