Member-only story
How I Got an (Almost) 25% Tip on Upwork
This article was cross-published on the author’s blog.
Freelance writing is not a service industry in the traditional sense. Generally, you get paid for the project you do, as happens in a product industry. Less frequently, you get paid hourly for doing the work.
Those details are all worked out and agreed upon before the work starts.
So, if not totally unheard of, tips are unusual. They are not expected or budgeted for. Tips are not built in to the freelance writer’s business model, the way they are in waiting tables or driving for a rideshare company.
So I was surprised when I received a tip of (almost) 25% on a cover letter in my second month of activity on Upwork.
Granted, it was a small dollar amount. As a beginner, I was taking small jobs to build my work record and reputation on Upwork. The original contract was for $21. The $5 tip really represented 23.8% of the original amount. (Yes — my headline was intentionally sensationalistic!)
More important than the amount of the tip was the fact that … I got a tip!
About the same time, on a separate job, I got a 35% tip. ($10 added to a $28 job.)
