New system aimed primarily at matching newer sellers with buyers
So now it seems I have to wait two hours before I can bid for a job. This is extremely unfair. Not only do experienced creatives/designers have to compete with an unfair playing field, ie people offered to do a job for £10 when it is clearly worth £100, we are now not allowed to bid for jobs as soon as they appear on PPH. What kind of system is this?!
Awful. Unfair. Unprofessional. Discriminatory.
Regards
C. Howe
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I am no fan of Accenture.
I reject the assertion that you made that the system was developed offshore because it couldn't be developed in the UK. The fact that Accenture may have failed doesn't mean plenty of others in the UK could have done things successfully.
The economics of using offshore teams is highly attractive to many corporates, but I really do wonder if it works these days.
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I am not sure buyers going to Deskdonkie is such a bad thing
Maybe you're right, but there are two downsides (at least):
Firstly, sellers have to join the Deskdonkie conveyor system - on-hand to pick up jobs and don't say 'no' to jobs too often.
Secondly, PPH will try and pitch deskDonkie as a preferential service, so they may not be pitching at bottom feeder prices - so they will not be taking out the worst of PPH (I suspect they are trying to cream off the best of PPH).
PPH is now trying to control the market from all angles.
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@Paul, I doubt you disagree with my underlying aim, which is to provide a strong counter example to people who claim that third world coders are necesarilly bad.
I AM NOT asserting that the system could not have developed in the UK, but that it would not necessarilly be any better (the system they bought is at least as good as those developed in the US). They could not develop in the UK as it would have taken far too long to start from scratch - they HAD to buy an existing system because they were in a hurry.
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@Paul, I suppose it depends on what sort of work you do. Desk Donkie is ONLY providing, in effect, a limited range of hourlies, and the buyer has to be comfortable with someone else picking who does the work. Its not freelancing as we know it.
I suspect it will end up "cheap but acceptable quality"
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@Graeme
they HAD to buy an existing system because they were in a hurry.
It comes across as a different proposition in the original post. Lets move on.
Desk Donkie. PPH will push their brand to buyers and really the buyers are doing business with PPH not the freelancer. It's just the same as a design agency sub-contracting work to freelancers. The end-client only deals with the agency.
I will NEVER sign up to Desk Donkie and I have contempt for whoever thought the name up - it's an insult to anyone that joins the scheme. I can't believe anyone involved in Branding would have sanctioned that name.
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Very little of my work would fit in the DeskDonkie format, but I would never sign up either. It seems to give you the autonomy of employment with the job security of self-employment - like a zero-hours contract.
I would be interested in knowing who has signed up and why, and how its working for them.
I think whoever thought up the name only had buyers in mind - saving them donkeywork. It is also going to attract buyers who place little value on the work done - it is just donkeywork, after all!
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"DeskScumSuckingWindbagJunkieImbecile"
It's kinda catchy. Better than DeskDonkie, anyway. Whoever it was that thought up that ghastly name needs shooting. Donkeys indeed. Yeah who needs to build up a good relationship with a client and get the satisfaction of a job well done for someone you've come to like and respect and who may have more work coming your particular way. That's why I'm a freelancer - so I can hoe my own row and choose my own clients (bidding apart, of course, but hey)..
I've done that kind of work before, where you just grab whichever assignments are on the line, and it's soul destroying after a while. No connection, no joy, no sense of satisfaction. Fine if it suits some. It's a choice, after all.
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MAYBE THIS IS THE REAL REASON WHY WE ARE BEEN STOPPED FROM MAKING BIDS.
COMMISSION !!!
1ST Invoice 15% , but by the time you get to Invoice 3, commission is down to 3.5%
Makes sense to push new freelancers .
You have raised three invoices to three Buyers: Invoice A (£100), Invoice B (£200), Invoice C (£50). All three invoices are paid by the Buyers in March so your earnings on PPH in March are £350.
You pay Service Fees as follows:
- Invoice A: £15 excl. VAT (i.e. 15%* £100)
- Invoice B: £15.63 excl. VAT (i.e. 15%*£75 + 3.5%*£125)
- Invoice C: £1.75 excl. VAT (i.e. 3.5%*£50)
- Total Service Fees = £32.38 (excl. VAT)
The effective total Service Fee on these earnings is just 9.3% (excl. VAT).
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To anyone at PPH who cares....
You are going to loose your most experienced and valuable highest paying customers to other sites like Odesk and Freelancer.... And here is why:
I just was cut off from applying for work because of the Certs and now real way to address it like live chat (even if a macro robot).
I am an American and the owner of a small call center in the Philippines and I do business development on PPH according to the skill set of my call center agents. I am the admin manager type and do not personally qualify for the work I bid on. I bid on the capability of my employees expertise.
I just this week have been getting a lot of responses for work. And now this. This was a cool site before even if I had to work through the competitive and super low bids.
Looks like Odesk and Freelancer will be my primary source of work now. At least they recognize that you can be an owner or manager of a company with many different skill sets and allow you to work accordingly.
I might check in with PPH every couple of months to see if anything has changed for the better or see if I can figure out how to contact clients through the "hints" they give about themselves.
For now it is good bye PPH. :(
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I realise that simply having a floor on the lowest bids isn't the whole solution, but I thought someone on the forum might have some better ideas.
Deskdonkie is an insult to us, and it is trying to take the (mostly mouldy) PPH bread out of our mouths by advertising on this site. So far it is low-ranked on Alexa and has a PageRank of 0. Although it only has a low number of job categories now, they obviously want to expand it, but as they have to assign and supervise each job, which on PPH is outsourcced to the buyer, it doesn't seem to me like a winning proposition on the low fee scale. Another PPH own goal, imo. I certainly hope no respectable PPH seller joins it.
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I think there isn't a single fix to quality issues. PPH has muted the old feedback system by mixing it with a PPH loyalty component.
A low-end job/hourly value increase will help, but it's not the whole answer. It will allow better quality sellers to engage in more jobs. Then there's the question of free bids. I think the availability of bids has an effect too.
Skills matching isn't going to work. The feedback system is problematic.
I think rating proposals could be an answer to control free bids and the ability of bottom feeders to keep on trying.
Another poster did make an interesting point about commission - the sweet spot for PPH is when freelancers don't escape the high commission rate, or at least not by too much, so maybe behind the scenes this is playing a part in PPH thinking.
We are really trying to second-guess the PPH mindset and improve our own situation. I don't really trust that PPH is upfront about some of their thinking - they often try and spoon-feed bad news by telling us it's going to improve our situation, and the skills matching doesn't really have anything in common with new sellers, nor does introducing new sellers have anything to do with raising quality.
For me, increasing the minimum hourly rate to the UK living wage, and a minimum job value of £15 would be at least a step in the right direction. I mention the 'living wage', but we all know that with PPH commission it won't be.
I would welcome a UK government body looking at PPH to see if it's providing a legal way for UK buyers to avoid the minimum wage or not.
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It's a good question, Paul. I seem to remember some time back - I'm talking maybe a couple of years - reading something about online sites like this not needing to abide by a minimum wage because the sellers and buyers are international. What might be minimum wage to us may be big bucks to someone in a country where the cost of living is much lower and where standard day rates are also much lower.
Very occasionally I do pick up a low pay rate job simply for the interest in doing a job, but in general I bid a decent hourly rate and have won jobs by asking for more than the client's stated budget because I know I'm ... cue advert jingle ... worth it and I prove I'm worth it.
There's a perception among SOME buyers that writing is a low skill job, partly because of all those ghastly scraping outfits that have devalued what it is to write well. Writing isn't just bashing it all down at speed and submitting - it's thought, rereading, getting the pace, grammar and fluency right, checking this and that and revising after letting it sit for a bit. That deserves more than tuppence and a bowl of gruel. How do you educate those buyers who don't know what good writing entails and who don't build a budget into their business plans for the writing?
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I don't know what the answer is but I think that something needs to be done regarding the budgets set by buyers. Whether that's educating them or PPH moderating job posts a bit more carefully and appropriately rejecting ridiculously low budget jobs, or something else entirely.
I don't have a specific skill as such. I'm an experienced PA and Admin worker and as such on here I seem to be very undervalued. Lots of low paid data entry and typing work is available but some of it is just unbelievable. There's currently a job posted that requires over 4000 bits of data to be mined from a website and entered into a document and the budget is £6!!! And there's bids on the job! And this job isn't an anomoly. In fact there's often jobs like this on the site. Like I said, I don't know what the answer is but I truly believe that if PPH wants to be taken seriously and retain the serious, successful freelancers then something needs to be done about jobs like that. -
Hmmm. I saw one job that fitted those details and it seems that the bidders are from another country where the costs of living are much lower. Maybe £6 / $10 translates into a reasonable fee there, but it certainly doesn't in the UK.
I can't think of any bidding sites that are restricted to one country, or one country's bidders, when the option is always there for a buyer to put it out for the most competitive bids on other sites. It's the heaven of international freelancing and the hell of it too, using t'internet! :-D
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I have spent some time looking at salaries in full time employment and rates in the two countries I have lived and worked in - the UK and Sri Lanka with specific software development skills (three languages and one web platform). My conclusions:
* There a good many people in both countries offering to work at rates that are well below what I would expect someone reasonably competent to get make in full time employment.
* There are more in Sri Lanka, BUT people offering to work for really silly rates do not seem to have win any work. Buyers are not idiots.
* Cheap sellers often claim an inconsistent (highly skilled and relatively unskilled) or implausibly wide skill sets.
* Overall rates confirm my intuitition that a Sri Lankan needs to charge about a third of the British rate for similar skills at the same level.
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For the time I've been on PPH their whole process seems to be aimed a creating desirable statistics, nothing to do with with quality for buyers OR sellers. Once someone joins the site, if the get work they stay. For most people if they don't get work, they don't bother to close their account, they just stop using the site. Hence the statistics show an ever growing user/member base regardless of the number of people actively using it. This will look great one they're big enough to float the company. It's basically a pump and dump scheme, which is why problems aren't addressed.
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I agree!
It is also frustrating when I am given the option to bid within the two hours for a job that is not in my skillset, and not the option to bid on the ones that are. The 'to bid on similar jobs amend you skills' part (or something to that effect) doesn't help either. Done that doesn't make a difference.
I am all for chances but when you are excluded from bidding on a job for two hours that you would have bid on in the first instance and stood a good chance due to the great reputation you have built up - it sucks! Just wonder how they go about picking those few that are eligible?
I think PPH do need to start making changes in other areas to stop projects being posted and never awarded - that is a waste of our time and credits!
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This new system is a pain in the bum and its clogging up my emails..
Why PPH are you sending me "you have been selected to bid first for the Job" when I dont do the type of work your sending me. I am a WordPress developer but your sending me jobs for: .NET dev, iPhone app, android app, social media marketing, project management, setting up pintrest... the list gose on and on..
Please fix this as its spamming my emails..
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I don't want to receive any invitation that is not match my skill.. please this is irritating and makes me crazy.. i am a comic illustrator.. and my skill is comic illustration written on my profile... why do i still receiving invitation that is not listed in my profile.. this is like a shit and making me crazy..
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I am a web designer with over 14 years of experience and am not able to send a proposal because the system says the project does not match my skills. If I am not able to send proposals for projects that I am clearly qualified for what is the purpose of using your website? This is very frustrating.
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Really there is a new system!! I wondered what all this 2 hours was about. To be honest I tend to ignore anything PPH sends out.
Especially after being badgered about DeskDonkie!!! Seems like PPH can send as many emails they want....we can't!!!
ill turning down most of the invites as the money is too little, or the buyers can't answer clarification questions.
Something I have learnt from this site. Don't flog yourself for a £50 job!! And you may even be surprised that you still earn as much money come the end of year. Let all the lower value stuff go abroad!!
But you might as well forget about trying to persuade PPH that they are wrong. When they switched from what I thought was becoming the best Freelancer site around to an expensive Fiverr copy.
They never listened, but of course their profit margin I am sure proves me wrong.
And now there is limit on communications!!! If buyers are morons and can't answer simple questions ban them!!
If Freelancers spam, ban them.Then we who are left can bid freely and communicate and build relationships.
dump hourlies without communication...I mean who buys without conversation!!!
Anyway wait until DeskDonkie gets going!! Was anyone else asked to provider FREE business development resources and professional advice?
When I mentioned I would provide what they asked for, but I would have to cost it up first, I never heard anything back. Can't remember the guys name, think it might have Christiphous or something like that.
I better read up on this new system as I haven't seen anything with a budget worth bothering with for a few weeks.
So that is possibly why this new system has passed me by!!!
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I think todays update from Xenios is quite interesting: http://blog.peopleperhour.com/memo-from-our-founder-recent-and-upcoming-changes?utm_source=PeoplePerHour+Company+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2264-Weekly+newsletter+2&utm_medium=email&utm_content=GBP
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Leaving aside the question of whether what PPH was trying to achieve here was right or wrong, the reality is that the algorithm used to identify who would be suitable for a job is entirely flawed, (either that, or I have mysteriously acquired new skills by osmosis and I just haven't found out yet!) and so should be done away with, either entirely or until such time as it is fit for purpose.
Over the past few days I've been sent several design jobs because of my skills in 'Logo, Business Logo, Identity design*'* - I don't have any such skills, neither have I ever claimed to have them; they appear nowhere in my profile.
There have been other examples similarly wide of the mark over the past few weeks. What I want to know though is whether someone else who does have logo design skills is being offered the voiceover and whiteboard animation jobs I _am _qualified to do?
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From Xenios's update:
"...we use algorithmic intelligence to match highly relevant jobs based on tags you place in your profile and information we gather from Jobs, and give you a chance to get a first call on placing a proposal."
PPH, this is still not working. I regularly get informed that I'm one of the 'most qualified' sellers for jobs I don't have the skills for, often in languages I don't speak. I sometimes can't see any correlation between the skills in my profile and the invitation. Sometimes I can see where the correlation has come from, but it still doesn't mean I'm actually qualified for the job.
I'm glad the 2 hour restriction was removed, it means I don't really need to worry about these emails and can go back to just looking through jobs and applying for those I'm qualified like before. But PPH should be aware that the algorithm still isn't working, and certainly isn't fitting the description of "intelligence".
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Hi guys (and girls) my name is Davide I'm fairly new in PPH but I'm already cert 4 with my very hard job. I got my fair amount of "not-matching jobs" proposed by PPH and I was wondering about something..
Read loads of comments and lot of people saying "we should do something" , I think until we do not show some negative feedback united , they'll not consider us.
So why do not make like a "virtual collection of signatures from all of us PPH guys that are touched by this issue? I tough by the best way to do that and I come up to that.
I've opened a job page with "
Some professional that will help me to solve the PPH issue."
not sure they'll pass it live, but the idea is that all the affected guys make a comment in the question fields , testifying their situation and after we'll send all the comments together to the c.s, if you agree come and make your voice heard searching for my job and leaving a comment.
For any info or other proposal my email is tradelicioushelp@gmail.com
If you have better ideas, let's hear them!! But just not stay in this page and moan or act like single freelancers, PPH is OURS!!!
Davide
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