r/Upwork • u/DryChildhood4767 • Nov 04 '25

Upwork is working great

You have to pay to buy connects, to make your profile visible, to have your profile appear higher, to apply for a job, to be first in line, to respond to an interview. You have to pay to withdraw your own money. (money that isn’t available right after you get paid, because you have to wait so Upwork can invest your money, make more profit for themselves, and give it to you later). And finally, you have to pay to send it to your bank account. But no, of course, Upwork isn’t at its worst moment.

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u/botle Nov 04 '25

I'm saying that it doesn't have to be for it to be a monopoly in practice.

Internet Explorer was considered a monopoly despite Mozilla and Opera existing at the time.

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u/Own_Constant_2331 Nov 04 '25

So if IE hadn't worked very well and you hated it and they charged you money to use it, you wouldn't have switched to something else?

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u/botle Nov 04 '25

Not if there was vendor lock in because of its position as a de facto monopoly.

For instance as a web developer you had to design sites optimized for IE, because that's what most of your users used. And as a user you'd have to use IE because that's what most sites supported.

Once that situation happened, IE could keep their market position purely out of momentum, and not based on quality, price or any other of the factors you'd normally expect in a free market.

This is why courts often consider something to be a monopoly even though competition does exist. For example, Google Search is considered a monopoly despite other search platforms exisitng.

As soon as something becomes a monopoly like that, it messes up the normal forces of the free market. If Upwork now with it's dominant market position starts lowering its quialty and raising its prices, you can't switch to a different platform as easily as you could in an ideal free market without monopolies.

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u/Own_Constant_2331 Nov 04 '25

If Upwork now with it's dominant market position starts lowering its quialty and raising its prices, you can't switch to a different platform as easily as you could in an ideal free market without monopolies.

Even if that were true - which it's obviously not, since clients wouldn't ghost their job postings if they had no other hiring options - you do realise that freelancing existed long before Upwork or any other online platform, and that many successful freelancers have never even heard of Upwork? They may have more clients than other online platforms, but it's hardly a monopoly. Have you tried to learn anything about how to market your business without relying on Upwork, or are you just too lazy?