People Per Hour Perspectives

Here we hear from two workers on the Macrotask platform People per Hour. Located in different corners of the globe, they share their different experiences attempting to make a living on the site.

I love keeping up with new technologies and trends and learning new stuff in the in the IT space, something I wasn’t able to do at my old job as an office administrator. So, after childbirth I decided to take the plunge into the freelance space as this would enable me to bring in some much needed income as well as be able to raise my newborn.

With some research I was able to narrow down a list of the most promising freelance sites and I began building profiles and sending out proposals. Within a few days I got a message on People per Hour (PPH) from a client asking me do perform a task for $15. Small I know but this jump started my freelancing career. Compared to most freelance sites PPH has a variety of fairly priced jobs and also allows one to post a service you are willing to offer to buyers. Buyers are required to deposit an escrow amount before commencing any job therefore your money is secure and waiting for you when the job is completed.

More than 8 years on no regrets. I’m able to work flexible hours, provide for my family and give them experiences we would only have dreamt of. It’s always overwhelming and humbling to have clients seek you out because of references and reviews from previous clients. I have built long and fruitful relationships with some clients and businesses over the years. With PPH, I’m able to get access to quality clients than with other platforms. It’s great to have a trusted space where you can deal and transact with clients. However, the 20% service fee on PPH is being a bit steep.
I have run into a lot of different challenges, but converting a prospect into a customer was the most challenging. Moving the conversation from informal chit-chat to the real topic was almost uncomfortable to me. With time, I was able to realize that what I provide is a valuable service that people should be and are willing to pay for cleared up the uncertainty and the bad feeling I was wrongly associating with it.

To augment business income I also offer Email marketing services, Integration and workflow services and Graphic design on PPH.

PPH isn’t perfect nor is it that much different from most freelance site. It’s just your hard work, devotion and passion that make you stand out of the crowd. Advice for anyone starting out, it is very difficult to convince a stranger to trust you and pay you money without some references. People you know like family, friends and ex-colleagues are way more likely to turn into your first clients. Hence, you can build up with the references they give you.

Irene Kabiru — Virtual Assistant — Kenya

I’m a television and film scriptwriter, a precarious profession, often entailing long periods of unemployment. When I came across People per Hour, around 2013, I was living in the backwaters of Somerset and in such a period it seemed the ideal solution for me to use my writing skills to make a much needed income. For the first three years or so it was ideal and enabled me to keep my head above water during my quiet times.

It works like this. Each freelancer is allocated 15 credits per month. A credit is used up each time a proposal is made. If you run out of credits you can buy more, at around £5 for five. Jobs are posted on a board, which has various sub-headings, such as Website Design, Business Support, Marketing, Software Development, etc. The freelancer then writes a proposal, making a case for why they should be awarded that job, and what they would charge to do it.

The client then chooses who they would like by clicking on their preferred bidder and accepting their proposal. The freelancer is then granted access to communicate directly with the client. All in all, a quite brilliant idea.

I joined in 2013, in order to pick up writing gigs. At first, work was hard to come by, as I was a Level 1, which meant highly inexperienced on the site. I eventually picked up my first client and soon my rating rose to a level 2, then 3, then 4 as my client list grew.

It was quite competitive as sometimes there were as many as 7 or 8 others bidding for the same gig, so it was time well spent writing a well worded proposal. I would win about 1 of 5 of those that I bid for.

The fee is paid by the client at the start of the job and held in Escrow, which is an account held by PPH, to ensure that both client and freelancer are protected. Once the work is delivered and the client is happy, the fee is released, minus commission, which was at the time, 8% + VAT. Perfectly fair, I thought.

The client then leaves feedback along with a star rating of between one and five. This is displayed on your personal profile. All of my completed jobs earned great feedback and I was soon making a living wage.

Fast forward three years. The amount of work appearing on the site began to drop quite dramatically. Curious, I did some Googling and discovered that there were a lot of unhappy clients voicing their displeasure across the web. Amongst the great freelancers there were truly terrible ones and bad news travels fast in the internet age.

So, with revenue down, PPH made a massive mistake. Instead of rooting out these people who weren’t up to the task, they raised commission to 20% + VAT. I’m not VAT registered so that means, for me, and I’m sure many others, almost a quarter of the fee is taken up by commission. This meant that we all had to hike up our fees to cover this, and suddenly hiring a freelancer on PPH didn’t become as cost effective as it once was. They also began to charge clients to post jobs, where before, it was free.

The boards got quieter and each job was now getting up to 30 proposals. More and more jobs went unawarded, probably because the client sensed a desperation as their inbox was inundated. So, PPH reacted by adding a ‘High Value’ job, which would cost 3 credits, whilst reducing the credits awarded to freelancers, from 30 to 15. A ‘High Value’ job was one priced at £200 and above, but often the job was for writing 20 x 500 word articles. After commission, that would work out as £7.50 per article.

It has got worse, with ‘High Value Job’ being stamped on gigs offering as little as £45, whilst the site is getting quieter and quieter.

It’s a great shame because PPH has so much great talent amongst its freelancers. I’ve had some quality work delivered when using it as a buyer, and have had some excellent and lucrative commissions in the past. And I will continue to browse its boards occasionally, for those reasons.

But as a freelancer, I’ve mostly moved on, as it is no longer viable to make anything more than pin money. I put this down to poor management of the company, along with greed/desperation.

Saying that, I’ve used other similar platforms and had no success whatsoever, as the freelance market becomes more and more crowded with suppliers. So, I’ve set up my own copywriting business, ironically, using a website I bought on People Per Hour.

Anonymous — UK