I mentioned in the last post that Upwork and other freelance platforms are more concerned with finding clients to pay money than they are to have freelancers that want to make money.
After all, everyone wants to make money. Gotta eat, right?
Anyway, it got me thinking more and more about how replaceable you are as a freelancer, and the world of pain you could encounter if you’re on the receiving end of a Terms of Service infringement, or if there’s an issue with a client.
You never know. And I think that’s an unhealthy fear when trying to bank on these platforms providing job security for you and your family.
At this point, if someone pulled the plug on the Upwork servers and I couldn’t log in, I’d be royally fucked. Or if I got into an accident and my Job Success Score drops below 90. I would lose my Top Rank, it would be harder for me to get jobs, and my revenue source would dry up like a desert. It’s super gnarly to consider, but it’s a reality.
And it’s a reality that slaps freelancers in the face all over the place.
This leaves us in a precarious situation that I think we can push back on and mitigate if we all put our heads together.
After all, we’re all in this together. And I think that we should work together to form a solution vs. adhere to this “every-man-and-woman-for-themselves” mentality that has plagued freelancers since forever.
And like I said, it doesn’t need to be the case. There’s more than enough work to go around for the competent online workers that want to do a great job for their clients.
And when that happens, and those relationships form, it seems unnatural to just end those relationships and move onto the next client.
These relationships should be cultivated. That’s what allows you to share knowledge and grow bigger things online.
And most of us already know this. We don’t want $5 gigs, we want $50,000 contracts that keep our families happy and our bills paid.
So after thinking a lot about this, I decided to create a new platform, just for us. Not a marketplace of talent like Upwork and Fiverr, but a community of online workers, that can form groups and work together.
Whether it’s for future work, or to reach out for help, I wanted a platform dedicated to freelancers and people that work online.
Eventually, our voices working together as one will allow us to be heard by the platforms in ways they never thought possible. And I think it’s important to establish this before your career becomes too far at risk by being dependent on a business that could go out of business at any time.
Again, I’m one of the highest-paid freelancers on Upwork, and If I’m thinking about this, you should be too.
If you want to join this new platform for free you can click here and let me know your thoughts. Once you’re on, you can either create your own group or join some of the ones that I created. Hope you like it!
