/g/, what are your thoughts on sites like Upwork or Fiverr? Decent

What's upwork?

Do you have prior experience? The people who will hire you won't want to train you. They expect you to have enough expertise to hit the ground running.

ignoring https://hackernoon.com/why-you-should-never-use-upwork-ever-5c62848bdf46#.l5qrxr9od

and likely other horror stories, you won't nearly make enough to get by for the first several months. everyone i've talked to about freelancing says that they couldn't even think about going freelance full time (that is, quitting their full time/part time jobs) until 6 months in. usually more. and these people had training and expertise in their domains. they weren't making a qualitative career shift, just a switch in the style.

you should look on reddit for a community of freelancers and see what they say. this question is so cliché that i bet you could even find someone saying they want to travel around southeast asia while they freelance, just like you.

the short answer is that no, it's not feasible. you'll need to spend an order of magnitude more time optimizing your profile on upwork and advertising and promoting yourself so that people will actually hire you. and the speculative nature of freelance work will stress you out, no matter how coolly you deal with financial stress.

>>58290329
why post?

>>58290329
One of those marketplace kind of sites where you can go with a website idea and pitch it, and freelance people can sign up and make bids to do the job

>>58290332
Not really, but I'm starting to get a portfolio and I'd establish myself on there a month or two before I left travelling just to make sure I knew the process. Mainly curious on how much you could make

Yeah i do some work on their platform as a graphic designer from time to time, mostly they expect good portfolio but in your case, just start with jobs no more then 100$ and have in mind that when you biding, 20% of total payment is going in upwork ass.

>>58290363
The market in Upwork has been depressed by a lot of workers in the Philippines willing to work for a fifth of a typical American worker (English is one of the two official languages). Unless you have an actual specialization, it'll be tough getting noticed.

>>58290351
Alright, thanks

I appreciate it's probably cliched, yeah, and I'm looking at other stuff at the same time. Just wanted to get /g/'s general feel of it.

I've got a shitty temporary contract at the moment while I'm applying to grad schemes, so this is something I'm thinking about while I wait for that. I've been doing webdev on the side so if the grad schemes fall through I would have the time on the side to stick with this shit job and improve my portfolio and profile

>>58290422
20% is a bit steep

What's your average job time and average job cost? Could you always get a job on there if you wanted or do you have to search and compete?

>>58290443
Yeah I've seen the Pajeet meme on here a few times, about always getting undercut. Is it actually as bad as a fifth? I could see native English being a benefit but not even that's doing much against 80% savings for the client

>>58290664
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Philippines&country2=United+States

>>58290684
Fuck me

Thanks for the link. Makes sense but that's pretty annoying

>>58290464
Its all depending on your portfolio and expect a lot of competitions, sometimes i get invitation for a job but mostly you need to do the searching and see what suit you the best and even then its a lottery that the client will pick you. I am trying to get my average job cost nothing less then 100$, thats means i get 80$ of pure dosh on my acc but most of them wants to get by cheaper so be on the lookout and get to know pricing on web developments first.