Vote - Original 15%-3,5% service fee VS new 20% Fee structure.
Hello Everyone.
PPH wants to know whether the new fee structure suits the majority of sellers or not? please vote and comment (Comment is important)
If you don't know how to vote, click the Up arrow button next to the post title.
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CS Response :
If you want your buyers to vote go here :
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Hi Gordon
I think most UK sellers are slowly moving away from the site. My issue was never the high commission but the poor protection for the freelancer and the amount of low skilled, poor foreign-based freelancers that have flooded the site. The tests to get 100% are on youtube and despite notifying customer services they were not interested. It is a shame cause this platform is certainly simpler than freelancer.com which is confusing. I feel peopleperhour is becoming more like fiverr.com and fivesquid with the seller and job posting of low value.
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Hi freelancers
is anyone else struggling with sellers on this platform recently? I feel like there are continual issues with vague job descriptions, accepting proposals and then changing the brief after, haggling on proposal budgets or issues where they try and do all the work outside of the platform.
I had to just refund clients cause I am my wits end where you either have to be a mind reader on what they want or work for peanuts.
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adam, majority of the top freelancers who used to use this site have moved on and mostly have our own platforms or sites now to advertise, theres's been a mass exodus of freelancers from here ever since they spat in our faces after helping build there platform to the status it is, majority of us only ever use this platform now if contacted directly by a client. never even bother bidding on jobs on here any more. as you've said job posts are a joke, the briefs are made out to be something else when clearly not and at peanut prices.
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Yes, the job quality has gone down rapidly. Even more so since the introduction of the "high value" stuff where people will demand a full social network website designed and developed for £100 and mark it as high value.
There are so many jobs that are being approved with no description or detail at all with things like "I need a website build" with a budget of £7 but strangely there are people submitting proposals (are they bots?).
It is much harder to try and find decent buyers nowadays. The approval of jobs needs to be a lot stricter before they are allowing proposals.
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I posted on the jobsite Nick and you will find it will be broken English people who dont even understand the description saying 'i'll do it sir, hire me for satisfaction'
Now they are offering freelancers a free 50 credits as per there blog (i have yet to see mine and had to chase my free 15 this month) it will make it far worse.
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I never bid on projects any more. Most of the time there's not enough information to make an accurate proposal and clarification questions are ignored. I only ever work with people who contact me directly.
The "high value" stuff is ridiculous. 90% the job isn't high value, in fact it's often very low pay for the amount of work required.
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I keep getting emails saying I have proposals being given to me but I don't think I ever see the amount go up.
There is no real vetting of both buyers or sellers. Don't get me wrong there are some great, honest buyers who are a pleasure to work with but the majority want everything for nothing.
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There is a fundamental issue with the buyer process - I posted a couple of jobs on here recently and as a buyer you a prompted with an 'average' price for the job - for my job this was at least 50% less than I was willing to pay so buyers are being encouraged to put low prices in!! Why??? It's crazy. As a test I put bids in for a couple of jobs at prices at least twice what they were asking for - and at what I thought was a fair price - in both cases the jobs were accepted without question. I still had to pay the ridiculous PPH fees though!
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I only started with PPH 3 years ago and it has gone downhill since then. There was a big drop in the quality and amount of work about 2 years ago. In the last year it might have picked up slightly for me and occasionally I actually get a job that is worth doing, in between the junk, the scams, the viruses, the time wasters, etc. Perhaps the mass exodus of better freelancers has moved up the list.
I think it doesn't help that there is no way to give feedback on a poor quality job posting. 3 years ago, freelancers would complain about a job in the clarification questions, but that isn't allowed now. We can report a job for being a virus, but not for a poor specification or an outrageously low budget.There are two good examples recently from jobs where I was either invited or recommended to bid. Both had fixed budgets. One looked promising but didn't have enough information and I was concerned that I would have a long correspondence with the buyer and could end up spending more time than the budget allowed. I left it overnight and the next morning there were 25 proposals. The second looked good from the email description but when I logged in to PPH to view it the budget was £25. (£20.83 + VAT, with PPH taking 20%, leaving £16.67). Based on the description I would have been looking for a £150 - £200 budget. Even though I was invited to bid there was no button to decline the invite and specify that it was a low budget. If somebody phoned me up and asked me to do that work at that price I would not be polite. Two words would be sufficient before putting the phone down.
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I couldnt agree more, we are forced in to working for minimal amounts of cash and often for poor quality work and terrible clients, i've signed up to techlancer.co.uk as it's uk only and has a lower commission, so far the site is new but i've had a few jobs which have worked out well.
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Please go back to the old fee structure. The new fee structure does not encourage sellers to build long-term relationships with buyers. This is down to the buyer. I have consistent 5 star reviews from buyers and this is the only way I have of encouraging buyers to come back to me. This fact hasn't changed with the introduction of the new fee structure. So the stated reason for changing it is misconceived. The result for me is that I pay a lower fee with only a couple of my regular buyers, while with the rest of them or with new buyers it poses the problem of either increasing my prices and not getting the job, or working at a reduced net rate and a having a lower annual income from PPH. I have earned less from PPH since the new fee structure has been introduced - not because it has encouraged the building up long term relationships, but because in effect I have worked with fewer new customers.
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I find it all very frustrating because PPH is still the best platform for me, it's just a lot worse than it used to be. I almost never get a project worth more than £500 so I'm paying 20% on everything. When I started I was paying 15% on the first £350 in the month. If I could get a could of projects done early in the month I was paying 3.5% for the rest. That gave me an incentive to look for extra work. Now a lot of projects are not worth the effort of reading the details and submitting a proposal and getting involved with correspondence.
Another big problem is something I have probably mentioned 5 times already in this thread, but I've opened another support ticket about it this morning. I'm VAT registered but PPH will not split a project budget into net + VAT. The result of this is that if I accept a budget on a project that is posted, I pay the VAT myself instead of adding it to the price. This, combined with the 20% fee means I lose a full third of the budget. All it takes is a tick box when the buyer posts a project so that they will pay the VAT on top of the budget if the freelancer is VAT registered. A £100 project becomes £120 for a VAT registered freelancer and stays at £100 for an unregistered freelancer. If the buyer is VAT registered it makes no difference to them. -
I personally think PPH is ok and the fees are just in line with other freelancer sites including upworks and freelancer, but I am yet to see real improvements. I have an issue with messages coming through on the app but not showing on the desktop version and still the inconsistency with customer support (though it is improving). Also, the number of sellers from abroad who cant write English properly and just use fake portfolio pictures (screenshots from adobe) is a real issue. The amount of new applicant should be limited, however, incentives like the cashback was a good touch, (though it does make you realise the amount of money each month you are losing out on!).
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I can see why they don't do that with VAT - clients are looking for inclusive prices. Though presumably for clients that can claim back VAT, knowing a quote includes it would be useful for them.
When you invoice you have an option of ticking a box that says 'Includes tax' and changing the %. How does that work out regarding their %, do you know? I assume that they don't take the PPH fee from the % of earnings that is VAT? -
@Adam I believe you havent tired upworks as seller and buyer, otherwise you would not say this. I am a seller and reseller (buyer most of the time) and I can see that cost on buyers here at PPH of the final producst is doubled compared to ohter websites beaucse here at PPH seller are trying to cover the fees and the buyer here at PHH also has to pay big fees, so they both pay fees while other sites only small fees split on both.
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I can't comment as a buyer but as a seller the commission is similar
Specifically, Upwork charges a fee of:
- 20% for the first $500 billed with the client
- 10% for lifetime billings with the client between $500.01 and $10,000
- 5% for lifetime billings with the client that exceed $10,000
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I'm not saying it right about the commission fees for sellers or buyers but it is PPH business model, and we pretty much have to accept it. I would like to see more invested in the site as I am unsure that the TV adverts worked and see more communication with freelancer. Whilst I commend new sites like techlancer, it is very difficult to compete with the major players such as PPH, freelancer and upworks when trying to get the volume of orders needed to make a living.
I personally use my own site to now get new sales direct, but taking a hit of 20% for getting an offer purchased is worthwhile as I am not wasting my time trying to find custom.
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