March 31st will be a historic day for freelancers on oDesk when the new membership starts to roll out. And just as expected, this new oDesk membership scheme marks another tell tale sign of what I call, the “Elancipation of oDesk“. Remember, they told us that it will be two separate platforms, but they never said that they will continue to work on the same scheme, that is, FREE and equal membership levels on oDesk versus upgrade/paid options on Elance.
So tomorrow, when you log in to your account, you'll have a choice, either you keep a free, basic account or upgrade to freelancer plus plan. The big question is, what is it really for me to be on a free or a paid membership account? If I have been successful with the free account, how can the paid membership be any different? Will I earn more, or get more jobs, have less competitors?
oDesk provided an overview on what to expect come that fateful day and here are they with a few of my personal insights on the issue.
Free Vs Paid
There are two classifications of Freelancer memberships, there is Freelancer basic or the free account and there is also the Freelancer Plus account which is the paid account and will cost you $10/month. These membership classifications are actually the same membership option on Elance.
Key things to remember in the new scheme:
- Membership is required (obviously)
- The basic plan is free for all freelancers.
- Freelancers who upgrade to a Plus plan will have extra perks, like
- Earn an additional 10 Connects per month,
- The ability to buy additional Connects
- Rollover privileges for unused Connects
- Visibility into your competitors’ bids on jobs.
This membership also is available to agency owners. An Agency Plus plan includes
- All the benefits of a Freelancer Plus plan,
- The ability to add team members
- More Connects to be shared within the agency
How will the change affect the oDesk economy?
It will be a sure additional source of revenue for oDesk, but beyond the monetary consequence of this, oDesk actually envisions these changes this way:
“We want to make sure all great freelancers and agencies can succeed on oDesk, whether they work a lot or a little on our platform. We’ve therefore designed membership plans to support your agency at whatever activity level makes sense for your business.
The Agency Plus plan is designed to help our largest and most professional agencies stand apart from other freelancers and single-person agencies. For a monthly fee, the Plus plan offers the ability to support unlimited team members, a higher Connects budget, the ability to purchase and roll over Connects, and visibility into what others are bidding. Going forward, we’ll continue to add benefits that our largest, most active agencies value most.”
My personal thought on oDesk connects and Membership options
I've worked on Elance and oDesk platforms and they both have their own pros and cons. Definitely, the paid option can be a pro or con depending on your personal take on it. I can say that I still favor oDesk over Elance. I think competition is very real on oDesk. You don't just compete based on quality, you also compete on price and the sheer number of freelancers who flood to submit proposals for open projects. And while it is true that paid memberships and limited connects will reduce this number, I'm convinced that standing out of the crowd still depend on
a) Your work history on oDesk,
b) Your previous client's feedback
c) Your approach in presenting yourself with your proposals.
Will I go for the upgrade option? My simple answer is a conditional NO. As long as I can apply to any job, under any category, I will keep the free plan.
What about job categories?
The category fees are implemented in Elance and its probably just days or months away before it becomes a reality on oDesk too. You may have noticed that recently oDesk made some changes with categories and announced a New oDesk Category Structure (March 2015) so it's foreboding that category payment will also soon be a reality. When this takes effect (which I still hope won't happen soon), I'll probably have to get a paid membership as I will need to get into at least three categories like what I used to have in Elance.
I hate these changes at oDesk, which are obviously being introduced for the benefit of one, oDesk itself.
The takeover of oDesk by the owner of Elance has been nothing but bad news, with the changes to the oDesk platform being universally worse than what we had before.
I for one am actively pushing my presence on other freelancing sites now, which I didn’t before, and suspect I won’t be the only one. Well done Elance-oDesk on promoting your competitors.
Hi Christopher,
I am with you on that. While I do like some of the changes that happened lately, like the imposition of minimum hourly rate and escrow payment, I think Elance will earn more out of this change but will get the ire of the oDesk community. And this makes me think, probably it’s high time to stop being overly dependent on the freelance sites but consider selling our services out of our own websites more aggressively, instead.
I just signed up as an odesk (now upwork?) freelancer, and while I’ve barely had a chance to use the site, I’m not too happy about the changes. I can understand how it could be beneficial for clients and for upwork if those on a free membership plan are limited in their ability to apply for jobs, that makes sense, but paying ten dollars a month for just ten more credits and the option to pay for more is ridiculous.
I would be happier, and much more inclined to pay a membership fee if it gave me unlimited credits. I get that upwork is growing and that means they have to start raking in more cash, but I would think that if a paid membership allowed unlimited credits they’d have more people signing up, and be making more money than by charging the most active, and thereby there most loyal users, the most. Or another option could be to eliminate or at least reduce the cut they take out of every project for paid members.
I also understand that this will reduce spam and mass messaging for jobs, which is great for clients, but I fail to see how this will help me stand out from the competition. Like this article stated, it all depends on you work history, your feedback, and how you present yourself. I will still give upwork a chance, but I will be looking into other options.
Hi Mitch,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. I frankly haven’t tried the paid membership ever since Odesk introduced this option. I might say that this has less effect on me and those who already have a good work history in the platform, and I can understand that this may not be the same with those who are just starting out on Upwork.
Take advantage of the free/basic membership while you’re testing the waters and if you’ve ran out of connects and still have not won a project, then a small investment of $10 would be worth it. I’m sure as soon as you’ve garnered a few 5 star feedback from your clients it will be a lot easier to nail the next project and you probably wouldn’t have to upgrade to the paid membership moving forward.