Honest as hell
After a long time of being an epal, I've decided to bid farewell to this page and move on to greener pastures. I registered on epal last summer. There were months where epal was helping me earn good and I was even one of the top epals this past summer. But the changes you constantly make to this page without really consulting the ones who bring people to you and help you earn your income as a company, aka your 'epals' without prior warnings have made me finally leave for good. 'What will they think of now and will or will I not be able to keep earning' is something that stressed me out a lot over the past year. I will talk about the things I have experienced, because that is the only credible information I can give you. The direction you're going with your page is not the right one. Instead of trying to become the next Twitch, you should have focused on giving your freelancers a better platform, and for the people who spend money ordering people on your page - a better deal. Since you added additional fees for people recharging buff my income from your page has VERY DRASTICALLY diminished to the point where it's not even sustainable anymore - not even as a side hustle. You're turning away people from your page - the numbers might say otherwise, but I'm seeing more and more epals and less and less clients. You're being reckless with how you're adding fees, removing fees, changing rules and adding more and more unnecessary things to your page which are not really a good deal for anyone. Unpopular opinion, but I did agree with the 10% withdraw fee for epals - I used the platform to sell my services and to earn, so you taking a cut from my money wasn't something that I haven't seen before and this was alright for me. But you've made it unattractive for clients to buy buff because of the crazy high fees they have to pay for it. So instead of increasing your earnings and the earnings of the people who represent your page with the buff price being 1:1 you've made epal a thriving place for people doing (or just boosting) free orders and that's no good for anyone. I don't like how you always focus so much on 'community'. This is a freelancing/buying companionship page and it's for your own good to keep things seperate. The whole 'community' thing was just something people did to give free orders to each other and unfairly boost themselves. I never cared about making connections to other sellers or to be the most active person on your Discord server. Not many people care about your uninventive events and to be most frank, as an epal what I did care about was giving my clients a real quality experience for their money and ultimately, cold hard cash. Besides, all I've gathered from hearing other people's experiences, was that getting involved in more community oriented stuff just meant more drama as it is expected in a competitive environment. And drama at something I considered work, was not the wisest choice. Don't defecate where you eat sort of thing. The 'Store Rating' system and the Subscribers system was the worst thing that was ever introduced to the page. Keeping up with the crazy requirements to have a good rating would make epal as time consuming as working two full time jobs. And people subscribing was never really something that took off. Ultimately, getting subscribers made epals lose money. Do the math. Eight dollars income per month for a person subscribing is funny, considering they get a big discount for all your services which you had to keep cheap to get any orders at all. The 'Matching' lobby is another thing that I'd say is complete nonsense. Being eStar, having good reviews and visibility became absolutely useless after this was introduced. Clients are flooded with messages so they don't even spend time to browse on the page. This is another thing that is making you lose money. Think about it. I never really minded the creeps lurking on the page. This is not something I blame you for. You actually did your best to protect people from them and I will commend you for that. Where there are anonymous people on the Internet, there is abuse and there are creeps. Epal is no exception. This is fine. The changes YOU made to this page caused me much more stress than any creeper that I could easily block. To people who are thinking of becoming an epal, it's your choice. Try your luck. It is possible to earn money on this page. Know though, that it's not 'OMG THE EASIEST JOB ON THE PLANET PLAYING GAMES WITH PEOPLE FOR MONEY' but it's much more mentally taxing than you can imagine. And ultimately, you might get some money yet lose a lot of time. Managing to earn on this page takes LOTS of time. As much as I can't see value in being an epal now, I am greatful for the good times I spent on this page and the good money I used to earn. It's not all good, it's not all bad. So three stars it is.