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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Yeah, I sense something is changing. I was just going through an old post on here titled "Vote - Original 15%-3,5% service fee VS new 20% Fee structure."
Anyhow, the posts were from around 5 years ago. People were complaining that work had dried up and that the site was tanking as visitor figures had dropped. Seems as though they have been through this before. I was a very active member of the site back then and never noticed any drop but fingers crossed it will come back around.
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I’m promoting a couple of my offers, despite objecting to the price increase. But the response has been shocking! Yes I’m getting noticed and getting plenty of messages but they are ALL scammers! What a total waste of money. I’m getting no new work despite being a Top Cert. All that’s keeping me going is projects from clients that use me regularly. My income has dropped from £30k to well below £10k. I’m trying out other job boards but have found nothing that I like as much. The decline of PPH is very sad.
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@jane - that is not good. I have seen a drop in clients but that has not translated into a drop in earnings just yet. I lost a massive client in March - they paid me around £30k per year and my earnings are sitting around where they should be with the client removed from the equation. However, this kind of silence and drop in figures is not sustainable.
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Same with me - I've dropped from over £30k to less than £10k. Most of my work is now outside of this platform with private clients. However, it does seem that there's more projects being posted here. They're not necessarily my niche, but it does appear to be picking up. Hopefully that's good news.
It's a very worrying time, granted. It's not sustainable, Craig. You're right.
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I'm still struggling. I have never had a huge amount of work on PPH and am a mere CERT 5, but up until recently I would have expected a few projects each month, if I was actively looking. I just went 3 months without a new project, until I picked one up last week.
There are a few more projects being posted but I'm suspicious of some of them and think there might be a few fakes among them. I applied for some of these suspicious ones but two were cancelled and none replied. By suspicious, I mean a new buyer with no previous projects, a vague description that contains words and sentences without saying much, and a relatively high budget.
The projects I bid on have a very large number of applicants and I'm getting no enquiries at all through my profile or my offer.
The job I just completed is the only payment I've had this month and I've jumped straight to 89th on the monthly leaderboard for my category. We are over half way through the month and it was only £200. I shouldn't be anywhere near the top 100. There can't be much work being done. -
Dreadful, Craig.
I haven't earnt a penny piece from this site during July, and I was regularly pulling in upward of £800 to £1K per week.
There are no new genuine buyers coming through. On the writing side, I have ongoing clients for magazines outside of this platform (Thank goodness). I think Chat GPT has a lot to answer for in this.
Transcription - Otter has taken my work away. My private clients are lawyers, Police and local authorities who NEED accuracy, but on the whole Otter suffices for clients who just need a vague copy of an interview discussion.
Proofreading / Editing - again, people don't seem that interested in having a second pair of eyes go through their work.
Conclusion - PPH needs to do some very efficient marketing to rise again. All my clients are now long term (10 years plus) collaborations outside of this platform.
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Work has been slow but it is not surprising with the calibre of people bidding.
Makes matters worse again on Saturday I got an email giving me another 50 free credits on top of the 50 from the week before. I now have 200, so no doubt all the 'i'll do it' are getting them as well. It is a real shame and perhaps they should look at paid monthly memberships to become a seller for the site it would perhaps put a barrier to people joining. 80+ people are bidding on fake CV projects alone (none of them with any skills) on the job board and this is not sustainable.
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I think the 50 free credits only go to Top Certs. I received them too. I'm in danger of losing my Top Cert status soon though.
I've mentioned the calibre of applicants when I've had to cancel projects and do them myself. I give that reason - poor calibre of candidates. It's soul destroying, isn't it? Upwork is the same. Where do genuine buyers go for trusted professional freelancers these days? It's not PPH.
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Sorry to hear of that guys. I am currently 9th on the leaderboard. The people above me are completely new with some of them having one or two clients and almost £5k of orders which I do not believe is legitimate. I am currently sitting at just shy of £900 and as of this point usually, I would be up to £3-4k. I have a number of external clients coming to me which is good but as it currently stands, I am overall, £2k down on my average earnings over the last four years.
I am on leave for a month in August and usually I would outsource most of my work to ensure I keep earning. As it stands, I do not have the option so it is going to be a month with little to no earnings. I am going to use the holiday to assess things and relax too. I am not getting stressed over this but I am also not happy at how it has changed.
I feel it is a mixture of PPH and AI. Something is very different on the site. I am applying for projects and then they are being cancelled and almost all of those are from new accounts. Very strange.
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Also, the last four months have not been great yet my cert rating has only dropped two places and has in fact gone up by one place. That tells me that there is not a lot happening. A couple of years ago, I went from 30th to 130th very quickly even though I was really active so I have put a lot of work into getting to where I am, much like we all have.
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I was speaking with a client of mine about this and I was telling him how much I dislike AI. He was telling me to embrace it and that he was reading about a woman who is making a killing with it but I was trying to tell him that even if I wanted to use it, I am not getting the volume of orders in that I once was.
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I think there are so many fake projects and they just remove telegram to get posted. I have seen countless CV posts come up almost identical in information with £200 budgets. All seem fake and some are still live like the one below with countless people bidding with no relevant skills. You can see why the scammers do it.
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What's different, Craig, is the lack of genuine new buyers. Like I said, where are they all going? Are they just using in house talent instead as well as using AI.
I used to transcribe financial webinars and roundtable discussions for a particular company. Last month they sent me an Otter produced AI version of one and asked me to improve it for accuracy. I can't charge the same amount as typing it from scratch though and it wasn't actually a bad transcript, but it proves to me that AI is taking our work.
Scammers are wising up to not using the word 'telegram' in their job briefs. They'll only mention that if you send in a proposal. I've seen copy and pasted projects from all over the world - the original having been reported. And Adam the CV project you've linked - mark my words that will get cancelled. I've had that happen to me twice this week.
I'm not sure where the answers lie to solve our problems, but wonder where genuine buyers are going.
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I think there are a mix of problems here that are all combining. Different disciplines are affected in different ways. AI won't be taking my work away - yet, and I would have expected it to gain me work initially as people try to integrate it into their applications. I have had one client recently asking me to look into this.
Most of my PPH work has been UK small(ish) companies, and I suspect a lot of those are now struggling and have less work and lower budgets for outsourcing.
I suspect that there is now competition to this type of outsourcing. We think of Upwork as the main competitor to PPH but they are not doing any better. Do we now have specialist agencies for each type of work and the buyers are going to those? I recently did an internet search to see where I would get a project outsourced and there were other sites coming up that were not doing this type of freelance work. PPH have never really changed with the times, they just plod along, and now their customers have gone. -
You are right simon, it is a culmination of things really. As you say, some disciplines won't be affected yet sales have dropped which then indicates financial constraints. For the likes of myself, where I charge not a lot to create content, I still think businesses would have the budget to place orders which then tells me it is AI.
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Don't get me wrong, Craig, I think AI is going to be devastating and it will wipe out an enormous number of admin jobs in the next few years. My question is, where are the people coming to me saying "I want you to make AI do this ...." The buyers have gone and nobody is asking me to do anything.
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Promoting offers or my profile just results in a flood of scam opportunities. The amount and quality of jobs to bid on has still not improved. I am a freelance copywriter and have used PPH continually to make an excellent living. Something has gone dramatically wrong with the site and I can't believe that it's just AI having an impact. PPH has cut back on support. I used to be able to phone them but no longer. I've survived temporary slow sales that have always bounced back. But nothing like this. I'm having to go elsewhere to try and find work. It's highly stressful and worrying and PPH is giving us no feedback or help.
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Yeah the scams is worrying im at a point now i cant tell if 50% of the jobs posted are fake, scams etc.
I decided to feature my offers a couple of days ago despite the expensive price increase and so far its made zero difference, still saying 17 hours ago was last time its viewed.
I hope to hell im wrong but I feel like it may be the beginning of the end for PPH and possibly the decline of a lot of freelance services in general.
One thing i found interesting on here was last week i got an invite to a job that was perfect for me, i was on the site so jumped on it asap very aware that submission time is key. As i started writing it noticed despite me being invited '2 minutes ago' that there was 15 proposals already sent. The usual suspects Mariah H etc, I thought "thats odd" its unklikely that many people have sent over a proposal that quickly so i opened it again in a new tab and it said "posted 35 minutes ago" which seemed much more likley. This isnt the first time this has happened and a couple of people i know on the platform ive recommended jobs to have questioned why they get invites later than me so i contacted PPH asking why i got a delayed invite over others and they basically tried to make out that 2 minutes invite was correct and the 35 mins was an error. I dont beleive that for a second!!
Since then ive done some testing of my own and friends accounts and i now beleive PPH have al algorithm were they process some new members and some extablished member to jobs people invite to and delay others, just to keep the etablished members happy and make it fair to new members. Like many of you my work on the platform has fizzled over the last few months so i must no longer be one of those important established members despite regularly usingthe platform since 2014.
Im not a negative person i usually try and stay positive and i love people per hour and appreciate the work theyve helped me obtain and appreciate it must be very difficult keeping a flow of increasing income, keeping old members happy and obtaining new members in such difficult times but its starting to feel like a sinking ship to me where i feel the VIP / Selected top freelancers are the only people who can make a living out of it unless they seriously start coming up with a strategy to restore it to how it was a couple of years ago.
Here for one is hoping ! -
I started off on fivesquid.com on my freelancing journey and it is going the same way. An influx of cheap unskilled labour and ultimately turns clients away from using the site. In the end, an email just went round and it just closed abruptly.
I guess AI, UK compliance rules, Canva (for designers) and the costs of keeping competitive with marketing operations with people like Fiverr and Upwork are now leading to the decline of the site. When you up you offer promotions by 50% and add no additional benefits or tell existing members it tends to signify they are squeezing the last bit of revenue out.
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