So the document I have up right now is a study that just came out yesterday from the San Francisco Comptroller's Office that looks at the size of the gig economy in San Francisco specifically. I just wanted to pull this up so we can talk about it later on, but I'll come back to it after we go through the introduction first. So welcome, everyone. Thank you guys so much for joining me here today. My name is Casey Anderson, and I am an instructional designer at Sama School. Sama School is a nonprofit organization where we're related to Sama Source, if you are familiar with that organization. But fundamentally what Sama School does is bring opportunity to people by training them and helping them succeed in digital work. There's a lot of different vocabulary terms out there right now, but basically what we mean by digital work is work that is facilitated by the internet. So you might have heard of the gig economy, the sharing economy, the task for hire. There's a lot of different terms out there, but they're all related to and referring to work that is obtained using technology, and generally also it's completely facilitated by technology. So for example, applying to monster.com, which is a website where they put job postings, that we wouldn't consider that online work because you're just applying online, and then you're going to go into an office and be an employee of a company. So online work is really facilitated and only possible now that we all have smartphones and mostly everyone has access to the internet. But the reason why my organization exists is because low income people are disproportionately affected by the digital divide, which is essentially access to the internet. And so without access to the internet, without experience with technology, it's really hard to take advantage of the opportunities that are now available. So we work on an in-person class where we train people, and then we also have an online program, which is what I specifically manage and work on. Hi, hi everyone. Can I just grab your names really quick? Rachel. Rachel, hi Rachel. And what brings you here today? Curiosity. Curiosity, awesome. Ben. Ben. Nice to meet you, Ben. Anything in particular bring you here today? Are you also just curious? Work. Work, got it. Okay, good job. And then... Dave. Dave. Awesome, great. Well, thanks for joining us guys. You didn't miss much. All I just mentioned was my name is Casey, and I'm an instructional designer at a nonprofit on 16th admission called Saba School. I work in an online program, and then I do these talks at the library to help also bring this information to our community. So, introduction to online work. So today's session, this is gonna be kind of our overview. We're gonna talk about what online work is. So I just gave you our definition, but we're also gonna go into it more deeply. We're gonna talk about how it's different from traditional work. So the way that you may have experienced work in the past, or the way you've conceptualized work in the past and how it differs from that. We'll talk about safety. I know that that might be a concern for some of you. If you've ever received a scam email or heard about a scam email or something like that, we'll definitely address that. We'll get to the part about what are the different opportunities that are out there and how you access those opportunities. And at the end, I'll show you some of the stats. I'll either show the stats from the San Francisco either at the end or when it comes up. And I also have a lot of resources I can share with all of you that I'll show you time permitting at the end. So at any point, if I'm speaking too quickly or if I'm saying, using a word that you don't understand, we, working in this sector, there's a lot of jargon and I don't, sometimes I don't realize when I'm using a jargon, a term that is not commonly used. So just please call me out on it. I won't, it won't, I won't care. So, online work. Online work is work that is accessed or performed using the internet. So, like I just said, that can take a couple of different forms. The primary form that, there's two primary forms that we're gonna talk about today, basically online only work. So that is probably what many of you are interested in here today. So online only work is work that is completely done on the computer. So you go to a website where jobs are posted, you apply to those jobs, and then if you receive that job, you do that work on your own computer and then submit it through the internet. So you actually never have to meet the client and you basically just need an internet connection and the ability to do the job. We really think that, we find that online work or being successful in online work really requires two components. One is basic digital literacy. So even if you think you're not tech savvy, it doesn't really require a lot of technical skills. It's basically at this point just navigating websites and knowing how to send emails properly and then a lot of your professionalism training that you've already learned in a mast will apply. So writing proper emails is the same as communicating professionally, things like that. The second type of online work is what is referred to as the gig or sharing economy. And so that is an opportunity to you because you live in San Francisco. If you lived anywhere, if you lived in a small rural town, there wouldn't be enough demand to merit the sharing of any of these platforms popping up. So for example, you can't drive Uber for Uber in like a very small rural town because there's just not the demand there so people don't do it. You can try, but really it's a kind of an opportunity that was only afforded to those that live in urban areas. San Francisco in particular has the most online work like sharing economy or gig economy platforms. And so it has the most opportunities in that field. However, the wages do vary and we'll talk about kind of like the different platforms and their reputations later on. But so JP Morgan Chase recently did a study looking at the online economy and also they did some research looking at people that had bank accounts with them that participated in the online economy. And basically they've estimated that by 2025 online work is gonna add 2.7 trillion to global GDP just for context that is the size of the UK economy. And it will also provide 540 million people with access to work. So essentially what's happening with online work is that by decentralizing marketplaces, so usually labor markets are in a certain area, right? You could only hire someone if you could physically find them but this actually opens it up and makes it borderless. So you can hire anyone anywhere in the world which has its drawbacks, which we'll get to. But it's awesome because it creates opportunities for all of us and also allows for greater efficiencies in terms of finding the right people for the right jobs or finding opportunities for yourself. Also a caveat is that this percentage online work is growing at 22% so that is true but remember that it's a global competitive market so even though it's growing more quickly and has more jobs available, just that's something to keep in mind is that there's also more competition on these platforms. And also the offline jobs growth rate is obviously not San Francisco's job growth rate. That's the US as a whole. So move on unless anyone has any questions about the basic definition of online work. No, cool. So the biggest thing to think about when you're considering online work is how it's going to affect your status. Basically most online work opportunities are freelancer opportunities or independent contractor, self-employed, again a lot of terms that mean the same thing. The official designation according to the IRS is independent contractor and that's why it's important is because essentially you have to file your own taxes and taxes aren't taken out of your paycheck. So that's the official IRS distinction. And it's important because it's really important to consider the pros and cons of being an independent contractor prior to entering into this world. Not to say that employee type work online doesn't exist, that does but usually that's done as kind of a remote work arrangement with a company and it's less kind of centralized like this is. Although there are some but yeah most of the platforms I'm talking about today are gonna be freelance opportunities. And so some of the things to think about when you're considering becoming a freelancer is, so I already mentioned the first one is taxes. So when you're an employee all of the taxes are taken out of your paycheck so the check you receive or the money you actually receive already has taxes deducted from it. So at the end of the year depending on your income level like those taxes, the taxes you've already, you basically prepaid a certain amount of your taxes whereas as a freelancer there's two things. One, you can file quarterly which is what we recommend. So basically estimating how much taxes, how many taxes you owe in a certain quarter so four months, three months sorry. However that requires a lot of diligence. So that's something I always talk about with Uber drivers is like are you aware you have to file taxes on your own? Are you doing that? Like making sure that people understand that Uber is not submitting taxes for you and so that's a big surprise for some people at the end of the year and they realize I made all this money and it was untaxed so now I have to pay taxes on it and you actually end up owing a lot more. So that's one of the major components to think about. If you're on top of it it should not be a deterrent. It's just simply another kind of point to consider. The second one is benefits.  Any of the benefits you would get in a traditional job. This of course is another point to consider and makes it more difficult to become a freelancer because essentially if you get sick, if you can't work for any reason, it's kind of all on you so there's a lot of pressure there. Another thing to consider is professional development. As a freelancer you are really your own boss. You are really tasked with guiding yourself and making sure your career is moving along the way you wanted to or the way this, the way you can really shape this however you want, right? So if you want to continually try to get new projects, try to get slightly harder projects, bigger projects, that's up to you. You can also just stick with the little projects forever. No one's gonna be telling you what to do. There's no manager, there's no director of any kind that's telling you how to move forward and progress within the track that you've chosen. So again, very self-directed and something that you should be intentional about and you should plan. So for example, I do a lot of side projects on one of the platforms I'm gonna talk about later and exactly that. I have to really think about, I get a lot of requests for projects and I have to really think about what I wanna do and what I wanna take on and if I have the time. And so it's just something that you have to be intentional about. The most exciting thing for people usually when they hear about freelancing is the flexibility. So yes, you have to pay your own taxes. Yes, you don't have benefits, you don't have sick leave, you don't have all of these kind of safety nets. However, you can do basically work whenever you want. You can work from a coffee shop, you can work from your home, you can work around your parent schedule that you have to take care of, you can work around your children's schedule that you have to take care of. It's really flexible. Hi, yeah. Not yet, no. I'm just describing the fundamental difference between an employee and a freelancer and most online jobs are for freelance only. So I'm just kind of explaining what that difference means and looks like in real life. Cool, no problem. And what's your name? I'm Logan. Logan, nice to meet you, Logan. Cool. So yeah, so that's the great thing is you can work on your schedule. I have a full-time job obviously so I work on my side projects either on the weekend or if I stay up really late or kind of just whenever I have the time. And so it's really flexible. And many people do it when they have irregular schedules and so that's one of the reasons this is so great is because it can accommodate irregular schedules or make up the hours when you have part-time work or you are underemployed or something like that. And the final one which may be a pro or con depending on your perspective is that you don't have an office. So you don't have the office camaraderie, you don't have coworkers, those types of things. These days there are co-working spaces so if you guys have heard of WeWork for example, that's a co-working space. So if you were a freelancer and you wanted that sense of camaraderie, you could pay to rent a desk at WeWork and work from there. And they have events, they have happy hours so they do kind of try to emulate that. Yeah, I did a fellowship program a while ago that was based there. But yeah, so you don't have to go into an office so there's no commute, there's no nine to five. So again, I just wanted to lay these out to explain to you the major differences and things you should think about when you're considering freelancing just because we have seen a lot of people kind of not anticipate the taxes question or not realize there's no benefits or something like that. And so we just want to make sure it's really clear what you're kind of signing up for. Like I said, there's a lot of kind of challenges but there are a lot of benefits. So if it's right for your situation then it is something worth pursuing because it can be kind of achieved. So safety.  Have you ever received an email from a foreign individual asking you for your bank account so they can send you money? Yeah, see, everyone's laughing. You are all familiar with the prince or the banker that wants to share this large inheritance with you. So that's, I mean an email scam quite clearly and I've heard of some really sophisticated ones like my aunt and uncle's friend got hacked and so he sent an email to them asking him for money and it was their friend and he said he was in a situation and so they're like, oh man, we have to help him. So they replied in Spanish to see if they would reply again and they didn't reply and then they called him and he was like, yeah, that wasn't me. So that was a lucky situation but they are getting smarter and so you do have to be careful and watch out. We have a tool that helps you identify if something is a scam so kind of just putting in some basic information. However, it's based off of like the job posting format and so if it's a different format, we have guidelines that you can follow essentially but that is the caveat. But yeah, some general tips for online safety is that you should never have to work.   So you should never pay to do work online. That being said, some, and I'll get into this later, some platforms do require small fees. Most of the platforms make their money by charging a commission off of what you earn. So generally you don't pay to do, you pay kind of once you get the job and you get paid. Yes, sir? Yeah, so I'll get into that in a moment but essentially these are platforms or the term platforms and it's really just a website. It's a company that is providing a centralized location where freelancers and clients can meet. So clients will post jobs on these websites and freelancers will apply to them. There's a, the great thing about platforms is that they have reputation mechanisms in place. So the way that on Uber, if you've ever given a star rating or if you've ever written a Yelp review or any of these kinds of reputation mechanisms, these platforms have incorporated them and so you can build reputations on them and then that of course over time has its own perks. But I will get into that later. But yeah, I mean basically the platforms are really helpful because they kind of vet the opportunities, not saying that there's never scams on them but it's very easy to tell which ones are the scams on the platforms. So again, I'll go back to that. So yeah, I should never pay to do a job. Don't share personal information like your social security number or credit card number, things like that. You'd be surprised but people do ask for it and people do give it to them. So just be careful. I know some of this might be common sense. Yeah.  Yeah, so great question. No. Basically, it depends. Some platforms that will do that, like Uber for example, you have to give them your social security number but that's Uber. So it's a company, it's reputable, you know it, you can look up information about them, you can verify them on the Better Business Bureau, things like that. What I'm talking about is when you're on a platform and you're negotiating with a client through messages, if you're on a platform, there's no reason to share your personal information because the platform handles all of that. The platform handles payment, the platform handles like every step of the process. I'm sorry. But the platform needs your social security. Yes, exactly. But you don't need to share it with them. And actually, I'm not even entirely sure if the platform does need your social security number every time. Yeah, a lot of this, they don't, not every platform will send you a 1099, so you have to report it yourself. But yeah, with a client, don't share personal information. Again, if it's too good to be true, probably is, so referring back to that email scam that everyone's gotten. Doing research, so you can use the Better Business Bureau, which is a government agency. Basically, that is a watchdog of companies. So you can check to make sure the business exists. You can also Google the business, see if there's a website, see if it's a real website. If you're really concerned, you can look up like the directory and find out when the website was created. There's a lot of different ways you can kind of vet a company, but it's always a good idea to do a little bit of research and also ask them questions if they're asking you questions. And the final one. So I had a student that was hired for his first job to write 500 articles. And he was so excited to get his first job, he just started writing, had wrote 50 of them and sent them to the client and was like, is this good? Is this the style you want? Client never responded, never paid him. And it was really, really sad for this guy. Yeah, so with a big project like that, again, online work is based on trust. So these platforms are great and they provide different reputation mechanisms. However, you also don't want to engage in a relationship like 500 articles is a lot of work to commit to. So if someone, and I'm not saying don't do a project like that, that's awesome, that's gonna be a great source of income for you. But before you commit to doing the 500, do a test project first. Say I will write one article for you first and I will get it to you by tomorrow and you can read it. Tell me if you like the style, the formatting, the grammar, whatever. And then we can move forward from there. And that kind of lets you test the responsiveness of the client as well so that you kind of know what you're getting into. Yeah, sorry, I wasn't done speaking. Sorry. It's okay, I understand. The question is a good one. So there are contracts, but I mean there, so Upwork tries to protect you. So I'm gonna talk about Upwork a lot today. Upwork is kind of the main platform that we use and are familiar with, but there's a lot of other ones that I will also explain. So you do enter into a contract and they try to guarantee your payment as much as possible. But for example, clients, you can see if their payment is verified. So that means that Upwork has, they've connected their bank account and Upwork knows that this is actually their bank account and they can pull money out of it and things like that. There's different types of projects and so there's different levels of security and adherence to that contract. So in this case, there was a contract, but it wasn't secured, essentially. And so he wasn't able... Contract really... I mean, it's a global platform, right? So if a client is in a different country, that doesn't really, the contract doesn't have much meaning. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's why I'm saying be careful and be aware and do your research and talk to the clients first. But also Upwork has had billions in business transactions and has been around for almost 10 years. I've used it many, many times, been paid no problem. So I'm scaring you because I want you to be aware of these potential pitfalls. So you don't make them, but don't think that they're the norm or that online work is not a realistic opportunity for you because it is. I just want you to be, I just want to be crystal clear on the potential negatives so that you just are aware of them and can see them and identify them if they do present themselves. All right, types of online work. So I already kind of touched on this, but we basically just broke down online work into four buckets so that we could basically, by the type of platform. So again, the platform is just a website or the way that you're connected to work. It just makes it easier for talking about them. So a services marketplace is an online only work opportunity. So what that means is that it's a website where there is a marketplace. So there is interactions between the client and the freelancer. What I mean by that is that as a client, you can post a job and freelancers can email you or message you and request to do that job. Or as a freelancer, you can have a profile and clients can search for people that do work that you do and message you directly to do the work. So there's this back and forth exchange of negotiation, opportunity, discussion, et cetera. And it's really, it's services-based. So different platforms focus on different services. The one I mentioned, Upwork, is the largest because it does everything. So any service you can think of, patent law is on there, graphic design, accounting, literally, anything you can think of is available on Upwork. And then there's more specialized, more niche platforms that focus on one area or another, and I'll come back to that in a moment. On-demand services, this is the gig economy, the sharing economy, things like that. These are mostly only found in urban areas. They're facilitated primarily by smartphones. So an application is necessary. So for on-demand, you generally don't need to have a computer. You can just get away with having a smartphone if you're providing a service in person. So even though you're fine, and so on-demand is really characterized by you find the work through the internet, like through the app, you interact with a customer or client in person, but then you finish the job on the app again.  So there's really, this one, there's not a lot of, there's no back and forth. It's kind of just like there's a job and it goes to the next available person. So as the freelancer, you don't really have a lot of say in the matter of the clients or the situation that you're getting yourself into, but it's the same thing over and over and over again. So you always know what the job will be, even if you don't know what the client will be. And again, this is a great opportunity in San Francisco and I have some awesome stats on the growth of the gig economy in San Francisco. I'll come back to. E-commerce is kind of the most traditional online work opportunity that people are familiar with. So something like eBay, Etsy, those types of places where you make something physically, but you sell it online. So the transaction is facilitated by online. So one of our students, one of the online students is a guy that lives in Uganda and he was trying to figure out what to do online. And I was like, and he was telling me about these bracelets that they make in his neighborhood. And so I told him to start selling them cause some American is gonna be like, that's awesome. And he did, they did. And so now he does that and it's really fantastic. And then independent isn't really a type. This is more of our catch all category for people that don't use platforms. So I'm gonna talk about the benefit of using platforms in a moment, but essentially freelancing without a platform is just what freelancing was like 15 years ago.  It's a lot easier now to be freelancer thanks to platforms. And so we keep that up there as an option and that's something that people strive towards definitely because there's no fees. However, being independent means you have to write your own contracts, you have to find your own clients, you have to guarantee payment yourself. So there's a lot of conveniences that platforms provide that being independent makes challenging or adds another layer of work to the existing work that you have to do. So talking about service marketplaces. So Upwork, that's the one I've been talking about. That's the biggest one underneath that is Guru Freelancer. And then thumbtack is actually shouldn't be up in this slide should be on the next slide. Talk about it in a minute. But yeah, Upwork Guru and Freelancer are all the same. You go on there, you create an account, you have to provide some information about yourself and then you can start applying to jobs. That's not what we recommend you do, but it is possible and there are many jobs listed. So if you wanted to, you could just literally sign on or not even sign in and just look at the jobs they have available. They are very wide ranging. These three all do kind of everything. So like I said, you can find any type of job, but for example, there's this other one called 99 Designs that only does graphic design. So if you need a graphic designer, 99 Designs. Yeah, that one's just for graphic design and that type of work. So if you have that skill and you are interested in that type of work, I would recommend going to that platform because it's more specialized. You probably, A, have less competition and B, it's probably more serious work or more higher skilled work. But we do recommend kind of testing out every platform and the demand on each platform and things like that. I'll get to best practices later on though, don't worry. Yes? So to learn about it. No, I'm working on building, so I'm basically right now I'm building a giant spreadsheet of every platform I can find and then trying to get what they do, the type of service. Yeah, it's very exhaustive and it's pretty basic and also the geographies because I do an online program so I have to find out what opportunities are available to people in other countries. It's primarily the people who take it. However, I will provide you guys with access to it later on. Basically, I was gonna say it later on, but there's a bunch of resources that I have in the online course that I manage. So there's the feedback forms. If you leave your email with Donia, she'll send me everyone's email and then I'll make sure to send out. Make sure you write it clearly, please though. Have trouble reading them sometimes. But yeah, and I'll email out all of the resources that I mentioned today. So one of them is this, I really apologize, it's clunky. I'm working on improving it, but it's a lot of research and I have other things as well. But yeah, so it's just a spreadsheet with all of the service, about 100 service marketplaces and then even more gig economy, sharing economy apps, but not all of them are available everywhere. But yeah, so in terms of the service marketplaces, so like I said, this is characterized by two-way communication between clients and freelancers and the market size last year was 4.4 billion and it's expected to reach 25 billion by 2020. So it's really growing very rapidly. Upwork alone I know reached the billions last year. So it's a really growing opportunity, like I said. And then these are some sample jobs, but this is not by any means exhaustive. I just wanted to give you an idea of the types of jobs that are available. So personal assistant, so it's also called virtual assistant, customer service, web and graphic design, translation, like any language, and transcription, writing in general, so there's article writing, blog writing, there's many different subcategories. And I'll go on to Upwork and show you guys what it looks like in a moment. So on-demand services, so this is what I was talking about, Tasker hire, gig economy, sharing economy, these are all referring to the same thing, so these are services that you kind of request immediately and the freelancer doesn't have much choice other than agreeing to be working in that moment. So there's a great app called Winolo, which is essentially a temp work app, so you turn on Winolo, and it was really annoying, I had it on my phone for a while, you turn Winolo on, you say I'm willing to accept work right now, and you turned on, and you'll start getting all these buzzing notifications that like this warehouse in San Francisco needs a stock worker for the day, or this office in North Beach needs a secretary for the day, or there's an event down in San Jose and they need more security guards, just like everything you can think of, and they were just starting out when I tried this out and they had a lot of variety of jobs, so I definitely encourage you to check it out because you literally just turn it on and then you accept the work and then you go do it. Sorry, what? No, Winolo is based in San Francisco and has been here. How do you spell it? Winolo, W-O-N-O-L-O. Yeah, and so the great, I like Winolo a lot because they kind of help out the freelancer a bit more, so I'm sure you guys have heard about Uber and the challenges of being an Uber driver. There was a recent news article that talked about how after taxes an Uber driver in San Francisco makes $13.75 an hour, which is below the minimum wage in San Francisco. So yeah, things to consider. However, not every platform does that. It's really, each platform has a different structure as to the way they take a commission essentially, and so Winolo is one of the best ones because they're very transparent about commission and fees and things like that, and they also provide you with training and provide you with support and things like that so that you kind of know what you're getting into. So there's no surprises. Less surprises is good. But yeah, this is also a high growth sector, $5 billion in 2015, and it's seeing 500% growth year over year, so we expect this kind of to keep growing and the gig economy paper from the SF Comptroller's office I'll bring up later kind of shows that. These are some other platforms. Again, I have a big list, but Handy is mostly cleaning and handyman services. Care.com is like any sort of caregiving service, so it also includes pet sitting, it includes tutoring, it includes childcare, elderly care, all sorts of things, so it's really varied and their care is actually the best platform out there in terms of they sign something called the fair care pledge or fair work care pledge, some name like that, but essentially what they're saying is they're committing to creating equitable work in this new space because that's one of the big debates right now is how do we make inclusive and equitable work because right now we are, there is a debate between like is an Uber driver an employee or is he a contractor? And that debate applies to all of this type of work and so it's really an open question as to how to make this inclusive and equitable and so it's this thing called the good work code is it's a kind of like a project to have this discussion and so it's a partnership between a lot of different organizations and the only organization that is committing to this is care.com so far. There's been a bunch of think tanks, some nonprofits including ours, but yeah. And then Uber, oh and then I also forgot to mention thumbtack. Thumbtack is another great option if you want to do in-person work, so thumbtack is, it's a hybrid because you basically can message, you can bid on clients and you can have a profile and your profile is shown to clients but we have a student that has been doing really well on thumbtack as a dog sitter so she takes care of dogs and has just really exploded and been able to sustain herself just from that but I know that thumbtack also does things like DJs, wedding photographers in general kind of just all of those types of services. Does anyone have any questions about the idea of on-demand services or the idea of service marketplaces before I move on? Cool, all right. So I'm gonna talk about just some tips for getting started and some best practices that we've learned over the past few years of working on these platforms and helping students get on there and then I will start showing you guys some of the platforms and we'll talk about the different opportunities that exist and we'll also look at the rate of growth in San Francisco for the gig economy. So one of the best, the first thing that I'm going to say is that it's very, very challenging to try to sell all of your skills online so we've had students in the past that are trained in graphic design because they went to school for it or something like that but they're really interested in doing something totally different like translation or something and so they try to create a profile that fits both of those categories but the problem is that by trying to be kind of a jack of all trades, you're a master of none and everyone wants to hire a specialist, right? You wanna think that you're hiring a person whose entire life is dedicated to content writing and so if they also are writing that they are a graphic designer as well then you're like, oh well, I don't know how much specialization is here so the first thing is definitely pick one thing to focus on. This mostly applies to service marketplaces so online only. With gig, it's, I mean, again, you would get more job opportunities if you do more things but if they have a review mechanism so TaskRabbit, for example, has reviews and so your reviews would get muddled like there would be one review for your handyman service, one review for your event planning service, one review for something else and so potential clients would see that and again be potentially turned off by that fact but for example there are different services so it really depends on the level of reviews and rating systems that they have in place and if they're publicly visible or then you should try to focus on one thing so an Upwork specifically and the freelancer, all the service marketplaces, I highly recommend focusing on one thing. If you really wanna test out whether you would be better at one thing or another I would say create two profiles on two different websites and just see which one you get a job with first and then pivot to that but it makes it a lot easier and also you're able to improve more quickly if you focus on one thing so I did, I had, my profile said a lot of different things when I first started I have to test every platform out basically to make sure our students to figure out how to teach it and I had academic rating, I had research, I had a lot of different things and the projects I got were really varied and they really didn't let me kind of grow in one direction they kind of, I just kept getting kind of the same low level projects and so then I put just one thing on my profile and all of a sudden I start getting requests for just that one thing and a lot more consistently and a lot more so it's definitely advantageous to focus on one thing. So start building your personal brand from day one so what we mean by this is kind of what I referenced earlier that a lot of the same tools of professionalism and skills that you've acquired in the traditional work world still apply online so whenever you write a message to a client it looks like a chat box but it's not. You are still communicating with a client and so you should still use proper greetings you should still use proper grammar and I know that this might sound silly to some of you but these are real issues we've encountered and so I'm obliged to say them but yeah and when you do an in-person work when you do an in-person service so going to someone's house to clean or something like that again you want to exude professionalism and think about who is the person you would want to hire and how would you want them to act and just start doing that consistently and your personal brand simply just like is created from that and the consistency and you can even start looking at your reviews and seeing what keywords are used to describe you and then kind of trying to build off of that and kind of continue to build that reputation that direction like use them in your profile and things like that. Number three so before you get started with online work we would highly highly highly recommend completely filling out your profile. Your profile is basically your resume but it's very similar to LinkedIn and if you have a LinkedIn I think that's great because you can just copy and paste things over to all of your different profiles on different websites but essentially a client is not going to hire someone who doesn't have any information on their profile who doesn't have their previous work experience or their previous work history or their education or whatever. It's okay if you don't have these things but if you do have them it's really important to put them on there because it gives you a leg up and the more that you fill out the more you kind of prove that you're a real person and you're not trying to scam them or do something like that and so they're already going to be more confident and more trusting in you. On one of the platforms is one called Field Nation which is very very technical so if any of you are kind of like IT people or IT repair or networking skills or things like that, Field Nation is really good but they did research on their platform so this is only from their platform but they said that having a fully completed profile improves your chances of getting a job by 200%. So it's really significant and really helpful to have a fully completed profile. And things that are good about a profile again, there's usually an overview so that's kind of like a cover letter so that's kind of your pitch. You get to kind of formulate it and sell yourself because this is what people will be looking at and then a professional headshot of you or a professional picture of you or if you don't have one just cut one off at your shoulders that looks as professional as possible. But yeah, and then, so the next, so yeah, so that's your profile and it varies from platform to platform and Geiger sharing economy platforms are going to have less thorough profiles and they don't matter as much on Geiger sharing economy because again, the job, you don't get to kind of select your freelancer on one of these platforms like Uber or TaskRabbit you can but like Uber for example, you don't really get to select who's working with you or handy. You simply put in a request and someone is sent to you, a freelancer comes to you and so in that situation a profile isn't as necessary but you can see how in somewhere where there's a back and forth exchange between the freelancer and the client, your profile is a reflection of you and so you should give yourself the best possible chance by completing it. Be highly communicative, so one of the things with online work is that people, you have a better chance of you're more responsive because the sooner you apply after a job is posted, the sooner like if the client is still online they're gonna see your proposal and they're gonna read it right away and if you fit what they want then they'll start interviewing you. So it's really advantageous to be online often, be online and applying the job as soon as they're posted and replying to clients as soon as possible because basically you're competing with anybody, right? And so if the client is looking for someone and they have messaged you and they've messaged another person and you're both qualified to do the work, that other person messaged them first, they're gonna get the job. So you really wanna be on top of it and put effort into being responsive, set an alert on your phone or set an alert on your desktop to know when you get an email from Upwork or just keep Upwork open and you can enable notifications. There's a lot of different ways, but yeah, you definitely wanna be communicative and talking to clients, letting them know deadlines if anything changes. Basically we recommend being as responsive as possible because people like that. The next thing is write a lot of proposals. So this is really specifically to online only. So if you're interested in the gig or sharing economy, please let me know later on and we can talk about that some more. But you only write proposals in online only because you're only kind of submitting proposals for jobs that you find online. You don't have to submit a proposal to give someone an Uber ride, that would take too long. You have to submit a proposal to write a chapter in someone's book or to make a PowerPoint for someone because they wanna make sure you're the right person for the job. With something like Uber where the same task is done every time, that isn't necessary and so it's inefficient and so that's why they're able to kind of remove that part of the process by just vetting and making sure that you have like a clean driving record. You have insurance and these types of things are your safeguards.  So your proposal is really kind of like a cover letter. So we generally recommend going over what you would do with this project, like how you would do it and explaining why you're the best person to do it. So akin to a cover letter but slightly different and that's why you also want your profile to be good because they're gonna also check your profile after you've read your proposal if they're interested. Yeah? Is any of this communication with the test audience? Yeah, great question. So initially the proposal round is definitely written. However, you can upload media files. So if you want to make a video or you want to do something like an audio, you can't include that. On your profile, you can also include a video, like an introductory video instead of writing your overview. And then if you make it to the interview stage, which is like you send your proposal and you get accepted for an interview and sometimes they'll just hire you right away. But if you do get to an interview stage and anything, sometimes yeah, they will want to do a Skype.  So I definitely, it's a possibility but it's not like the norm. Cool. But yeah, so the main thing I want to emphasize here is that when you're first starting out on these platforms, you don't have a reputation. You have zero stars. You have no stars, actually. So you have no reviews. No one has kind of vetted you. And so it's gonna take a lot of proposals to get that first job. It'll really kind of depend on what skills you have. So what jobs you're trying to get. I can tell you right now if you're trying to do customer service or virtual assistant, those are kind of, right? The lowest skilled jobs that you can do online and so can people in the Philippines and different parts of Africa. And so the competition for those jobs is very high and there's no minimum wage on up work. They actually put a cap recently so it can't go below $3 but there are people that will work for $3 an hour. And so that's, yeah. So that's why I want to warn you about this global market. Just on the subject of virtual assistant, I found certain requirements where you need accounting ability for $3 an hour. Well, I mean, that is going to be like a more highly skilled virtual assistant, right? What if that was like virtual assistant? Oh, I mean, no, it varies widely, right? It depends on the client. So that client sounds like they want all of those things from someone and so they're probably going to have to pay more. They're, yeah, someone with those skills is not gonna charge $3 an hour if there's a lot of requirements like that. But I mean, most of the time it's like answering emails or phone calls and things like that. And so at that point, it's something that's more basic and they can. So, but I just, like I said, it's a global platform. So the competition is global. So I would definitely do some research on the skill that you're trying to sell and making sure there's a market for it, making sure that the wages are where you want them to be otherwise and be as specialized as possible. So basically like, like I said, virtual assistant, very low wages. But if you're, I don't know, I don't know, some sort of special niche within virtual assistant.  Then you would be like Excel specific virtual assistant. And like just being a little more specialized, you would be surprised by how quickly that leads to more opportunities, getting contacted more often, things like that. So I definitely encourage you to kind of try to continually revise your plan and see where you're getting jobs and things that are coming from so you can understand how to give yourself the best chance. But yeah, in the beginning you'll write a lot of proposals. I encourage people to write as many as possible, like 20 a week until you get a job. Again, our students are low income, most don't have college degrees, some don't have high school degrees. And so it does obviously varies depending on your level of education and your level of skills. But that's just kind of what we say to our students. So I'm just sharing that. You might find a job sooner. You might not, I don't know. But yeah. Regarding the proposals, it just occurs to me that, and I've not looked at this at all, are you given enough information about the opportunity to actually do that or do you have to create sort of the game plan that the employer is looking to create? Yeah, good question, Al. It depends. Most of the time there will be enough information there for you to say something or formulate some kind of plan. If there's not enough information there, I would be weary of that opportunity just because why is there no information there, you know? That's kind of a red flag. So if there was that and they didn't have a verified payment kind of system, they didn't have verified payment already on Upwork and they did have a shoddy description of the job, I would say no go. So yeah. The next one, be willing to work for a lower rate than normal at the beginning. Again, I know this isn't the greatest piece of advice or I mean it's not the happiest information. However, like I said, it's really competitive and so one of your advantages at the beginning is that you just need to get a rating. Once you get a rating, things are so much easier. Once you have that first job and you have your first rating, things become much, much easier after that. But in order to get that first one, we highly recommend just getting it and so doing what you have to. Obviously you should work within your constraints so if you can't go below a certain amount, don't. But whatever you can do to get that first review is awesome. If you have a previous employer that is on Upwork or you can convince a previous employer to go on Upwork, you could get them to give you a review or you could do it with someone else or some other previous client that you've had. So that's really helpful obviously because the reputation is really key because you can filter by rating and so if someone is committed to hiring someone with five stars, they're not even gonna see your profile even if you have all of the skills that they want. The next item is, this is again more Upwork specific but on Upwork and other online marketplaces, there are different ways to kind of create a reputation or the aura of a reputation without having actual reviews. So on Upwork they have skills tests which are tests administered by Upwork that test specific skills and this compares you to all of the other users, right? So if you don't have any reviews, you don't have any ratings but you have the number one score in graphic design like you're gonna find graphic design jobs because you obviously are better than all these other people on Upwork or you know more about it than all these other people who have a lot of reviews and ratings. So skills tests are really helpful. Obviously here, if one of the things I tell students online, many of them are non-native English speakers, if you're working with a non-native English speaker, you really wanna know that they know how to speak English well and so the English language skills test is really important for them. And again, so the tests you wanna take will definitely vary depending on the skill that you're trying to sell but we encourage you to take them and if you don't do well, you can hide them and take them again 30 days later but if you do do well, you can display them on your profile and then everyone will know that you know what you're talking about even if you don't have reviews. Yes. Are you able to see the results? You can work on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like you yourself are but you can hide the results from, yeah, probably, yeah, for sure. And then the other thing is that you can also create a portfolio. So I know that this lends itself more easily to certain professions than others but there are really creative, I've seen some really creative portfolios out there for everything and so it can be done but essentially again, if you don't have reviews, you don't have ratings, clients don't really have a reason to trust you so if you have a portfolio with examples of your work then that kind of demonstrates a level of proficiency that they can kind of gain some confidence in you and perhaps give you a shot or at least do a test project with you to demonstrate that. And then the final one is just always be error free and make the effort to sound professional. Sorry to sound like a broken record but this is something we encounter often with our students is typos or spelling mistakes or like weird formatting things. These are all red flags to clients. No one wants to hire someone that misspells a word even if it's an accident obviously but it just shows like you're not being careful, you're not being focused and it makes them start to wonder and so that's something we always want to focus on and I have to read many, many proposals and reports and things like that and so just something I want to highlight. So yeah, so this is kind of like our top tips for getting started. If you highly recommend after you leave here today if you're interested signing up for a platform, trying to build up your profile, seeing how far you get and what you can do, trying to identify some job opportunities that you're interested in just to kind of get yourself started and get some questions rolling and yeah, and I'll give my card to anyone who wants it afterwards and you can send me questions or emails like this is all that I do all the time with my online students and so more than happy to answer any questions or provide advice on how to proceed. So yeah, I'm gonna move on now unless anyone has any questions about kind of getting started. So yeah, now I'm gonna show you guys the different platforms and yeah, sorry. It's Casey Anderson. Yeah, that's not me, that's Ashley. I know that that's not me. Yeah, but me is Casey Anderson and my email is kandersonatsalmaschool.org. Really quickly, I'm gonna pitch you all to my online class. Basically, it is a series of four courses that kind of covers all of these topics more in depth. I honestly, we're about to switch platforms so maybe email me or sign up for our existing program so you get the emails but we're about to switch in like less than a month to a new website I can show you guys and yeah, basically what we do is just provide kind of training and project-based assessments and a community of people that want a freelance and so it's really good for kind of learning the basics and also like talking to other people about like their experiences and also posing questions and having other people answer them. So yeah, so that's what we've been doing and that's what I work on regularly and I can show you guys, yeah. I just signed on there just a couple of days. Oh, cool. And I did get your email. Oh, nice. So I'm just finishing out this awesome or re-enrolling in the new one. Oh, a great question. I honestly, it kind of depends on you on your level of urgency. If you can wait, I would say to wait just because it's gonna be so much better. I'm so excited. Can you take it twice? Yeah, no, for sure. This one, so this is the existing course and it's a little clunky and so we started this and we weren't sure how much demand there would be for this type of training and it's very much exploded and so we're already working on the newest version and so it's gonna be up in a month but yeah, so this is what the current version looks like. There is four courses. You would start with introduction. It really covers what we talked about here today so you don't need to take it if you don't want to. And then online work platform models talks more about kind of the gig versus online only type of thing and then professional profiles and work opportunities talks more about the profile building and virtual occupations as a case study. However, this is the old version and I would highly recommend going to, this is gonna be open in a month or in the next month and so if you register for our course or if you email me, I'll put you on our mailing list and you can learn about this once it's up. Yeah, it's not loading, it's fine. So yeah, really quickly I wanted to share some information about the gig economy with you all about in San Francisco and then I'll show you some platform. I'll show you how I'll show you Upwork and I can take more questions, yeah. Actually, can I ask some general questions? Yeah, go for it. Before you go into it. For sure. So when you have one of these sort of jobs and you go to a rent an apartment and the landlord wants to see verification of employment, how do you handle that? Oh, you mean like to rent an apartment when you want to rent an apartment? That's a great question. We actually haven't encountered that before. You wouldn't have like a letter from any of these platforms you wouldn't be able to. I think that in that situation in order to be able to do that you would have to have a consistent stream of freelance work and you'd have to be able to demonstrate it. So maybe you could show either bank statements with deposits occurring regularly because they do have like an automatic deposit system. So if you don't touch it it'll deposit automatically into your account every week. And so you could do that. You could try to get a letter from one of these companies. I've never solicited one. I'm gonna actually write that down and try to find out if. Exactly. Yeah, precisely. Like I said, if you have those consistent deposits to your account from the direct deposit from the platform then for three months back that should be sufficient. However, I will look into that as well. Second question. Yes. For Obamacare. Once you get. Oh, awesome. Once you get over about $16,000 you have to switch from MediCal to Cover California. And it's like how do you deal with that sort of well this quarter I made less than $16,000 on annual life basis. So in the next quarter I make a ton of money and now I pop into the Obamacare basket and the next quarter is really mean so I have to go back to MediCal. Yeah. How does that work? Yeah, great question. So actually one of the great things about Obamacare or the ACA is basically that it makes healthcare portable. So before you had to have a job to have healthcare. So now it's decoupled work from healthcare. And there's also an option for retirement as well. I can send you information on that if you're interested. But basically it decouples it. So now you're able to have insurance even though you don't have steady work. With regards to that, so the only way they're gonna know about that is if you report it, right? And like I said, you can either report quarterly as a freelancer or you can report at the end of the year. There is a fine at the end of the year if you end up like going over the income limit but if it evens out like you say, like you have a very lean quarter and then a very like more robust earnings in another quarter and it does even out. So you're underneath that threshold, you should be fine. If your net for the year is over, then you would have to go up. I'm just confused about how do you sort of notify the welfare office down here at Harrison Street? Oh, this quarter's been a really good quarter. They take you off, then it's come back a quarter later. Well, this hasn't been. Well, but why do you have to report that every quarter to them? Well, if you're on, if you're on MediCal, then if you're making less than 16,000, whatever year, they want to have, you know, you're supposed to report every quarter or at least every couple quarters to let them know you're still on. I know, but I'm pretty sure it's once a year. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's once a year. I did AmeriCorps and in that we were part of different government programs and you only had to report once a year. And so like I said, if it evens out then you should be fine. I think it's better to like figure things out quarterly but if that's the situation then you might want to wait until the end of the year to see how it balances out. And then the third question is once you're into this online stuff, does it ever happen that it leads to an actual employment with one of your clients? Yeah.  Yeah. You want to sort of put this on your resume? Yeah. And sort of point to your previous clients when you were doing this. Yeah, so I mean that's why I think LinkedIn is great because you can put projects on there. I would like talk to the company first and make sure that they're comfortable with you disclosing that information. But first of all, yes, these can lead to real jobs. We've had students that happens to specifically I'm thinking of Sarah and social media marketing over in Merced. She did a freelance project for a dentist creating his social media strategy and then he liked it so much he hired her full-time to do that. So it does, it can lead to sustainable work. Like I said, that's not the norm. So it shouldn't be kind of, you shouldn't expect that but it can happen. And you can kind of look for clients that are saying I'm looking to create a long-term relationship here or that looks like it's a business that will need a long-term support in this area. And then second with regards to kind of resumes or demonstrating the work. So this is something we're actually working on and thinking about because one of the biggest challenges with these platforms is that they don't talk to each other at all. They don't want to talk to each other. Kind of part of their value is their own unique profile, their own unique platform, everything like that. And so it's really hard to create like a stream of all of your jobs on all of these platforms, right? So that's why I really recommend using LinkedIn because you can kind of update that yourself. Personally I have a website where I have a portfolio of projects and I do case studies on different projects. So I made a PowerPoint for this company last week and I put that in the portfolio and I talked about that. And then this week I made a video and I put that in my portfolio and talked about that. So there's different ways to do that and incorporate that but you definitely want to keep track of all your projects and either build a portfolio or just keep a record of it on your LinkedIn because it's really helpful to have that history and also like you said, to show to people that you've been doing work if you haven't been full-time employed in a while. Yeah, some do. Again, they don't like to inter, there's not a lot of interoperability. Yeah, some of them allow you to like pull your information from LinkedIn. None of them are gonna like send info to LinkedIn though. Like they're not gonna post your job history with them themselves. However, they do have their own, you will have your own feed on the platform of the jobs you've worked, the number of hours, the client, all of that information. And so you can just copy and paste it and put it on LinkedIn. And I know that that's not ideal and I've been trying to figure out a way to export things more easily but like I said, these platforms really want to hold on to their own data. Yeah, great question. So there actually used to be a nonprofit, kind of a nonprofit. There used to be a business that did that. They actually went out of business. So yeah, well their business model was that they would provide like tax advice for freelancers for free and then they would try to get freelancers on to group healthcare plans that they like managed and so they would make like a commission off of that. Didn't work out well for them. Zen 99, but they're gone. So there's some resources out there from Zen 99 and I have some saved, I have some myself but there's no like service or anyone that does it for you and it's very much like you have to report it yourself. So like this past year, I didn't make that much on Upwork but I had to report that myself as independent income on my taxes. Well on your training session, you have, there's a union for freelancers. Yes. I read that today. Yeah, so there's, yeah, no there is. So there's a freelancers union. So they would have tax information. They do have a lot of tax information. Again, they don't do it for you. They just have, they just provide resources but the freelancers union is an awesome resource for freelancer resources about taxes, about healthcare, about all of these questions that you might have. And then on top of that, there's strength in numbers, right? So obviously they're not able to negotiate with the platforms to reduce their commission fees but they're able to create group healthcare plans for example so you can get a lower healthcare cost or workers insurance or like different types of things that you might want or need. And they're just like a great resource overall for a community. And Donny actually reminded me about there's a local freelancer. Well, Freelancers union has local meetings. So they have like a chapter in SF that you can go to but then there's also this thing that BayVac, it's a nonprofit that also does workforce training. They also have their own like Freelancers meetup. So that may also be a good resource if you're interested. Like I said, I'm gonna send all of this out to everybody that leaves their emails on the feedback form. So don't worry, yeah. Yeah, did I answer all of the questions? Cool, okay. So really quickly I wanna show you guys this report just came out. So this is the first data that we've actually had on the gig economy in San Francisco. So it's 27% of workers in San Francisco are either self-employed or work less than 35 hours a week. So that means a good chunk of people are working in the gig economy. San Francisco has fewer employees. Temporary employment has declined. And then long-term wage and self-employment has risen. So just showing you kind of like the growth trends that are happening. In this, in the gig economy. So that you have an idea of how it's growing. Did you make a lot? Oh my gosh, no, this is the Comptroller's office. Yeah, right, yeah. So yeah, it basically shows that income from online platforms, San Francisco is leading kind of the US in growth of this. And oh, they referenced the JPMorgan Chase study that I talked about. So yeah, so that's basically just showing you that this economy is growing, particularly in San Francisco. There's a lot of demand for the gig economy, sharing economy, so sorry? What is the average income? Oh, that's a great question. Unfortunately, there's no data on that because it's all disparate sources, right? So Upwork has some information, but then also varies so much depending on the skill level. So the average wage of a virtual assistant is gonna be very different from the average wage of a computer programmer. So it's really hard to give you kind of an average for that. And also online, there's no bottom limit, right? So it would be a lot lower than San Francisco. Like I said, there was recently research done on Uber and Uber drivers considering all of the costs make $13.75 an hour in San Francisco. But that level of research, the market just isn't, like the companies mostly aren't mature enough yet and also they are not willing to disclose that. So this is actually the first report that the government has released on even the growth of the gig economy. We just don't have the information yet for wages, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually. I'm sorry, that wasn't an answer. And so yeah, now I'm gonna show you guys Upwork just so you get an idea of what it looks like. And like I said, Upwork is not the only one, it's just the biggest one. And so it's the one, and it's been around the longest. It used to be called Odask and Eliance and then they merged and then they rebranded. And so that's now we have Upwork. Like I said, there are many other ones and they actually just released their, oh, let's do US. They actually just released a new pricing scheme. So basically they reward you for doing more repeated business with a client. So they used to only take 10% commission. Now they take 20% commission for your first project with someone and then 10% on your second and then eventually 5%. So it's incentivizing you to work with the same clients over and over again. Why do they want you to do that? Sorry? Why do they want you to work with them? Yeah, or they want you, or they make more money. Yeah, I mean. So why do they want you to work with them? Oh, why do they? Oh, I mean maybe they don't, maybe that's just the way I'm interpreting that incentive structure. Maybe they want you to do mostly one-off projects and so they can get the 20%. But I think that they're trying to incentivize that because it creates longer, more stable relationships. So it probably creates a more stable income stream for them so they can rely on that 5% if you're continually doing business on the platform. Because the risk is always that if you become too close with a client that you take it off platform. But I mean the risk with that is that unless you really trust the client and know the client, they like you no longer have the protection of the platform. So one of the things about Upwork and also these platforms is that there are different protections for your wage. So what I mean by that is for Upwork there's two types of work. I'll just log in and show you guys my platform. So there is fixed price. Right here you'll see fixed price and there's hourly. So fixed price means there is a single price, no matter how long it takes you to complete this project you're only gonna get paid $15. It can take you two days, it can take you 10 minutes, they don't care. And Upwork guarantees that payment because they hold that money in escrow. So basically when someone says I'm gonna do a fixed price project and this is how much I'm gonna pay for it, Upwork basically puts a hold on their account, takes that money and holds on to it until you say that you finished the project and they confirm it and then that money's released to you. So with a fixed price project the client can't really just like disappear on you because their money is kind of being held in limbo. So if you don't, so if you dispute that or you say you did it, like Upwork will usually help you out. They're not like, they mostly like tend to side with the client but if there's clear breach and the client just disappeared then they'll help you. So that's how you're protected with fixed price projects is the money is held in escrow. And then the other kind is hourly. So let's find an hourly job. So basically hourly obviously is just you paid by the hour. So that is a rate that you pick yourself. So that's where I'm saying that at the beginning you're wanting to charge less and later on you'll charge more. And the way you're protected with hourly is if you use their app. If you use their app it basically is just like a little thing that runs in the background of your computer and takes a screenshot every 10 minutes. So you turn it on when you're actually doing work and then it takes a screenshot and kind of like provides documentation that you're doing the work. Not the most sophisticated but if you do use it then you're covered. So if you do that work, if you do those hours and you submit them through their app you will get paid for those hours. Like even if the client like somehow disputes it or does something like you have that verification you have that backup and they guarantee payment protection on that. So yeah, that's how hourly works and that's hourly versus fixed price. So there's different ways to be protected on both. So yeah, being aware of that is important. And now we're on a job post. So now you can see this is what a job post looks like. Yeah, so connects are like tokens or basically it's just a way of kind of, because the problem was that before they had, they just implemented this a few months ago the problem was before that like people were sending generic proposals to like everybody and just sending like many, many, many. And so they wanted to discourage, they wanted to discourage that behavior. So the way they did it was by giving you limited amounts of connects. So connects are just like kind of, like you're paying to apply to the job basically but you're not actually paying any money. Like it's just a mechanism to limit the amount of jobs you can apply to in a month. So that it requires you to be more selective and more careful and consider of the jobs you're applying to. So yeah, so this one's two. So I have 40 connects left. So I can apply to 20 more jobs this month before the connects refresh. And that means I can only apply to 20 more jobs. So I'm gonna be careful about which jobs I apply to if I'm really trying to find work. At this point I receive invitations to do work. So I generally don't use all my connects but that can be a concern if you're just starting out and you're applying to a lot of jobs. They do have an option where you can pay for more connects but I kind of discouraged that because you should, like the whole point of limiting the amount of jobs you apply to is, and the reason I didn't mention is because you should be intentional about the jobs you're applying to. You shouldn't just apply to everything just because you need to because this is supposed to be something that you're investing in and it's a long-term sustainable solution, right?   Like what skill are you trying to sell? Are they paying you the right amount of money? Is this a client you wanna work with? Like even though you might not feel like you can be selective, you should be selective because otherwise you get trapped in these jobs that are kind of terrible and clients that are uncooperative and so it's just really best to kind of put the effort in early, that makes sense. And not every platform has this system in place. ThumbTact does and that's how ThumbTact makes money actually so ThumbTact doesn't take a commission but they do charge you to apply to submit proposals but they only allow you to submit proposals for things that you're qualified in. So with ThumbTact you say I'm a dog sitter like our student Marie. Marie says I'm a dog sitter and ThumbTact whenever they get a request for dog sitting jobs it sounds like they're a good fit for Marie. They're in her area, they're in the jays she's said she's available, et cetera. They send Marie, here's a job you should consider applying for it. And then Marie pays like, I think it's like 80 cents for each to connect. They use a different term but they charge for the application essentially and it's never more than like $2. It varies depending on the skill level so like a high-end photographer job might cost a little bit more like maybe $2.50 but it's never very much and they don't charge you commission so that's what ThumbTact is great is that you can basically kind of circuit you basically as soon as you meet the client you are off the platform which is for some people that's ideal. Why did you receive this? Oh I didn't receive this, I just found it. I just like looked at, I was just browsing jobs. Like we can browse, oh no we can find jobs. So a lot of people have weird preferences so for example that guy, I mean it might be like communication-based, like they might be in that time zone and they want you to be able to communicate with them regularly or they might be looking for someone that is cheaper and that's why they're indicating specific geographical area or they might have some sort of like they might be Eastern European and want to work with an Eastern European. There's really no real rhyme or reason to some of these requests and not all of them make the most sense but sometimes they work to your advantage like many people want to only hire Americans cause they assume that our English is really great. So yeah. What's a job that people are interested in just like say anything? So as you see there's a million editing jobs and it's very like variable so there's audio editing, video editing, all of those things so the more specific you can be like I said the better. So this is the job search what the job search interface looks like. Advanced search just allows you to do more like specific parameters or you can search for skills. I would say that this is probably the most useful in the advanced search is you can search for the specific skills that you have and sell those and look for jobs that want them. Categories. So within Upwork and most online work platforms you have to pick a category of the type of work that you're gonna do and so you're kind of committing yourself to like a track there and it's like I said you wanna be a specialist. So here are all of the categories and so right now we're searching for editing amongst all of them but what type of editing were you talking about? Someone that knows me and knows my English skills of things I can do work for a particular company like reading I guess proofreading I don't know. Okay so let's go to writing then. So proofreading here's a job on proofreading. So here as you can see the subcategories writing is the major category so like the major skill that you're selling and then there's all of these subcategories and so like I said if you can become a specialist in one of these subcategories and even further into the subcategory then you're gonna be well on your way but as you can see here editing and proofreading is a category so I'm gonna select that. So now we are looking at this sort by newest so that tells me this job was posted seven minutes ago probably means that person is still online and I can start and I can probably reach them if I apply now. It's only 10 bucks so I'm probably I'm not gonna apply for it right now but someone could. As you can see about the client we can see that their payment verified so that means that they have entered their bank account information into Upwork and have proven that they have a bank account that they can pay you from. They have a rating as well right. So they have 4.69 stars based on three feedback reviews. So that tells you that this client has worked with three other people and on average it's been pretty good. So so far I like this person so far there's no red flags. They're from Canada so they're in the same they're maybe the same time zone and so that is important potentially to me if I want to work with someone who can communicate with me. I tried to I'm trying to schedule a call with this guy in the UK and it's it's been a nightmare because I don't work during the day and that's when he's awake. Yeah so yeah so it's and you know that could be a consideration you have to play with this look at it figure out what matters to you kind of define your own list of requirements but here this is the part that's important for understanding if it's a scam it tells you about the client. You can see since when they've been a member so if they've been on the platform for a while that's generally a good sign unless it's like you have to look into all of the things together right. So you want them to be payment verified you want them to have reviews you want them to have good reviews. You want to know that they've done jobs before and you want to know how much they've spent so like that just gives you a good ballpark idea of like whether or not this is a legitimate client. I would say that this is a legitimate client. They doesn't seem like they want to spend a lot of money and they're looking to use upwork to kind of reduce their costs. So that's what they say to their people. No that's how much they've spent in total for five jobs. Yeah so you have to look at everything together right. But I wouldn't be wary of like scams at all like this is this is a legitimate client. Oh and here here you can read the history and feedback. Sometimes it's visible not always and you can see other jobs that they have available. So if I wanted to I could submit a proposal and this is what the proposal page looks like. Oh here's the here's the new fee service model. So the more business you do with a client on Upwork the more earnings you keep. So it's 20% for the first 500, 10% after 500 and 5% after 10,000. So they want to create more study income streams. But yeah so as you can see here's the job details the proposal terms. So the because it's a fixed price project it automatically just put that there. If it was not it was an hourly project you can you can change it. I mean you can change it now but this person said they're gonna pay $10. They're not gonna pay more than that. Yeah they're taking 20%. So that is like I said it's graduated so it's incentivizing you to work with the same client and also not all platforms take this much. So if the 20% is kind of a deal breaker for you I would encourage you to check out Guru I would encourage you to check out Freelancer people per hour there's a lot of other platforms and they all have different pricing structures. And so commission is like the most common pricing structure but sometimes they'll have you pay for the credits or tokens. Sometimes they'll have you pay like a membership fee so you can access the job listings. There's like I said a variety of pricing structures and you should definitely check them out and see which one kind of appeals to you the most. Yes. Yes. Yeah literally anything you can think of is on here and if it's not on here it's on another platform just keep looking. Yes. Yeah okay so here estimated duration so this would probably take me less than a week. I could probably have this done today right? If I had this done today they would if they completed payment today like they said yes this person finished this project the money would move to my Upwork account probably by tomorrow or the day after one to two business days for the money to hit your Upwork account. The transaction is already in progress once they confirm that you've completed the project so it starts from that time when you've completed the project. Like two days to hit your Upwork account and then once it's in your Upwork account it does you can do direct deposit to either PayPal or your bank account. Direct deposit to your bank account is the rest like the same as any other direct deposit so one to two days. Most recently I got paid in like a day which was really fast but I've had to wait like a week before. You can set it up so that if you hit a certain amount of money or they automatically cash out your money or if you can also set up a schedule so like every five days or every three days like deposit so there's different features and like I said it's slightly different from platform to platform and so this is what a proposal looks like like I said oh they even changed it to cover letter but yeah this is where you would describe here how you do the project here's the attachments where you can put a video or an audio file if you'd rather do that and then you submit the proposal it's pretty straightforward and then back to the search area and then just so you guys get an idea of the size of the platform this is the US in 2014 they they haven't released their data for last year yet they're not the best at sharing data we talk with them often about this but yeah so in 2014 and so it's grown a lot more since then so just in 2014 just in the US it was 604 million was like spent on the platform so clients spent 604 million 574,000 US freelancers registered there was 1.5 million US online job posting so that's just from the US alone we look at the global data 941 million globally so it definitely hit billions last year it was like 2.2 billion I wanna say and then there was 2.8 million jobs million jobs posted in the entire year and there is 2,000, yeah 2.7,000 skills available so that's one part that I can show you guys so skills are basically on your profile you can select the skills you have and they kind of work like SEO no they work exactly like SEO so if you can select up to 10 skills I recommend filling that up if you can just because it makes it easier to find you so for example if you have proofreading, writing, editing, article writing, blog writing all of these on your profile when someone is looking so we're on the jobs search end but if someone is looking for freelancers they can look editing comma proofreading comma blog writing and search for someone with those skills and your profile will pop up because you have listed all those skills and if you have take the skills test for those skills then it like verifies the skills so it provides like another layer of support yeah just one question is it when you pose your word the companies can help bring you yeah exactly the companies can also offer you jobs so like I said I used to have to apply for many jobs but now that I have like I have many reviews and I have like there's like up work special status or whatever once you like reach certain amounts of money earned and positive reviews so then people start reaching out to you because they see that you have reviews they see that you're verified they see that you've already done work for other people on this platform and so they trust you already and what I do is very very very niche very specific so yeah I just happen to get messages and so the more specialized you are usually the more likely that is to happen yeah so we're actually about to be out of time so I was gonna see if anyone has any other questions yes are there any jobs on the internet just internet accounting you can do in an office proofreading you can do in an office but is there some kind of jobs that are specific and only can be found doing internet work what do you mean by that because like as a law like if I was a freelance lawyer like I could do it on my computer at home right so what do you mean by internet work well there's a little advertisement that says something about do you wanna learn coding and to me that's related to computer yeah so so I mean you can find coding jobs like as you can see here in the US the most money was spent on technology and I can tell you that that was mostly programers so you can do that on these platforms and there's a lot of free resources the library has great resources on their website for learning different skills and there's a lot of great free resources for learning coding specifically you can definitely find freelance coding jobs or freelance different software jobs so help me set up a web page clip folio expert required need a word press website done Wi-Fi setup revamp website Python development algorithm so these are these are is this what you were talking about more sort of it I mean that's one area but I guess like I don't really don't know no no no worries I'm hoping maybe you had some idea because like you're in office upward doesn't exist it only exists on internet mm-hmm right so so in a way your job is partly related to something that's on the internet can't find it anywhere else yeah and so I was looking for other things there's coding there's upward and some people say oh could you help me you know go to go to different websites and find out whether there's certain information here report back yeah you can't do that in an office unless you have a computer yeah and specific to internet it's not anything else yeah no I think I think I understand what you're saying I think where I'm having trouble is that anything you're describing like many in part like traditional jobs are now available as freelance jobs and now there's an in addition to that there's also like the new jobs that have been created via technology and through like the internet social media marketing for example with that fit into that category I think it could yeah because you have to be on the internet but you could do that in an office like we have a social media marketing person that comes in once in a while but we have students that do social media marketing for 10 clients and they work from home so it really varies and like I said there's there's so many different opportunities one thing that might be interesting to you I don't know if this is what you had in mind but there's a website called user testing and you can basically get paid $10 for like five minutes of test so what that means so this is usability testing so what that means is like a client of this company will submit they have a free service and they also paid for services so what they do is they the clients send like a link of a website or an app or something that they want someone to test and you record yourself looking at it for five minutes yeah okay yeah exactly so that this is one opportunity for that yeah and I think somebody wanted me and I didn't like it when I found out what it was but they wanted me to go into different yelp places or make reviews using canned phrases to support this other company oh yeah no that's that's sneaky yeah yeah I mean yeah you can find opportunities like that okay there are different yeah there's a lot of different opportunities out there I think that's the kind of thing like it's only on the internet I see I see what you're saying yeah yeah yeah I think that you could find a lot of them on Upwork but it does also have some of these things it does also have the other things as well so it's a mix but I would definitely recommend checking out user testing and then I have more resources like this one yeah yeah so Sama school you guys offer like the training we have a free online training so does Amazon Seller fit in that category? yeah Amazon Seller would include be included in that category we don't provide specific platform training because a lot of that is already available but I mean just message me and I can send you the resources we have on e-commerce it's mostly like best practices for how to do e-commerce but we can definitely guide you and like provide you with resources on that yeah he is a professional portfolio expert can he use Upwork to get clients for themselves? so Upwork really wants you to stay on the platform so they you can actually get banned from Upwork if you get caught doing like getting a client and then moving them off platform but I think your other question is like do bigger companies use Upwork? and I actually just did a project for P&G so yes they get like Upwork preferred status and like all of these like special benefits because Upwork really wants to be like a sourcing agent for big companies like their goal is for big companies to go to them when they need someone and they're saying basically we have all this data on all these people like we hear better than LinkedIn at finding whatever you need and we'll find it for you so that's what Upwork they're trying to make money off of enterprise services now that's what they're moving towards so yeah cool so working for so basically so this is not how they're making most of their money right like freelancers in 5-10% like that's not the bulk of their money the bulk of their money is by charging big companies like P&G fees for finding freelancers for them so like they like they'll charge P&G like a flat rate to find a freelancer and then they hire the freelancer and then the freelancer does work for them and they also get the commission but like the bigger chunk of money is the fee that the big company pays yeah can you I'm sorry are you asking if there's government jobs on these platforms? yeah so as far as I know that is still very much in-person yeah for jobs yeah no the government doesn't the government doesn't use these platforms at all do they hire agencies? yeah they hire agencies to do contract work so government jobs is like a separate route and they also don't do like online work really yeah no government yeah the government jobs website yeah I agree they should use up work I don't know why they don't I'm sorry well thank you all for coming sorry we ran over time it was awesome yeah yeah like I said I have the I mentioned the job the like job security checker job scam checker the all of the platforms that exist that I know of I also have another resource of tools different tools for freelancers I can also send you some more information about the freelancer union and the BAVAC meetup and yeah and I encourage you to check out the class and thanks all for coming thank you


Twenty years ago the learning management system, or LMS, had just been invented and educators were just beginning to consider how it might be used. Today it is a core and costly part of the IT infrastructure of just about every large educational organization. But do learning management systems provide us with good value? Are they really necessary, or could we be using other approaches that are cheaper and more effective? Are there unintended consequences of using a learning management system? In the next few minutes I want to explore some of these issues. I will argue that we need to look seriously at alternatives to the learning management system not only to save money but also to provide a more appropriate learning environment. To begin with though I want to explain briefly what an LMS is. The LMS is a web-based application that is essentially a suite of tools for organizing and managing course content and resources, communication and interaction between students and instructor and among students, assessment, assignment submission and grade keeping. It provides all of these capabilities and more within one web-based environment and it can be integrated with institutional student information systems. Now it sounds pretty amazing and when the first LMSs emerged in the late 1990s they were seen as a significant technological innovation. In recent years however they have been growing criticisms. So what are some of these key criticisms? First a learning management system is very expensive to support and this applies to both commercial and open source products. While open source products are free they often require a significant and costly investment of technical support to install and customize the application which often eats up any savings from the license fees. It's difficult to provide an average cost because it usually depends on the size of the organization and the number of users but we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars annually at least and one post-secondary institution that I worked at we spent nearly 200,000 per year for a commercial LMS. So regardless of whether you choose an open source or a commercial product an LMS will be expensive. A second criticism is that running and using an LMS requires significant technical expertise. IT staff need to be trained to support and maintain the LMS and even faculty and students need to learn how to use the software effectively. Despite what vendors tell us learning management systems aren't easy to use. There is a learning curve. A more substantial criticism of the LMS is that it tends to reinforce a teacher and content-centered approach to education and perpetuates a transmission model of teaching. Research shows that faculty tend to make much greater use of tools that have an administrative and teaching focus things like the grade book, announcements, assessment and course material distribution and much less use of the tools with a learning focus like the discussion forums, blogs and collaboration spaces. Furthermore learning is artificially situated inside a kind of walled garden. Learners are disconnected from resources of the open internet and from the networks that the internet supports and even from their own personal networks. LMS is also inhibit continuous learning. The LMS already restricts the development of a learning network to the students who are enrolled in the course but it then disrupts the development of this limited learning network as all communication with peers and instructors is confined to the course term. Students spend 12 to 15 weeks building connections with their peers and developing their networks only to have this discontinued at the end of each term as the courses and all the interactions are deleted. A final problem with learning management systems is that for the most part they are not truly open regardless of whether you are using an open source or a commercial product and even if you have put an open license on your courses if it's in an LMS search engines will not find them and anybody who does manage to find your courses will need to get the appropriate permission and login credentials to access them. So what is the alternative to the LMS? Well in the last 10 years we've seen an explosion of free cloud based software and services that can be assembled to create a kind of customized do-it-yourself learning management system that doesn't have all the disadvantages of the conventional LMS. So there are file sharing services like Dropbox, Google Drive, BoxNet, OneNote, and others. There are asynchronous discussion tools like Google groups, Yahoo groups, Yammer, Facebook, and others. Skype and Google are just two companies that provide free tools for real-time video and audio communication. Delicious and Digo are two of the best known resource sharing and social bookmarking tools. There are also many free grade book tools available, Learn Boost and Thinkwave for example. And finally for blogging and building websites there is WordPress, Weebly, or Google Sites. And WordPress can even be turned into a simple learning management system itself through the use of a number of plugins. LearnDash, WPCourseWare, and Sensei are just a few of the plugins available for this. There are a number of compelling advantages to using do-it-yourself alternatives to a conventional LMS. First, it doesn't require institutional buy-in and support. Assembling tools in this way is something that can be done by any individual instructor or teacher with minimal technical support. And this means it doesn't require support from your IT department because all of these services are hosted externally. But probably the most important advantage is that this approach allows you to tailor the tools to meet your specific needs. If all you want to do is distribute content you can create a website or create a shared folder on one of the file sharing services. If all you want to do is hold weekly online meetings with your students then Skype or something similar will do. The beauty of this approach is that you can add the different tools as you need them. And if you want to provide your learners with a consistent online environment then use WordPress with one of the LMS plugins as an option. And finally using this approach makes the resources much more accessible and open and it doesn't cut learners off from the resources and their networks once the course is over. And of course there are some disadvantages. First, security and privacy may be a concern because these tools are on the internet and not confined to the walled garden of the LMS. Almost all of these tools are provided free of charge in exchange for the right to make use of your data in some way. In some cases it may go even further and you may be asked to give up copyright. So it's important to read and understand the terms of service carefully before you embark on this approach. Nothing is completely free. This is a do-it-yourself approach and some technical skills are required to configure and use some of these tools. But it's not insurmountable and anybody with basic IT skills and the motivation should be able to manage. And because this is a do-it-yourself approach the student experience will not be as consistent as it would be if institutional LMS were being used. Your customized approach may be quite different from a colleague's. Most students are looking for the most efficient route to complete their studies. They may not be too happy about having to learn how to use different tools every time they take a course. So this is something to keep in mind. To conclude there's an old saying that goes if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. And I think that sums up the approach that has been taken to decisions around the use of learning management systems. But we no longer only have hammers. We have a wide variety of different free and sophisticated tools at our disposal that can be used to support eLearning. A learning management system is one option but not the only one and we need to be much more critical in our appraisal of the tools we choose to use to support eLearning. Learning management systems are expensive. They tend to privilege the instructor as the center of the learning process. They disrupt the development of learning networks and they are not open.