Lack of projects to bid on?
I have been a full time freelancer on PPH for many years, but I've seen hardly any new projects to bid on in the last few weeks. Though there are some, there's certainly a lot fewer jobs available. Despite having a lot of project views, I haven't had a single buyer in a week, which is hugely unusual.
Is anyone else noticing the same thing? Why could this be?
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That's extortionate! And poor business planning. Why would sellers pay such an increased amount when there's little traffic on the site?
I got an email from them today highlighting four offers they think I would like. Huh? They're all in my field. Why would I pay anyone to do this type of work? I don't have any work to outsource, remember!
They do need business management training. The site needs buyers. It's over run with very low quality freelancing. Well, they're not true freelancers. They're people desperate to make money, which is very obvious from the begging messages I receive. I just don't see why PPH don't pull on the Top Cert marketers on this site to help put it higher on the map. No, they always do the same old thing - punish the sellers. That's a ridiculous jump in price at a) cost of living crisis and b) lack of purchasers to sell to. Just no - I'm afraid.
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@Liam thank you for bringing this up. I have promoted my 2 offers for the past 2 years and was never informed of the price increase. I have just checked the transactions and they are at £14.95. I wonder if they can raise the price without notice but of course, they take it off your balance so you would not realise.
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I'm a TOP CERT and have made a good living from PPH for 10 years. However, last few months the amount of jobs plus quality is declining fast. Of the jobs that do appear, bids usually get no response. If it were not for a few regulars, my business would close. Whether this is due to AI or something else, it is extremely worrying. Would be helpful if PPH would make a statement to assure their freelancers. We deserve some support!
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PPH can't moderate the word 'telegram' appearing in a job post. They even market freelancers who haven't logged in for two years, so they have no idea what the market's like. No way could they assure us on anything. That's the problem - there's no support! Ask a question and it takes a week to get an answer.
I've not had one job from this site for 3 weeks, despite being a Top Cert. This is the first month in 13 years that I've not earnt anything. However, I have secured £1K in projects this week from outside of this platform. Just a question of being proactive, I think, rather than sitting here waiting for non-existing jobs to materialise. I've bid on eight over the last two weeks and not even gained a response. I'm very fearful for this site at the moment.
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@Adam, if you check back on their facebook page, pretty much every single one they post promoting PPH members andd their work havent used the platform for over a year. There is a guy even mentioning it in a couple of the posts and has been doing for weeks and PPH havent even tried to respond. Says a lot I guess !
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@Liam I think that is me, I call them all the time over it.
I find it hard to justify a 50% increase in promoting offers with no additional benefits. Opportunities like being promoted via social media would be good etc or case studies for blogs etc.
I have just posted for a logo designer this weekend and I have just hired someone from the UK who seems to be good however, PPH recommendations were for someone who didn't meet my brief and the proposal was 'Lets do this' .
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I have one reply for a thread over a dispute over 1-month-old, there is no way support should be this bad.
I am worried this site is going down the route of fivesquid where it will just close with an email. I think chargebacks are a massive issue as I have been notified by square and wix that they are increasing fees for my own website over this practice.
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@adam i hear that all the time about searched giving bad results.
I have a long standing clients who are a couple from years ago and few weeks ago they asked for advice on getting products added on their website along with a few other services related to api. They are no stranger to freelancers but mostly use upwork and fiverr.
on saturday during a video call and I asked how they got on and they were very critical of PPH saying it was absolutley garbage and pointed out lots of different issues with it, had a nightmare with a client who went awol and took 13 days for pph support to respond and pointed out how stupid it was that when they searched "Liam" i was 12th despite the fact i was the Liam with by far the most / highest reviews.Theyd rather put people with 4, 19 or even 0 reviews above me despite my 850 plus 5 star reviews. I also looked under my main services and keywords and im on the 2nd to 5th page. The whole thing just seems like abig mess at the moment. -
@craig - yeah its not good really is it? Feels like all our loyalty to this platform and hard work is wasted nowadays tbh, I understand it must be difficult building an algorithm to keep everyone happy (new and old) so I can only hope the drop in work, means a lot of people abandon it and PPH realise they need to take action to rescue what feels like a sinking ship !
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I never had to bid for work as it used to flow in - not any more. So I went to promote my offer and the price has risen to £19.95 for 7 days instead of £12.95!!!!! This is ludicrous! So we have to pay because the site is failing and PPH hit us with higher charges with no warning. What has happened to the communication with freelancers? Things are definitely getting worse.
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This is the response I got for the increase
Hi there,
Thanks for your message and sorry to hear the impact our new fees have caused.
Unfortunately, due to rising costs that are outside of our control, we as a business have sadly had to raise certain fees. As we did not want to increase our commission fees to protect our community, we decided that the prices to our add ons including featuring offers and buying proposal credits have had to increase.
This decision was not made lightly, and we're sorry for any frustration and inconvenience caused by these new changes.
As always, we thank you for your continued support and understanding and if you have any questions, please email support@peopleperhour.com and a member of the team will be happy to help.
Best wishes,
The Community Team
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If they have messed around with the search algorithms so that higher ranked freelancers are not getting any priority, that is enough to explain the lack of work. I had a bit if an upturn in work over the last year after the complete freeze caused by covid, but it was mostly from people contacting me, rather than me bidding for projects. Now nobody contacts me, except existing clients.
Are they looking to open up a new income stream by charging us to promote our profiles? -
@Jane yeah i mentioned the featured offer increase a last week on here, i cant imagine many people will pay that tbh.
Im the same, ive very rarely had to bid on jobs, ive always had people buy my offers instead. Id only need to feature my offers once in a blue moon but have to admit ive been featuring my offers on and off the last 5 weeks since things have been going down hill and its not been worth it at all, so im certainly not paying £19.95 instead of £12.95 with the quality of the buyers atm.
Even when i do get enquiries now (which is rare) they seem like time wasters, usualy id say if someone contacted me i had an 80% chance of getting the job now its more like 10%.I really hope things start to change soon its starting to really stress me out !
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@jane, I have never had to bid for work. People would come to me and either tell me what they want and accept a proposal or they would purchase outright. Now I am getting barely any work in. I think PPH is saying that I have worked with 4 clients this month and we are 12 days in. Previously, I would have worked a lot more by this point.
Now I am having to bid on jobs and there are a lot of new people setting up projects that then eventually get cancelled. It's all a bit of a joke, there is no way that sales would drop off a cliff for no reason as they have not dropped in the last ten years of using PPH.
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@craig - yeah i know what you mean, ive had consistant work for over 14 years on here myself, there has been peaks and valleys and i recall last march being bad, i was fine thorugh covid, actually did better that usual tbh. January was bad, had a pretty good feb, march, april and then it fell of a cliff for me.
I too have been getting a lot of views, 242 visitors to my profile on June 6th apparently but no enquiries so i take that all with a punch of salt tbh
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I sent a proposal the other day for a job and because i was late i thought id try paying for my proposal to be featured at 6.95 i noticed when adding them there was other options for buying more featured proposals but reverted it back to buying just the one and when i clicked next it said "you have 3 of the 4 featured proposals remaining" and realised it had charged me for 4 at £24.99 arrrrghh ! sufficed to say i never heard a thing from that job and with the quality of the jobs on here i dont really need the others.
Id contacted their support team to ask for a refund but i wont hold by breath for an answer nevermind a refund !
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I said on another thread @craig that I hired a UK freelancer through the job board for web copy. The proposal was good, the individual has 800+ reviews however I received a document of poor quality which had a Grammarly score of 80 and 14 major errors. When I questioned why they never checked or proofread it before sending it to me, I got the following:
I 100% disagree with proofing draft content. And the majority of my cleints seem to feel the same way. But I won't try to convince you of that. No point.
Followed by workstream messages that made no sense. Apparently Cogshed is from the UK and is degree-educated (that maybe the case but it is clear it is farmed out work):
Can you describe to me on more detail what you had hoped to see - what 'good' would look like to you?
And the majority of my cleints
You are entitled to several rounds of revisions, to get it t the point that you
know you'd never actually pay the remoander
That is what we both agreed to in thr Ts&Cs.
please answer the questions int he previous message,
I am willing to submit an invoice for the amouthIt is a shame as it puts such a negative experience on the site.
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