Freelancing Website
-
Hi everyone! I was thinking of getting some jobs on freelancer.com or upwork.com for a while, and finally i signed up just to have an account ready. There is a bid system that I don't quite understand. Does anyone know anything about it? The lower bid the better? There are some Children's book illustration projects posted up there, however I don't know how someone could do a 28-32 pages book for so low like around 200-500 dollars considering the time and sweats they need to put in it. It would be awesome if you could share some of your story or thoughts. Thank you!
-
Months ago I set up an account on upwork with a 100% complete profile and I even got "Rising Star" status. I bid on stuff that didn't seem scammy but most of the projects were just insulting. More experienced users in the forum kept saying that you have to do a bunch of low paying "easy" jobs to get your job score up. It just made me angry. After bidding for a couple weeks I gave up on it. I think Will Terry called those sites "a race to the bottom" in one of his videos.
-
I was also looking into those sites to see if it would be worth it to get some experience under my belt. But yeah some of the budgets were like way low for the amount of work they are looking for. If you try it let me know how it goes.
-
I'm not up to date, but in freelancer.com the experience and the reputation as user are often as importan as the price offered.
There are a lot of excellent freelancers from countries where a family of six lives with U$ 500 per month, so the competition is hard. The good new is that some clients prefer to contract someone that lives in the same city, state, or country.
I did win a couple of projects the first week (7 years ago). One of them was a British client that is still a client and a good friend.
-
Thank you everyone for the inputs. I just watched one of @Will-Terry video and realize that it's probably not the best way to earn enough since the competition is overwhelming. I'll try to stick with it for a couple weeks and I'll get back to this post with my experience. Thanks again!
-
I don't have any experience with freelancer or upwork, but I did try out freelanced.com for a while. You had to pay to be on, which wasn't so great. Most people didn't have experience working with artists and were offering pennies to the dollar for their projects. I did manage to land one job, only to find out afterwards that I'd get paid after they (with my artwork of course) successfully funded a kickstarter campaign. I dropped out of that as quickly as I could.
I really am not that impressed with those places, but I only have a little experience with them. I'd rather do personal work to up my skills instead of taking work paying less that minimum wage to fulfill someone else's dream.
-
@Shannon-Perkins I'm so sorry they were such jerks, these people they don't appreciate artwork enough. I think it's time to send more work to editors or agents. Thanks for sharing your story, really appreciate it.
-
I forgot to say that, even having had good experiences at some of these sites, I have had much better experiences from direct marketing.
