Customer Support - What has happened?
This is a post for customer support and I know I speak for others when I ask what is happening with the site? In the last few months, I have noticed a massive drop off in orders and earnings. I look at my July performance for 2022 and I worked with 27 customers. This month it is 7 so far, this has been the same for June, May and April and possibly before.
The number of projects to bid on has dropped drastically and the number of overall projects has dropped too. Why is this the case and what is happening? I think as members, we do have a right to know given that many of us who earn a good income from this platform have been here for 5+ years - myself it has been almost 12 years.
In addition to this, from what I have read, it seems as though customer support has been scaled back too, what is the reason for this? Also, the number of spam messages and scammers has increased considerably-a lot more than I have seen on this site in the time I have been a member. In addition to this, the number of projects that I am bidding on and are then subsequently cancelled has also increased. It is also worth noting that a lot of these accounts are completely new users with no prior experience on the platform.
I have also noticed (as have others) that you are actively promoting freelancers who have very few sales, many of which have not been active for months or even years.....surely it is worth promoting your best performing freelancers...after all, we all help to create an income for this platform.
So, given that I have (and others) have earned a very good living through this platform over the years, I think that we have a right to know what has happened and why things have almost fallen off a cliff in such a short space of time.
Thanks
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Official comment
Today we deployed an upgrade to our Project moderation internal tools. I'm cautiously optimistic that the number of spam messages and scammers should reduce.
We'll continue to work on filtering out non-legit content.
Cheers,
TomComment actions -
I hope we get some kind of statement on this. What I find strange is that things were picking up for me on here. If I go back to the Covid years, I was getting almost nothing through PPH but from last summer onwards I found I was getting more work. Most of it was coming through as enquiries from my profile, rather than me submitting bids to projects, but there were still some of those as well. Then there were a few weeks earlier this year when I was very busy and then it suddenly stopped.
Now I get no enquiries through my profile and most of the projects I bid on are as Craig describes. They are from new buyers with no history and they are often cancelled. Something must have changed, but from my position as a freelancer I can't see what that might be. -
In all honesty, I have never really had to bid for work. In the last few months I have had to. However, I am now at the point where I am wondering if it is worth it as so many projects get cancelled and over 50 people are applying which is ridiculous as most of the accounts are probably not even legitimate.
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Hi Tom,
Thanks for replying. The scam message isn't really the main issue for me. The real concern for me is the complete drop off in sales and enquiries....what is the reason for this? If it was just myself I'd understand but it seems as though it is almost site-wide. When PPH has been consistent for so long, what has changed in recent months?
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Is this "Product Market Fit", is this the way you automatically match jobs with freelancers? That has always been a bit hit and miss (eg getting asked to bid on a job as a window cleaner "because of my skills with Microsoft Windows") but that does seem to have fallen apart recently. I wondered if my lack of work recently had caused it to lose its settings.
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I've always disliked the way the site has promoted sellers. I'm one of the top sellers in writing but id often find myself on the second page when people with a handful of sales are ahead of me. I never understood that, even when I was paying to be promoted. I also disliked the way the site would push your account down if you didn't respond to messages and I'd regularly ignore those nuisance messages so would then have to get in touch with support to have it overturned.
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Tom, is there any chance of you providing a more detailed answer to the issue we are all experiencing here? It would be good to know what is happening.
Since yesterday, I have done a bit of searching online and have come across this: https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/anyone-know-whats-happening-with-peopleperhour.345802/
Ok, it was back in 2015 but I guess I am trying to look at this from a positive perspective as since then, I always thought the site was brilliant until recent months, so I am hoping that things can turn around. Looking on similar web, the global ranking of the site has dropped 1672 places but I am not sure what this means in terms of the bigger picture and how much of an impact it would have.
The website has also seen a drop of 200,000 visits from May to June according to Similar Web.
It would be really good to have some kind of update on what is going on so we all know why and where we stand.
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I personally think their marketing budget has evaporated. Declan on LinkedIn is recorded as running the show (Brand Manager) but I am unsure if they have a marketing team anymore. They wasted money on that silly advertisement back in the day and at the same time reduced the commission
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That is an interesting link, and I'm surprised it is a scathing as it is, because I have also found PPH much better than the other platforms. I started here in about 2016. I have found it a good source of work from UK companies outsourcing genuine work.
I would like Tom to elaborate on the "Product Market Fit" he mentioned. The big change I have noticed recently is the lack of enquiries coming direct from a buyer. A lot of my projects over the last couple of years have come in that way and many buyers have told me that they don't like posting projects because they get swamped with useless proposals and even get pestered directly off the platform by freelancers begging for the work. They bypass all that by picking a freelancer themselves. Has something changed with the way that search is done? If the new buyers are not getting their first project done, they won't be coming back for later projects. It isn't just the new buyers that have gone. Where are the buyers who have several projects behind them who don't need advertising to find the site? -
Simon, I am starting to think that there is more to this than the AI I have mentioned in the other post. If it has gone quiet for many people across all industries/niches then its probably fair to assume that something has happened to the site and the way it is run.
With the downturn in visitors, the site clearly isn't getting the same level of exposure but the site seems to have been in this position before and perhaps it is something that works as a cycle - who knows?
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I'm Tech focused and don't want to comment on the commercial side of the business.
I would say that our American competitors have staggering marketing budgets that allow them to take a bigger slice of the pie. Something that gets my goat is "the Google Tax". Our competitors pay Google many thousands of pounds per month on our own keyword and we are pushed way down the page to number 4! That's a dirty game.
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@Simon asked me:
> I would like Tom to elaborate on the "Product Market Fit" he mentioned.
And @Craig asked me:
> Ok Tom, that is a positive update but what about the drop in sales
The world is changing all the time. If you want to hire a Freelancer to do a Project, in todays world there is so much “noise”. There’s so many different Freelancer Marketplaces vying for attention, and in each Marketplace there’s so many Freelancers from so many countries (there’s literally millions). There’s so many fee structures and Project posting rules. It’s very very confusing for first time Buyers. It’s hard to know where to start and there’s scams everywhere to avoid.
In addition, today, people's social graph is so well developed that they can often use something like LinkedIn to find a Freelancer they can trust, so they don’t need to come to a dedicated Freelancer Marketplace.
This wasn’t the case some years ago. There was not so much “noise” and the Freelancer Marketplaces were more clear as the best place to hire a Freelancer to do a Project.
This is what I mean by “Product Market Fit”. I think we have less Product Market fit nowadays and we need to figure out how to get it back.
It is not just us by any means. The Fiver share price is currently 90% down (it’s 30 USD, down from a high of 300 USD). This share price annihilation probably means a drop in sales. Due to increased competition, we are all getting a smaller slice of the pie.
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Thanks, Tom, that does answer some questions, and it is not far off my thoughts on the subject. I've been trading online since 2001. Initially I was only selling my own software, but I moved into this freelance stuff about 7 years ago, and the online marketplace has changed beyond recognition. People are not even searching the internet the way they did and having a website is no longer a cheap and efficient method of finding customers.
What is still puzzling me, and I probably speak for some of the other freelancers, is what has happened recently? I have been seeing a drop in projects posted for years but between around a year ago and March this year, I had been getting more work. The work was coming from buyers picking out my profile and contacting me. Some of them have said they won't post projects because they get swamped with junk proposals from people who don't have the skills and haven't read the project brief. They have realised they can avoid that by finding a freelancer and contacting them. That has suddenly stopped for me. I don't think I've had a sensible enquiry from a new buyer (new to me) for months. Even during the Covid lockdowns I was still getting some enquiries. -
What customer support? I've had several tickets open for 6 days and not 1 response to any of them. I have an open order that I cannot open nor can the client despite paying PPH, so they cant release funds eve if they want to and I can't see the workstream to invoice.
This is $865 USD, not some $5 offer here.
WHERE ARE SUPPORT ?
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Tom i also have an issue. One of client purchased my hourlie. But the work stream is not opening. Client send me messages but when i click to the notification then workstream is not opening. Please solve my issue. So i can contact to buyer and complete his order fast. Hope you help me fast tom :)
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