People Per Hour is a website I see recommended quite often for freelancers. If you’re already a member at oDesk, Elance, or Freelancer, you’ll find this site is very similar to those. It has been around for a lot of years now and every time I check the site, I see there are a ton of jobs up needing workers so it’s very active.
My first impression is that this is a very nicely designed, established website. The “About” section has a ton of info on how the company was started and the people behind it, which is great to see.
Create your account on the site (free), fill out your profile as completely as possible, then browse around to see what freelance jobs are available. They have jobs across a wide variety of categories including writing, design, marketing, social media, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Some of these might be entry-level that anyone could do and others might require experience.
If you find a job you’re interested in, you can submit a proposal. In your proposal, you list why you think you can do the job, what you can deliver, your specific skills that make you the ideal candidate, etc. There is a also a place for you to submit attachments. You can ask the job requester questions if you’re not clear on something before you submit your proposal via their handy question/answer tool at the bottom of each job posting. The job posting shows what the requester is willing to spend and also whether or not it’s a job that can be done remotely (most of these are).
Keep in mind that while it is free to register at People Per Hour, you can only submit 15 proposals per month at no charge. You will have to buy credits on the site if you want to submit more than 15 proposals in a month’s time. This page explains all the fees and how much proposal credits cost, but just to sum up, you can get an additional five credits at $6.50 US dollars.
There will usually be other people competing for the jobs you want, so that’s why it’s really important to make your profile look as good as possible so that you stand out.
Another way to earn money on People Per Hour apart from just submitting proposals on jobs you’d like to do is through something they call “Hourlies.” When I click over to the Hourlies tab, it looks very similar to the way that Fiverr is laid out. This is where you can post various freelance jobs/tasks that you’re willing to do for others in one hour and also list what you’ll charge for the jobs. And just like Fiverr, you can add extras to your hourlies so there is potential to earn even more money. People who have been satisfied by your work can rate you and review you on your profile.
It is. You’ll notice when you’re looking around the site that there’s lots of UK English and pretty much all the jobs list pay rates in pounds as well as US dollars. The site has a handy function toward the bottom of the screen where you can switch the currency to the dollar, pound, or Euro to make it easier for you to understand what you’re being paid when you browse around.
When a requester posts a job, the money they are willing to pay for the job is held in escrow while you do the work. When you’re done with the work, you send the requester an invoice requesting payment for the job (getting paid for hourlies works the same way). If the requester is satisfied with your completed work, they can release the funds from escrow to pay you with. They are supposed to do this within seven days after you’ve sent them your invoice. If they approve and pay your invoice, the money will be held in a pending status while security checks are performed which the site says can take up to three business days. When the money falls out of pending status, it will show up in your online “wallet” on the People Per Hour website and you can then withdraw it through either bank transfer or Paypal.
It looks like most of the work here is offered at a fair rate of pay from what I can see. However, you’ll need to keep the steep fees in mind when you’re submitting proposals for work. Details on that are below.
The site says this about fees:
PPH charge Sellers a Service Fee of a 3.5% (excl. VAT) on all work billed and paid by the Buyer (earnings), above the first £175 | €210 | $280 USD earned in the month which has a 15% (excl. VAT) Service Fee.
If I’m reading that correctly (and I’m honestly not sure I am, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here), you’ll lose around 18.5% of your earnings each month? That is quite a lot actually — a good bit more than what other similar sites would charge. So definitely keep that in mind when you’re submitting proposals on jobs and trying to figure out the total you’ll earn.
You will also have Paypal fees deducted when your earnings are sent to your Paypal account. There is no charge for bank transfers in the US if you’re being paid in US dollars and the funds are going to a US bank, and there is no charge on UK bank transfers if you’re being paid in pounds and the money is going into a UK bank.
Overall it looks like this is a paying, well-run site. Like most freelance bidding sites, there are people complaining about some of the jobs paying what would be less than minimum wage.
Below is a collection of other reviews of People Per Hour I’ve found online written by people who have used the site for freelancing:
… and there is a lot more than that online if you do a simple Google search.
You can read all about how to get started here. Please comment below if you’ve ever used this site for finding freelance work and let us know how it panned out for you.
