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 have figured out the problem with PPH. It is pretty obvious to me that the their website - as wonderful as it is, has become so automated they do not have any human staff left. There is possibly only the CEO left. I see the logic here - cut down on the overhead. Still I have earned a few £££ so will give them the chance to get their act together before parting company.
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Bidding for jobs is a complete waste of time on this site, not to mention skill matching! As crap as that is over the past couple of weeks I have had a massive increase of work come through my Hourlies (which is where ive always got 99% of my work) I got 10 in one day last weekend and am receiving regularly inquiry's everyday now.
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@ Molly I get those every day trying to get me to buy writing hourlies of the same ilk as I offer, and I even got a 10% discount code the other day, score! Today I have one telling me how to get onto this 'newsletter' and sell more of my hourlies to other writers, WTF comes to mind!
@Paul I now have a mental image of all these little bots sitting with each one programmed to press their own auto response button. The bot attached to the new get help now pap is clearly a work in progress as the super simple q I put in to see how the process worked (how long does a buyer have to pay an invoice?) remains unanswered :/ So not so much 'help now' as 'help when the bot can be arsed to press his button'.
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A hefty chunk of my income comes for hourlies as well and they are already discounted on normal job rates. Then there is the commission to come off that, then Paypal fees so thanks but no thanks, I will not be taking them up on this awesome offer!
Hi Deb,
We are excited to announce the launch of Hourlie Discounts, a brand new tool for you to sell more of your hourlies.
The way it works is really simple:
- You edit your Hourlie updating the field “24 HOURS DISCOUNT OFFER” specifying a percentage off the original price as a limited time offer.
- We include your Hourlie in our Newsletter that goes out to 400,000 Buyers. This is not guaranteed 100% but setting a discount is a prerequisite.
- The discount is available to Buyers for only 24 hours after we send your Hourlie via our Newsletter. At any other time the price is set at its original value as normal.
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There was some discussion earlier about the 100k earning seller. Lets apply some maths to that.
Firstly its was over 18 months, so even assuming that the first six months were slower as she built it up, that cannot be more than 80k a year.
She is the third highest ranked PPH seller by CERT, which largely reflects earnings. That puts her in the top 0.75% of CERT5 sellers.
She is the second highest ranked of 14k UK sellers Assuming that a few thousand "UK" sellers are not actually in the UK, that still puts her in the top .02% of UK sellers.
She is also third of 34k sellers on PPH.
Either PPH is a lousy way to earn, or (and I think this is true) most people do not rely on it as their main source of income.
On a more encouraging note, PPH has been doing much better for me recently, so its not all doom and gloom.
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SuperTasker "part of the PeoplePerHour Group". My goodness - this is what they're offering
Unlimited revisions
Request as many revisions needed to get your task perfect.
100% money-back guarantee
If you 're still not satisfied we refund your money back, no questions asked!
No questions asked? So I could work for SuperTasker, get an idiot buyer and not get paid? No questions asked!
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No more work/update on Maven Freelancing then?
Here's an old archived version of our old website built on the same platform (Boonex Dolphin). It was pulled offline over a year ago now as the platform was so atrocious but this gives an example of what can be done with the platform when you know how to work with it properly.
http://web.archive.org/web/20121020014843/http://clubnetuk.net/
Obviously quite a few bits of the site will break or not load from the archived versions.
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You sound like you are almost willing Maven to fail.
If they have chosen a poor platform, their judgement process might have been similar to your own and that particular platform (not that I know it) has continued in development in the intervening period.
Why not just let Maven appear in it's own good time and judge it then (or better still give it some time to try and get off the ground)?
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Predicting is not willing. Geoff is talking about what the platform can achieve using good developers, whereas Maven does not have developers which pretty much dooms them.
Maven's failure will also make PPH freelancers much more reluctant to try out other new sites (especially those that charge a monthly fee, which may be Maven's best idea) making it harder for anyone who wants to do this later who would otherwise have a better chance. It is very frustrating to watch them messing it up.
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As Paul said give them time. If something has gone wrong during testing they have clearly gone back to the drawing board and are taking their time to get it as good as they can. Better that than rushing something out to find it crashes. I have also noticed that one of the registered members is saying he built the site, not a great advert for him if it doesn't work properly.
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Oh dear. I have no idea what Maven is doing behind the scenes an while we can speculate about developers you cannot know, only speculate.
As a developer myself I find this inspection of technical niceties disappointing.
What they are proposing (as I understand it) is very difficult to do, and the last PPHers who attempted it failed badly. At least someone is giving it a go.
PPH was pretty basic and ropey at the start. I'd like to think we can be better people and let the plane take off, rather than shoot it down before it reaches the runway.
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Paul, I think it is reasonable to be very sceptical that a developer whose main experience is running a computer shop and fixing people's problems with Windows etc. is going to be able to deliver a complex website. OK, so he has some experience doing CMS installs for small businesses, and he has another Boonex Dolphin install set up as a social media website - but setting up a marketplace requires someone with experience of web app development.
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I completely agree Graeme although it doesn't make a difference as we're just seen as people shooting down a site and not giving it a chance.
I'm all for giving start-ups a chance, but it only takes the knowledge and experience of already running a business and working in the web industry to be able to predict huge flaws in a business model and a website. That being said, I'm not having a pop at Maven, I'm purely only defending my previous comments which keeps triggering the same responses from the same people.
If getting something up with minimal skills, budget or time was a priority, there are actually pre-built scripts for job boards (and similar) that have the minimum functionality required for listing jobs already - like this one:-
http://www.phpjabbers.com/demo/1412679024_134/index.php?controller=pjAdmin&action=pjActionIndex
A few tweaks and it wouldn't be far away from a platform for both businesses to post jobs and freelancers to bid on jobs. Either way, whichever route you take, it won't be possible without knowing a programming language and expertise in web app development as Graeme raises.
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I think it will be hard for Maven to get off the ground, but not for trivial technical reasons, but I wish them well and I'll give them the respect that they deserve for giving it ago.
Instead of sniping at their efforts publicly in a forum, why not offer your advice directly to them?
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Paul,
a) I previously read that they are active in this thread so can read what is being said...?
b) I have no idea who is behind Maven so cannot speak to them.
c) Can already see what they're building upon and I have no desire to spend the amount of time that would be required to advise accordingly. My advice would be, scrap it and start again so wouldn't be of much use to them.
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Katie, email support: support@peopleperhour.com
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@ Katie, unfortunately that is par for the course on here. There have been numerous posts about the very same thing. I have been blocked from applying for a product description job of which 70% of feedback comes from but today have been selected to bid for a job putting together an online nurse training programme :( These are 2 bugbears we have had to put up with for ages now and nothing gets done about it and are just 2 of the reasons why several of us have signed up with the new jobs site Maven that launches on Friday. I could bore you with all the explanations for this cock eyed way of working but suffice to say PPH have their own way of doing things that make no sense in the real world.
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