I believe I recently read that freelancers chase the money for up to 40 percent of their work. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate the source where I read that.
However, there are plenty of horror stories out there, as well as enough advice out there about how to deal with it, that you can confidently infer this is a significant problem for independent workers.
This is probably why this video is so popular among independent workers:
If I spend four hours working at $20/hour, but then also have to spend eight hours trying to get paid, it has taken me twelve hours to make $80. If, instead, I had spent that twelve hours working at $10/hour and got paid at the click of a button for it, then I have earned $120.
That is 50 percent more money for the same number of hours of effort at nominally half the hourly rate.
This is one of the reasons I like Textbroker: If I do the work adequately, I can get paid every week by requesting my pay out. I do this by clicking a button (and then confirming).
This means my actual hourly pay rate is not depreciated after the fact by the process of chasing my pay. Chasing your pay is not only time consuming, it also means you do not get paid in a timely fashion, and you may not get paid at all. Since you might not even get paid, chasing your pay is incredibly stressful.
Until you actually have it in hand, you spend all your time worrying that you wasted your time working for these people. You can't help but fear that you will get bilked.
So, at the same time that it drives your real pay rate down, it drives your stress levels up. This is a dreadful thing to go through. I think if I had to deal with that for every paycheck, that would be torture. I would have zero sense of security or confidence that it would work out.
Most people who do gig work or freelance work seem to go through exactly that scenario a high percentage of the time. This is no doubt one of the reasons it has such a terrible reputation as a very insecure way to live.
But I don't feel that way at all about working for Textbroker. Instead, I feel empowered to build the kind of income I want while retaining a high degree of control over when, where, how and how much I work. For me, this is a dream come true.
When I first began working for Textbroker, I was incredibly ill. I went through long periods where I worked very part time and intermittently. My de facto hourly pay was well below minimum wage and my paychecks were typically small and sporadic.
But the work I managed to complete got paid at the click of a button. That was a really big deal to me.
I knew that a nominally higher pay rate was not necessarily a better deal in reality. Because Textbroker plays middleman, I consistently get paid in full and in a timely fashion without chasing my money. That is a big part of why I stuck with it when I was making so little at first.
Not long ago, I did my first paid writing outside of Textbroker. They came to me, so I did not spend time looking for this assignment. Overall, it was a positive experience. But it did take more time and effort to both garner the work and to get paid for it than how Textbroker works.
On the one hand, it has me feeling like there is a larger world of greater possibilities that I may yet explore. On the other hand, it has renewed my appreciation for the Textbroker model.
I always liked Textbroker, but some of my loyalty was based on a hypothetical comparison point. I now have actual experience of getting a commission that only serves to verify my hypothesis that there is real value in not needing to chase either the work or the pay.
Page updated December 17, 2018.
However, there are plenty of horror stories out there, as well as enough advice out there about how to deal with it, that you can confidently infer this is a significant problem for independent workers.
This is probably why this video is so popular among independent workers:
2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from CreativeMornings/San Francisco on Vimeo.
Thought experiment:If I spend four hours working at $20/hour, but then also have to spend eight hours trying to get paid, it has taken me twelve hours to make $80. If, instead, I had spent that twelve hours working at $10/hour and got paid at the click of a button for it, then I have earned $120.
That is 50 percent more money for the same number of hours of effort at nominally half the hourly rate.
This is one of the reasons I like Textbroker: If I do the work adequately, I can get paid every week by requesting my pay out. I do this by clicking a button (and then confirming).
This means my actual hourly pay rate is not depreciated after the fact by the process of chasing my pay. Chasing your pay is not only time consuming, it also means you do not get paid in a timely fashion, and you may not get paid at all. Since you might not even get paid, chasing your pay is incredibly stressful.
Until you actually have it in hand, you spend all your time worrying that you wasted your time working for these people. You can't help but fear that you will get bilked.
So, at the same time that it drives your real pay rate down, it drives your stress levels up. This is a dreadful thing to go through. I think if I had to deal with that for every paycheck, that would be torture. I would have zero sense of security or confidence that it would work out.
Most people who do gig work or freelance work seem to go through exactly that scenario a high percentage of the time. This is no doubt one of the reasons it has such a terrible reputation as a very insecure way to live.
But I don't feel that way at all about working for Textbroker. Instead, I feel empowered to build the kind of income I want while retaining a high degree of control over when, where, how and how much I work. For me, this is a dream come true.
When I first began working for Textbroker, I was incredibly ill. I went through long periods where I worked very part time and intermittently. My de facto hourly pay was well below minimum wage and my paychecks were typically small and sporadic.
But the work I managed to complete got paid at the click of a button. That was a really big deal to me.
I knew that a nominally higher pay rate was not necessarily a better deal in reality. Because Textbroker plays middleman, I consistently get paid in full and in a timely fashion without chasing my money. That is a big part of why I stuck with it when I was making so little at first.
Not long ago, I did my first paid writing outside of Textbroker. They came to me, so I did not spend time looking for this assignment. Overall, it was a positive experience. But it did take more time and effort to both garner the work and to get paid for it than how Textbroker works.
On the one hand, it has me feeling like there is a larger world of greater possibilities that I may yet explore. On the other hand, it has renewed my appreciation for the Textbroker model.
I always liked Textbroker, but some of my loyalty was based on a hypothetical comparison point. I now have actual experience of getting a commission that only serves to verify my hypothesis that there is real value in not needing to chase either the work or the pay.
Page updated December 17, 2018.
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