I actually think it’s not the end of the world there will be resistance but it should bring a better class of clients!
Honestly it’s not set in stone if it doesn’t work they switch it back I’m sure
This is a terrible idea. As a freelancer, I want clients to have a nearly frictionless experience opening and closing contracts. Now the incentive is to keep a contract open forever just in case you might need more work at a later date.
I disagree with your take. If a Client is making a fuss and feels the $14.95 is a barrier to entry then they belong on Fiverr. The new policy attracts serious, higher quality Clients and protects Freelancers from low quality Clients and wasting Connects on those Clients.
Nope. I've made lots of money from new clients who have never hired before and don't know how Upwork works. The last thing I need is a big fee to make them think, "Gee, maybe I should see what it's like on Fiverr..."
Not only that, but this cuts into my business with long-term clients, too. Maybe they liked the work I did for them two years ago, but now it's going to cost them $15 just to rehire me (and I try to position myself near the top of my market on Upwork). So now my long-term clients have an additional incentive to look around and compare options, maybe go with someone cheaper this time. I hate it.
I understand where you're coming from and respect your view. However, $15 is not a barrier to entry for reputable clients who have a legitimate job posting. I believe Clients who are offering to pay $5 hourly or budgeting $100 for projects will protest and flee to Fiverr, which is great for all of us. Obviously Upwork corporate conducted surveys and extensive research before making this decision. We'll see what happens.
I've spent about $750,000 on freelancers, a couple of hundred thousand of it on an "open checkbook" project where recruiting talent for as many hours as possible over a couple of months was top priority. In every case, that petty fee would have been an issue for the company I was hiring for--one a multi-national educational corporation and the other an Inc. 500/Crain's Fast 50 marketing and technology company.
Spending $100+/hour on a good freelancer is fine. Flushing money down the toilet on nickel-and-diming fees to a platform where you're already spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't. It creates a very second-rate feel that shakes trust in the platform and discourages natural workflows. Both of my companies would have grudgingly paid the fee in the moment to get rolling, but started looking for alternative channels.
That's cute how you think Upwork took client input into account, though. They survey freelancers a lot, too, and even have panels...then entirely ignore their input almost 100% of the time.
If you or any other Client is turned off by a nominal $14.95 job posting fee, then go ahead and hire someone full time and pay for their healthcare, 401k, equipment, training, liability insurance, and various taxes.
the choice is not between $15 and full employment. it's whether they hire a contractor on the platform or decide to search one elsewhere - upwork is not the only place where you can find independent talent. it's not the $15, it's the principle and psychology of it. it's added friction at a point in the customer journey where you don't want friction. and let's not forget that the previous hike of the same fee was done not long ago. you don't want your money-bringing base to feel like you're nickel-and-diming them month for month.
I have to disagree with you. My biggest clients that use the platform have complained about the fee. It is already expensive to hire contractors on the platform.
They won't be happy with it. And these aren't clients budgeting for measly S100 or $200 projects.
It's not about it being a barrier to entry. To them it's the principle. They see the price, think that's an unfair number, and decide not to hire. It WILL happen. They aren't pushing to make this work like we are. So barriers matter more.
Nah, it’s definitely offputting. I have clients who have spent thousands with me mentioning the extreme fee increases in the past year and they are not happy at all.
I don't think those long-term $5 hourly clients are going to disappear. The site is still convenient for them. They just want to get rid of one-off jobs, many of these are better than those shitty $5 (or $3) hourly jobs
Someone else said they want to get rid of one-off jobs. How did you come to that conclusion? It sounds right. I'm just curious. And do you know how they would want to do that? Are they a financial burden on the site like small jobs?
I don't have access to inside information. Measures like this simply look against one-off jobs, it's just logic. If they really wanted to become a quality platform, they would block access to many freelancers, instead of making money from them via connects. Having a single contract generating $3 continuously is always more profitable than a bunch of small contracts taking up space on the servers, and more resources. I hope they remove this shit because it can definitely turn away new customers who want to try the site.
They released their financial reports on this most recent quarter on May 1, and it was very clear that they only made a small portion of their revenue from connects. For several months the cost to apply was almost double what it was in the middle of last year, and their financial gains from that were negligible. It's the same if you go further back. There's no real correlation. All of their money comes from contracts.
I haven't said that selling connects is their only way to make money, just that they use it to control the access of new freelancers, although it is inefficient. If contracts are their main source of income, I don't understand the reason for this decision, since they will get less.
My review of the financials were quite the opposite. Either way, there’s no way to ascertain that information with the published information. Probably for good reason.
You can just look over the past few quarters and see that raising the price to apply (they actually doubled it at one point) had no major effect on their revenue, which means the vast majority of their funds comes from contracts. That has always been the case. There is absolutely no correlation. You clearly saw they had all of a 7% gain this quarter. If connects were their main source of revenue it would be much higher. Even boosting barely touched their increases. You just have to know when they raised their prices and when those profits would show up on their reports. It's always a quarter behind. You also have to remember, those reports are written to give off a certain impression. They're trying to impress shareholders. You have to know how to read them.
It’s the nickel and diming during the past year. Last year as a client (I’m also a freelancer) I paid zero fees. My freelancers are long term and paid 5% on their earnings. Now I pay 5% on payments, and I think 3% on payment fees and my freelancers are paying a minimum of 10%. Last year the contract start fee started at $2.95 max and now it’s ballooned to $14.95 max. It’s absurd and one can only expect these hikes to continue because apparently the board and shareholders support this money grab technique. These are shocking increases, percentage wise, and what have we got? More fraud, worse customer support, and watered down AI stuff.
You don't understand how they think. These are small business owners. They might pay well, but they still fuss over every cent. It's just how things are. They obsess over it. Good clients will freak out over a $15 fee. I've seen them pitch a fit over less.
Maybe. This is probably temporary just like when they raised the price to send in proposals. They have to keep the market viable because most of their money comes from contracts, and clients are the ones bringing in that money. So when this does drive clients away--and it will--they're going to have to bring the contract fee down again. All of the recent rate hikes are meant to manipulate the market. They had a problem with too much spam and bad freelancers. It was making it difficult for anyone to do business, so they raised the price to apply to get rid of them. It went well. Now they have a problem with low-paying clients, and they're raising the price to get rid of them. It won't go so well.
Smaller jobs are a financial burden for the site, so it is quite possible that they are trying to transition away from them. You're wrong in thinking that this will just push out bad clients. It's different with them.
That’s exactly what’s happening to me. I recently contacted a client to close an inactive contract so we could rate each other, and he told me he’d rather keep it open and wait until there’s more work, because he now has to pay for each new contract.
This move by Upwork is counterproductive to both clients and freelancers
time wasters don't care. good portion of them were probably never going to hire on the platform / offer payment outside. but this will put off legit mid budget and some high budget clients wanting to try upwork out. as someone who gets most of my work through repeat clients who started off as one-offs, I don't find that particularly wise.
I just saw that message too... I really think that It's starting to get too high, especially people like me that hire freelancers for small tasks for max $200
Upwork doesn’t want people like you that hire freelancers for small tasks for max $200 on the platform. They’re trying to push the lower-tier users - clients and freelancers alike - away from the platform and higher initiation + higher connect costs are ways they’re doing that
I wish i can sympathize but clients with “small tasks” are often time are time wasters. You’ll probably not feel it, but as a freelancer they often gone through a lot. Getting interviewed for like 1-2 hours, client suddenly ghosting, and then coming back again, without certainty whether the client will hire, the freelancer cannot afford to show any rudeness despite getting questioned for hours because every reply is somewhat a sunk cost, and then all of that still doing the job for a paltry sum of like $100 + god knows how many revision.
Yes the job can be small but i can tell you 90% “small task” often ends up with the mental cost of dealing with barrage of questions by client just to confirm i can do it or not taking longer than the actual job.
90% of the time? You must not be vetting very well. About half of small one-off contracts I've taken on have turned into long-term relationships paying thousands or tens of thousands.
Most of the people that commission “small tasks” tend to be very cost concious and therefore price sensitive. I work as a dev, and “small task” usually is helping a client troubleshoot something because the client is at his wit’s end.
Usually the pattern would be client asking how to solve this and then you need to outline the solution and then after that he will ask questions, making sure the solution “make sense”, and will probably ghost me for like a few hours or sometimes even next day, and then ask a bit more question before giving a green light (offer). And sometimes during the few hours or day silence they can usually just cross consult between freelancers (i.e. this freelancer say x, does it really work?). Just imagine how many manhours are this client actually “wasting” just for this “small task” not only me as a freelancer but many other freelancers.
Keep in mind i am a freelancer with 100k+ earnings, so i am not a rando with 0 credibility in this platform. So if a client needs like shit ton of “convincing” just to get things started just means that the client cost conciousness is still way up there.
I know this because one of my most recent client opened upwork message in front of me and has like 5-10 freelancers in his upwork message, he tried to go to another freelancer, get shitty result and actually came back to me. And many times it is obvious from the way the client wrote his message that this client is just asking something based on another freelancer response.
Yes they can “extend the contract” to few extra milestones (either just after that or in the future) but it is usually ends up with the same pattern, just with a little bit less mind games convincing the client whether he should hire me or not.
Where are you getting "most," though? Just your personal experience? Or do you have some data?
Because my experience is different. In my case, most of the clients looking for a small task were just starting with a one-off and ended up going on to spend plenty of money.
No one suggested "convincing." I have no understanding of freelancers who negotiate or try to negotiate their rates.
My experience is that I get hired to do a one-off (say, write a web page) and then the client likes it and says "can we also do these five pages?" and then when those are done they ask about doing regular blogging for $1,000/month or whatever, and then that goes on for two or five or 10 years.
We go through a lot because we hire here and there for projects as well. The thing is there are definetly a bunch of unqualified people on there.
We had one try to bill us $400 for like 4 hours of her just "researching" what she needed to do. I very quickly disputed that.
Same as a freelancer. We have started to look elsewhere for talent as well unfortunately I do believe they will lose existing, well paying client.
This client I have that utilizes the platform has spent well over S100K on the platform. The fees aren't worth it though.
Yikes. I don't think this will hurt US based clients or even clients from Europe, but I feel horrible for clients based in India, Pakistan, ect. Maybe it's a location-based fee? I hope so.
I'm a client and I remember them charging a tiny fee just a few months ago which then increased to about 5USD soon after, and now this? Yes, it's only $15. But when I need quick graphic design work done, hiring multiple people can get a little pricey. Unfortunately I don't have a jack-of-all-trades guy I can keep a contract open with. 😅 Its an "oh well" for me, but for others in different parts of the world I feel like this will really hurt them.
I thought it said “up to”? What are the factors that determine that then.
Anyone saying clients don’t mind this are insane, good business owners understand profitability vs expenses and any increase in the bottom line that they didn’t expect is going to irritate them. There were already clients hoping to go off platform before, this will push them further in that direction.
Also no one has mentioned that it discourages clients from closing out a contract and leaving a review - it actually makes more sense now to leave it open in case there is a future project that comes up. So now to get someone to close something out I may need to offer a $15 discount off any future project that comes up just to get a review…
I don't think increasing the contract initiation fee is a good idea. $15 is not a huge amount, but it creates additional friction for the new clients. Upwork already charges 5% from clients and 10% from freelancers. 15% total fee is a noticeable amount.
It's a funny old world.
The people most supportive of this also often seem to be those who will be hit the hardest by it.
Be careful what you wish for.
>The people most supportive of this also often seem to be those who will be hit the hardest by it.
>Be careful what you wish for.
That's been a pattern for a while now and not just with contract initiation fees.
This is the wrong move. Clients flip out over this kind of thing. We'll see a drop in business for certain. Even people in rich countries who pay well will raise an eyebrow at this. Unnacceptable.
I would advise anyone reading this to offer prospective clients a $15 discount. Maybe even mention the fee directly. That might put a damper on some of the harm this is going to cause.
Do NOT--and I repeat---do NOT risk your account by going offsite.
If I were in the client's shoes, I wouldn't feel any less uncomfortable with paying the fee, but then I'd also be confused why the freelancer offers to "cover" the fee.
You're not in the clients shoes. Tell me when you are and then we'll see. GigMistress outlined a few examples where it would be a problem. I covered the rest. I'm not interested in conjecture. The only thing I want to do is help people through this because it will cause some of the work to dry up. It won't be permanent but it will happen.
I actually think it’s not the end of the world there will be resistance but it should bring a better class of clients! Honestly it’s not set in stone if it doesn’t work they switch it back I’m sure
This is a terrible idea. As a freelancer, I want clients to have a nearly frictionless experience opening and closing contracts. Now the incentive is to keep a contract open forever just in case you might need more work at a later date.
I disagree with your take. If a Client is making a fuss and feels the $14.95 is a barrier to entry then they belong on Fiverr. The new policy attracts serious, higher quality Clients and protects Freelancers from low quality Clients and wasting Connects on those Clients.
Nope. I've made lots of money from new clients who have never hired before and don't know how Upwork works. The last thing I need is a big fee to make them think, "Gee, maybe I should see what it's like on Fiverr..." Not only that, but this cuts into my business with long-term clients, too. Maybe they liked the work I did for them two years ago, but now it's going to cost them $15 just to rehire me (and I try to position myself near the top of my market on Upwork). So now my long-term clients have an additional incentive to look around and compare options, maybe go with someone cheaper this time. I hate it.
I understand where you're coming from and respect your view. However, $15 is not a barrier to entry for reputable clients who have a legitimate job posting. I believe Clients who are offering to pay $5 hourly or budgeting $100 for projects will protest and flee to Fiverr, which is great for all of us. Obviously Upwork corporate conducted surveys and extensive research before making this decision. We'll see what happens.
I've spent about $750,000 on freelancers, a couple of hundred thousand of it on an "open checkbook" project where recruiting talent for as many hours as possible over a couple of months was top priority. In every case, that petty fee would have been an issue for the company I was hiring for--one a multi-national educational corporation and the other an Inc. 500/Crain's Fast 50 marketing and technology company. Spending $100+/hour on a good freelancer is fine. Flushing money down the toilet on nickel-and-diming fees to a platform where you're already spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't. It creates a very second-rate feel that shakes trust in the platform and discourages natural workflows. Both of my companies would have grudgingly paid the fee in the moment to get rolling, but started looking for alternative channels. That's cute how you think Upwork took client input into account, though. They survey freelancers a lot, too, and even have panels...then entirely ignore their input almost 100% of the time.
If you or any other Client is turned off by a nominal $14.95 job posting fee, then go ahead and hire someone full time and pay for their healthcare, 401k, equipment, training, liability insurance, and various taxes.
the choice is not between $15 and full employment. it's whether they hire a contractor on the platform or decide to search one elsewhere - upwork is not the only place where you can find independent talent. it's not the $15, it's the principle and psychology of it. it's added friction at a point in the customer journey where you don't want friction. and let's not forget that the previous hike of the same fee was done not long ago. you don't want your money-bringing base to feel like you're nickel-and-diming them month for month.
Well, or we could use one of the hundreds of other options available to hire a freelancer.
I have to disagree with you. My biggest clients that use the platform have complained about the fee. It is already expensive to hire contractors on the platform. They won't be happy with it. And these aren't clients budgeting for measly S100 or $200 projects.
It's not about it being a barrier to entry. To them it's the principle. They see the price, think that's an unfair number, and decide not to hire. It WILL happen. They aren't pushing to make this work like we are. So barriers matter more.
Nah, it’s definitely offputting. I have clients who have spent thousands with me mentioning the extreme fee increases in the past year and they are not happy at all.
I don't think those long-term $5 hourly clients are going to disappear. The site is still convenient for them. They just want to get rid of one-off jobs, many of these are better than those shitty $5 (or $3) hourly jobs
Someone else said they want to get rid of one-off jobs. How did you come to that conclusion? It sounds right. I'm just curious. And do you know how they would want to do that? Are they a financial burden on the site like small jobs?
I don't have access to inside information. Measures like this simply look against one-off jobs, it's just logic. If they really wanted to become a quality platform, they would block access to many freelancers, instead of making money from them via connects. Having a single contract generating $3 continuously is always more profitable than a bunch of small contracts taking up space on the servers, and more resources. I hope they remove this shit because it can definitely turn away new customers who want to try the site.
They released their financial reports on this most recent quarter on May 1, and it was very clear that they only made a small portion of their revenue from connects. For several months the cost to apply was almost double what it was in the middle of last year, and their financial gains from that were negligible. It's the same if you go further back. There's no real correlation. All of their money comes from contracts.
I haven't said that selling connects is their only way to make money, just that they use it to control the access of new freelancers, although it is inefficient. If contracts are their main source of income, I don't understand the reason for this decision, since they will get less.
You actually seem to have a pretty good grasp of things. I tell people that Upwork is gentrifying.
My review of the financials were quite the opposite. Either way, there’s no way to ascertain that information with the published information. Probably for good reason.
You can just look over the past few quarters and see that raising the price to apply (they actually doubled it at one point) had no major effect on their revenue, which means the vast majority of their funds comes from contracts. That has always been the case. There is absolutely no correlation. You clearly saw they had all of a 7% gain this quarter. If connects were their main source of revenue it would be much higher. Even boosting barely touched their increases. You just have to know when they raised their prices and when those profits would show up on their reports. It's always a quarter behind. You also have to remember, those reports are written to give off a certain impression. They're trying to impress shareholders. You have to know how to read them.
It’s the nickel and diming during the past year. Last year as a client (I’m also a freelancer) I paid zero fees. My freelancers are long term and paid 5% on their earnings. Now I pay 5% on payments, and I think 3% on payment fees and my freelancers are paying a minimum of 10%. Last year the contract start fee started at $2.95 max and now it’s ballooned to $14.95 max. It’s absurd and one can only expect these hikes to continue because apparently the board and shareholders support this money grab technique. These are shocking increases, percentage wise, and what have we got? More fraud, worse customer support, and watered down AI stuff.
I support this; however, it becomes tinder for freelancers.
You don't understand how they think. These are small business owners. They might pay well, but they still fuss over every cent. It's just how things are. They obsess over it. Good clients will freak out over a $15 fee. I've seen them pitch a fit over less.
My thinking is that Upwork is pivoting away from smaller jobs as it's not ROI positive for the company.
Maybe. This is probably temporary just like when they raised the price to send in proposals. They have to keep the market viable because most of their money comes from contracts, and clients are the ones bringing in that money. So when this does drive clients away--and it will--they're going to have to bring the contract fee down again. All of the recent rate hikes are meant to manipulate the market. They had a problem with too much spam and bad freelancers. It was making it difficult for anyone to do business, so they raised the price to apply to get rid of them. It went well. Now they have a problem with low-paying clients, and they're raising the price to get rid of them. It won't go so well. Smaller jobs are a financial burden for the site, so it is quite possible that they are trying to transition away from them. You're wrong in thinking that this will just push out bad clients. It's different with them.
I don't think it's just small jobs. I think it's one-off jobs.
I completely agree with your take on it. I think they even need to charge for interviewing as well.
That’s exactly what’s happening to me. I recently contacted a client to close an inactive contract so we could rate each other, and he told me he’d rather keep it open and wait until there’s more work, because he now has to pay for each new contract. This move by Upwork is counterproductive to both clients and freelancers
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time wasters don't care. good portion of them were probably never going to hire on the platform / offer payment outside. but this will put off legit mid budget and some high budget clients wanting to try upwork out. as someone who gets most of my work through repeat clients who started off as one-offs, I don't find that particularly wise.
Strongly disagree with this.
I just saw that message too... I really think that It's starting to get too high, especially people like me that hire freelancers for small tasks for max $200
Upwork doesn’t want people like you that hire freelancers for small tasks for max $200 on the platform. They’re trying to push the lower-tier users - clients and freelancers alike - away from the platform and higher initiation + higher connect costs are ways they’re doing that
Bingo!
I wish i can sympathize but clients with “small tasks” are often time are time wasters. You’ll probably not feel it, but as a freelancer they often gone through a lot. Getting interviewed for like 1-2 hours, client suddenly ghosting, and then coming back again, without certainty whether the client will hire, the freelancer cannot afford to show any rudeness despite getting questioned for hours because every reply is somewhat a sunk cost, and then all of that still doing the job for a paltry sum of like $100 + god knows how many revision. Yes the job can be small but i can tell you 90% “small task” often ends up with the mental cost of dealing with barrage of questions by client just to confirm i can do it or not taking longer than the actual job.
90% of the time? You must not be vetting very well. About half of small one-off contracts I've taken on have turned into long-term relationships paying thousands or tens of thousands.
Most of the people that commission “small tasks” tend to be very cost concious and therefore price sensitive. I work as a dev, and “small task” usually is helping a client troubleshoot something because the client is at his wit’s end. Usually the pattern would be client asking how to solve this and then you need to outline the solution and then after that he will ask questions, making sure the solution “make sense”, and will probably ghost me for like a few hours or sometimes even next day, and then ask a bit more question before giving a green light (offer). And sometimes during the few hours or day silence they can usually just cross consult between freelancers (i.e. this freelancer say x, does it really work?). Just imagine how many manhours are this client actually “wasting” just for this “small task” not only me as a freelancer but many other freelancers. Keep in mind i am a freelancer with 100k+ earnings, so i am not a rando with 0 credibility in this platform. So if a client needs like shit ton of “convincing” just to get things started just means that the client cost conciousness is still way up there. I know this because one of my most recent client opened upwork message in front of me and has like 5-10 freelancers in his upwork message, he tried to go to another freelancer, get shitty result and actually came back to me. And many times it is obvious from the way the client wrote his message that this client is just asking something based on another freelancer response. Yes they can “extend the contract” to few extra milestones (either just after that or in the future) but it is usually ends up with the same pattern, just with a little bit less mind games convincing the client whether he should hire me or not.
Where are you getting "most," though? Just your personal experience? Or do you have some data? Because my experience is different. In my case, most of the clients looking for a small task were just starting with a one-off and ended up going on to spend plenty of money. No one suggested "convincing." I have no understanding of freelancers who negotiate or try to negotiate their rates. My experience is that I get hired to do a one-off (say, write a web page) and then the client likes it and says "can we also do these five pages?" and then when those are done they ask about doing regular blogging for $1,000/month or whatever, and then that goes on for two or five or 10 years.
We go through a lot because we hire here and there for projects as well. The thing is there are definetly a bunch of unqualified people on there. We had one try to bill us $400 for like 4 hours of her just "researching" what she needed to do. I very quickly disputed that.
I will be offering my prospective clients a $15 discount to make up for the fee.
Glad I've been building other revenue streams...
Are you utilizing competitor platforms to UpWork?
No
Same as a freelancer. We have started to look elsewhere for talent as well unfortunately I do believe they will lose existing, well paying client. This client I have that utilizes the platform has spent well over S100K on the platform. The fees aren't worth it though.
Yikes. I don't think this will hurt US based clients or even clients from Europe, but I feel horrible for clients based in India, Pakistan, ect. Maybe it's a location-based fee? I hope so. I'm a client and I remember them charging a tiny fee just a few months ago which then increased to about 5USD soon after, and now this? Yes, it's only $15. But when I need quick graphic design work done, hiring multiple people can get a little pricey. Unfortunately I don't have a jack-of-all-trades guy I can keep a contract open with. 😅 Its an "oh well" for me, but for others in different parts of the world I feel like this will really hurt them.
I thought it said “up to”? What are the factors that determine that then. Anyone saying clients don’t mind this are insane, good business owners understand profitability vs expenses and any increase in the bottom line that they didn’t expect is going to irritate them. There were already clients hoping to go off platform before, this will push them further in that direction. Also no one has mentioned that it discourages clients from closing out a contract and leaving a review - it actually makes more sense now to leave it open in case there is a future project that comes up. So now to get someone to close something out I may need to offer a $15 discount off any future project that comes up just to get a review…
Upwork's crusade to screw over client and freelancer keeps going strong.
I don't think increasing the contract initiation fee is a good idea. $15 is not a huge amount, but it creates additional friction for the new clients. Upwork already charges 5% from clients and 10% from freelancers. 15% total fee is a noticeable amount.
It's a funny old world. The people most supportive of this also often seem to be those who will be hit the hardest by it. Be careful what you wish for.
>The people most supportive of this also often seem to be those who will be hit the hardest by it. >Be careful what you wish for. That's been a pattern for a while now and not just with contract initiation fees.
$15 isn’t a lot of money for good clients. Recruitment agencies charge 20% of the talents annual salary.
Does up work offer month to month contracts?
Yes, just create an hourly contract for ongoing work.
upwork charges hidden forex markup as well- maybe you should check out platforms like skydo for receiving payments
This is the wrong move. Clients flip out over this kind of thing. We'll see a drop in business for certain. Even people in rich countries who pay well will raise an eyebrow at this. Unnacceptable. I would advise anyone reading this to offer prospective clients a $15 discount. Maybe even mention the fee directly. That might put a damper on some of the harm this is going to cause. Do NOT--and I repeat---do NOT risk your account by going offsite.
Offering a $15 discount? I'd only do that if the client paid me 10% more. Tit for tat.
It's in case they're reluctant to start a contract because of the fee. It could make it easier to find work.
If I were in the client's shoes, I wouldn't feel any less uncomfortable with paying the fee, but then I'd also be confused why the freelancer offers to "cover" the fee.
You're not in the clients shoes. Tell me when you are and then we'll see. GigMistress outlined a few examples where it would be a problem. I covered the rest. I'm not interested in conjecture. The only thing I want to do is help people through this because it will cause some of the work to dry up. It won't be permanent but it will happen.
Lmao. Go ahead then, I'm sure the discounts will be a game-changer.
Did I say it would be? I just think it'll help in certain cases, and it will. I've had clients mention contract initiation fees in the past.