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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There are multiple reasons for work drying up.
1) Fee increases for BOTH buyers and sellers.
2) People Per Hour website failing to do well. Poor SEO, poor marketing.
3) The removal of distinctive, brand-able hourlies in favour of freelancer photos
4) People per hour pushing buyers into "Creating Jobs" instead of simply purchasing hourlies. They changed the menu to push buyers into Jobs and hid the Hourly section in a submenu. Their emails also push buyers into Jobs.
The move away from hourlies means freelancers who have successfully performed hundreds of jobs and have high ratings aren't getting the exposure. So views are down and purchases are down.
All of that work we put in getting high ratings and promoting our hourlies mean nothing. They've been dumped.
WHY would they want to push Jobs instead of hourlies? Especially when it is HARDER for a buyer to deal with proposals from a dozen unknown freelancers? Because they believe it makes more MONEY. They want freelancers to buy proposals.
End result is buyers not wanting to post jobs or review the bios of a dozen freelancers just quitting. They probably just wanted a few articles or a basic SEO service and could have bought an hourlie. Nope. PPH want to make the site worse for buyers so they squeeze more profit out.
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I think there might be a 5th reason for the work drying up, Paul. If I buyer has a need for something their first port of call is Google, not PPH. If freelancers are giving up on PPH and resorting to direct marketing they might be catching some of the buyers before they even get to PPH. (See also your point 2.)
The recent fee increase is nothing new. Anyone not earning £500 per month, every month, was put on 20% fees a year ago. I'm in the middle of Cert 5, ranked about 2000 among all the freelancers, and I was rarely reaching £500 in a month. That means most of the Cert 5s and all the Cert 4s have been on 20% for the last year.
I had been thinking about trying a more direct marketing approach and the latest changes and the contempt PPH have shown to us all has made my mind up.
Is anybody else noticing an increase in PPH marketing emails? I keep getting mail from "Lucy" trying to sell me a variety of hourlies and other services, despite specifically opting out of marketing promotional emails. That really looks like desperation to me, writing to the existing freelancers and trying to turn us into buyers. -
The email marketing is very spammy and sometimes there are multiple emails landing within a few minutes of one another (super spammy). They need new marketers NOW.
Just on that Post Job vs Hourly issue again. Even if a Buyer wants a simple job done, they are still being directed into posting a job.
SO they have to:
1) Write up details of their job (time consuming)
2) Wait for bids (time consuming)
3) Read messages from various bidders and answer questions (time consuming)
4) Manually weed out the bidders without the right skills or experience (time consuming)
5) Finally choose one and hope it goes well.
OR....
1) Find an hourly offering what you want. You immediately see how much experience the buyer has, you can filter by their rating/location/skills.
2) Click "buy now" and send details of the job
Buyers don't want to post jobs, why would they? Why would they want to review ever applicant and write detailed job postings? They just want to get the job done, which was the beauty of hourlies.
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On the Post v Hourly issue I think it depends very much on the type of work. All the work I've had on PPH has come from bidding and I don't see how I can package my work as an hourly, because it is too open ended. I have tried and maybe I should have tried harder.
I picked up two jobs from bidding on Friday and I don't think either of those could really have gone through an hourly, unless there is something fundamental about hourlies that I've not understood.The types of projects that were getting posted last year are not getting posted now. If PPH are trying to push people into posting projects at the expense of hourlies, it isn't working. They are losing both types of work.
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Doesn't work for me at all. I've been using PPH for over 5 years, am a top cert seller, and was originally on an average commission rate of 5.5% - this huge increase to 20% is certainly not something that helps me as a seller, as it means I am now paying four times what I was before, and with just a few weeks notice regarding this change it makes it very difficult to plan for my business from a financial point of view.
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I have been a top seller on PPH since 2010. I have billed over 120k, and started to work exclusively through this platform. I have been an ambassador for many years, I have worked in their support area when it first started. In short I have been one of the platform fiercest proponents.
This new fee is not better for me - but I'm under no illusion that it's meant to be. Why change a revenue system unless it's benefits the company? It certainly can't benefit the workers AND the company.
This amounts to a massive pay cut for me.
The majority of my work is with a great many small-medium/new companies, and even after working 5+ years with some of them, few of them meet the £5k minimum that would make this worthwhile.
In addition, hiking the new customer fee to 20% (plus VAT) simply discourages me to seek new clients on this platform. I cannot absorb that hike and remain competitive.
I am already looking at alternative options for gaining new clients as a result.
ps. I definitely did not receive an email about the fee change that PPH say they sent out. Did anyone else? -
I must have missed the announcement about the new fee structure as I only realised a couple of weeks ago.
The new fee structure is disgusting. I've had to increase my hourly rate because of this and I've certainly had a reduction in enquiries because of doing so.
Bring back the original fee structure and stop ripping off your money earners. This is simply greed from PPH.
I'm already considering taking my business (and MY clients) elsewhere and I'd suggest to everyone to do the same if this doesn't change soon.
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Although most of my business on PPH is now with long term clients - over 73K billed to date - so the fee change is sort of better for me in this regard.
However, this fee change makes taking on any new clients highly un-appealing. Paying 7.5% up to £5000.00 is a joke. The 20% for the fisrt £500 is completely unworkable for most freelancers, myself included.
Thanks,
Dave
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Surely the whole point of PPH, and similar sites, is that the Buyers can dip in and buy the service they want when they want it at a price that suits their budget. This model does not imply long term relationships, in fact almost completely the opposite.
I have had repeat customers - and I do enjoy building a relationship with them - but have never billed over £500 from any one customer in one month. They've mostly been jobs the customer doesn't have the skills to do but I can do them in a reasonable time scale.
I can't see how this new fee structure will work for me. It seems to be a disappointing move away from the original ethos of this site and one that will be too expensive for most sellers.In case people are unaware of it there's a petition here:
https://www.change.org/p/peopleperhour-com-people-per-hour-pph-restore-the-old-fee-structure?recruiter=888266967&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=undefined -
The new fee structure is crippling my business. I love PPH but have signed up to upwork now too as 20% is just too much. I can't make a living and am really struggling.
All of my clients pay less than £500 so I have to pay 20% on every job plus Vat.
I thought the last fee structure was very fair.
Please, please can we go back to the old fee structure.
Thanks PPH for listening to us :)
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"Surely the whole point of PPH, and similar sites, is that the Buyers can dip in and buy the service they want when they want it at a price that suits their budget. This model does not imply long term relationships, in fact almost completely the opposite. "
That's right. That's the whole benefit of hourlies. Buyers can quickly get a service from someone they know has a good reputation in the community. They don't need to write proposals or review applicants.
If anything, PPH should be encouraging new clients by removing the 10% fee on buyers until they spend more than $100 on the site.
They should also make fees cheaper for a seller when they are helping a new buyer -- to help them assign additional time to the sale and ensure their offering is excellent. The "new to the platform" buyer should get a great experience to ensure they come back.
But nope, PPH want to punish new buyers and the sellers that service them with more than 30% combined fees. A huge DISINCENTIVE for new people entering the platform.
Seriously, who the hell is making these decisions. Clearly, they don't have marketing or sales skills.
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Sorry, but what’s bothering me most now is that PPH haven’t even had the remote decency to reply to this thread. Not one iota of acknowledgement. Surely, they’ve seen this and it infuriates me 900 fold that someone STILL does not even have the common decency to even acknowledge our concerns
All we do Xenios is put money in your pocket the LEAST you could do is somewhat acknowledge this sh*t storm?
It’s not working. It never will work. And until you realise this the site will continue to plummet. It makes BUSINESS SENSE to revert back to the old fees and keep the people that keep YOU in business happy.
It’s unfathomable that you haven’t replied?
Even a generic sub-par support line will do - just tell us so we can now look for alternatives IF this fee is indefinite and won’t be rolled back. I have mouths to feed and a family to support - I need to know what the future holds for their sake, the communities sake and my own sanity.
C’mon PPH - the longer you leave it - the worse this is going to get. It’s CLEARLY not favoured amongst 99.9999999% of freelancers (that’s why I’d very much enjoy to see your community feedback for the fee change)
Just give us bloody closure so we can plan ahead. It’s not fair to keep this going on.
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Jamie- I couldn't agree more. It has been over two weeks now and we have had one cut and paste response right at the start. This isn't the way you run a business- the trust has completely gone.
I replied to the message from Fortune the customer 'support' person asking the following:
Hi Fortune,
Can you please point me in the direction of the research PPH have completed that proves that the majority of sellers want the fee change?
I also don't believe that the hourlie sales are being affected by the summer period- the school holidays have not started yet and I have never been this quiet (apart from early January).
Can you also tell me how PPH have justified this huge increase in fees? What will we be getting in return to match the increase?
Are PPH monitoring the forums and the vote thread?
This was her reply. SHE IS ACTUALLY SUGGESTING I GIVE PPH MORE MONEY TO FEATURE MY HOURLIE. She believes this will increase views. Views of a hidden hourlie. Considering how upset we all are and how lifechanging this is- this response for me is beyond the pale.
Thank you for your response. A growing number of Sellers earn £5,000 or more with a single Buyer, and this represents a large proportion of earnings on PeoplePerHour but unfortunately I cannot provide any more details as those are handled by the relevant department. However, as previously explained we are still evaluating the new scheme and monituring the results it has on our Sellers' accounts but a decision on if the change will be paused and restored back to the old scheme or not cannot be made yet since only 2 weeks have passed from the implementation. Our Team is monituring all the votes, comments and feedbacks left by our Users concerning the new fee scheme so please do not worry as all will be considered in a new decision made in the future.
Your Hourlie sales depend on what a Buyer is looking for in a specific period of time therefore we cannot provide an exact reason why they are not purchasing them at this period but since many Users are in vacation that may justify the low sale rate. You can try featuring your Hourlies to boost them up into getting views and sales! -
They treat freelancers with utter contempt I am afraid. They have burned the trust of many freelancers. You simply cannot trust a company that triples fees overnight (after multiple increases in the space of a couple of years).
I've already started working on other platforms. I suggest that other freelancers do the same. PPH is being extremely greedy and treating freelancers like garbage imo.
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This is nothing new when it comes to PPH. They have made many changes over the years and can't think of a single one that wasn't based around improving their profits. They are a business after all.
However, this is the first time I have seen such a huge reaction from the suppliers. Many of the communications people are starting to get are talking about how PPH will be reviewing their options, looking at the effects etc. I actually believe that this time they might just make a more positive and fair change.
The only problem is that they will lose many freelancers in the meantime. Waiting three months or six months is too long. We need a change now.
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@sofia
nope, they tried to hide these changes so hard that support manager told me that literally that not being notified is my own problem since my email preferences don't include "community news and updates"...what a stupid excuse for not sending email to me...they send to me everyting, dozens emails daily but not this the most important one
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I was sent an email on 4th June. I didn't pay that much attention to it at the time because after what they did to my fees last year, it doesn't make much difference to me. The new fees are only worse for me if I manage to earn £500 in a month and it's a long time since I've done that.
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@sofia
I didn't see the email and only found out when I went to invoice for a job at the beginning of July (where the proposal was accepted in May) instead of the expected £25 in fees I was being charged £125 - at first I thought it was an error until I found out otherwise.
Due to the volume of spammy emails from PPH I filter out anything other then invitations to bid, so didn't see this email.
Any change to T&C should be clearly displayed so you cant miss it, for example one of the blocks on the dashboard as well as a blog article.
As a comparison, in 2016 Upwork made a similar change to their fees but they didn't bury it in an email, it was widely published in a way that couldn't be missed.
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I received the email. However, the way it was worded was very sneaky- it had a 'summary' of the key points, which is what I read, and the point that stood out to me was the one which said something along the lines of 'existing, long-term sellers don't worry- we will still honour your fee structure' or something like that. And the bit about the significant increase in your take home pay was highlighted too. The reality was very different.
This thread alone has 237 comments- I still can't get over the dismay I feel that PPH haven't even bothered to get back to us.
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As I have no intention of doing any work on this site anymore, I am in the process of wrapping up three jobs. However, I still have two jobs on this site which have not been paid - one recent and one almost eight months old. I contacted a freelancing payment agency to recoup my funds sitting in escrow for jobs I where the buyers keep rejecting the invoice - approximately £500 just sitting there between two buyers. This agency follows up on unpaid invoices for freelancers and all they require is a populated PPH invoice which you can download yourself from your invoices tab. Sad thing is, PPH doesn't require buyers to provide any useful information other than their first name and last bloody initial! No company name. No VAT number. Nothing! Shame on you PPH. Sadly in this instance this agency was not able to support me and recoup my lost £500 due to lack of buyer information. You would think that as a respectable and decent freelancing site PPH would at least require these small pieces of information from a buyer, but apparently not. PPH is just happy to let any buyer run away without making payment even though the seller has done the work. I am totally disgusted with this platform and am letting every buyer know that I work with am leaving this platform effective Aug 1st. They know where to find me! Thank God I have a website!
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By the way, I never received the PPH email and I get all their emails. A freelancer friend of mine on this site had to forward it to me but to me it looked like it was only relevant to sellers who had been on this site for ages.
I wonder if there is a way to dispute it via some complaints/ombudsman. Similar sort of way that you can dispute a cell phone/utility provider for not disclosing hikes in fees? Anyone know?
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