Hello,
I have been a freelancer on other platforms for a long time. Since the past three months I have decided to give upwork a try again after sidelining it the first time due to its high entry barrier.

I decided I am well in position to invest on connects just to make my portfolio stronger here. I have been consistently investing in buying connects and sending proposals. Now I know a lot of people discourage a newbie with low-effort proposals, Although I dont write low effort proposals anymore much less, but I have had huge success with other platforms without even putting any effort into the proposals all through invite and my project showcase.

However, on Upwork, despite being a successful freelancer elsewhere, I never had the opportunity to work with a client EVER.

It's so rare for me to have a client just "view" my proposal that I bucket those proposals into my gold list of proposals that worked!

Consider the image above where I sent a proposal for 14 connects and bid mine to the highest for 24 connects and never having the opportunity to not only be not viewed by the client but also never coming back to their posting for anyone at all

Now imagine this for all 50+ hopes tossing connects into these black hole posstings where they lose connects just into a "gamble." That would be very roughly an average of 600 connections just from proposals, bidding aside . Upwork would charge about 100 USD for 600 connects, and this is just one job post sucking connects from users. This client has posted one other job with no response and no interview at all (attached)

Don't you think Upwork should penalize this behavior from the client? Could there be a possiblity of upwork using this strategy to use up connects just for users to buy more. I mean sounds perfect for a business model

Regardless, I don't know how to win jobs on Upwork anymore. And I specifically checked this job time and again after sending the proposal, as it matched very closely with what I offer and I spent about 3 hours writing proposals and creating demo (as this was very closely matching my skills)

Happy to hear any experience or suggestions

Why do people still use Upwork? All I read from this Reddit is bad news about Upwork, but yet people are still using it.

I have an account with them and I’m honestly afraid to submit any proposals now because I only have 8 connects. If I submit a proposal and get no result, it feels like such a waste. I also don’t want to spend money buying more connects on this platform, especially after reading what people have said here.

I know, Upwork this, Upwork that. Lot of negativity. But there are people making 100K+ per year, for those people, I want to ask, is it skill issue with me? What's the way to get clients on upwork? Please shine some light upon beginners/intermediate like us.

Freelance dev here with a security background. Flagging this so the next person finds it when they search the posting text.

There is a malware campaign running through Upwork job postings right now. I have seen the same posting from at least two different client accounts (one in Ukraine, one in India, different spend levels, both payment verified with good star ratings). Both are titled some variation of "Salesforce Admin (Service and Sales Cloud)" and both open with this exact sentence:

"All requirements, questions and screenshots attached with job post here, You have to answer all the needs in your proposal."

That sentence is the fingerprint. If you see it, close the tab.

The attachment is a zip (mine was called Salesforce-Job.zip) containing a few screenshot PNGs and a file named "Project Requirements & Budget.vbs". That is not a document. It is a Visual Basic script, and on Windows, double clicking it runs code. I did not run it. I pulled it apart in isolation instead: it is a two stage downloader that fetches a decoy requirements text file plus a batch script payload from kohlerronan[.]com and executes the payload from your temp folder. Classic infostealer delivery. Worth noting what that means on this platform specifically: stealers grab browser sessions, and your Upwork login is a browser session. Compromised freelancer accounts are very plausibly where this campaign's fresh "client" accounts come from.

What made this one dangerous is that everything looked normal. Payment verified, 4.9+ stars, thousands in spend, and it arrived in my inbox through the paid job alert feature as a match for my saved search. Client stats tell you nothing about attachment safety.

Lessons, none of which I enjoyed learning:

1. Never download attachments from a job posting before you have a contract. A real client describes their problem in the posting text. "All requirements are in the attached zip" is a pressure tactic and now, as far as I am concerned, a confirmed attack signature.

2. A .vbs, .bat, .cmd, .js, .lnk or .scr file inside a "requirements" zip is the whole story. There is no legitimate reason for a client to send you an executable script as a project description.

3. If you already opened one of these: disconnect, run a full AV scan, and change your passwords from a clean device, starting with Upwork and your email. Assume browser sessions and saved passwords are gone.

4. Report the posting (flag as inappropriate, then also file a support ticket so it reaches trust and safety with a case number). I have reported both postings I found.

Archive contents were dated late August, so this has been running for a while. Stay careful out there.

Have no idea what .bat is doing.
Luckily it doesn't work on Linux.

And someone wasted connects on it and sent proposals.

Hi everyone.

I joined Upwork about 10 days back as I had more time now because of AI at work and I was getting a bit bored with pure AI work so I thought why not try to pick up AWS/DevOps/Infra projects.

Have around 12+ years of experience in infrastructure - AWS , DevOps and SRE and now Lead AI at my org after Cloud. Have deployed at least 8 Fintech SaaS apps and 6 On premise core banking applications.

However, I wasn’t even able to get a single proposal opened by the clients.

I have Pro already. Have 100% profile completed.
I try to bid the lowest.

What am I doing wrong ? Can someone please help understand this ? How can I at least get the clients to open the proposal?

Hey all,

I have too much on my plate to monitor Upwork everyday. Never liked the API stuff as that's definitely against TOS...

But can Upwork detect AI controlling my computer? Has anyone got banned from this? I just want to schedule a Cron every few minutes during the workday to check for new posts, draft replies and hand it off to me. I feel like the Cron part will definitely set off some flags though.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’ve been working as a freelance architect for around 4 years. I really enjoy freelancing because it gives me the opportunity to work on projects from different parts of the world.
However, finding a consistent flow of clients has been difficult. I occasionally get projects through Fiverr, but I’ve never managed to get a project through Upwork. Applying to jobs there can also be quite exhausting, especially when many of them have very low budgets.
I’ve also been regularly posting my work on Instagram, Behance, and LinkedIn, but these platforms haven’t brought me any clients so far.
How do you guys find your freelance clients?
Do you actually get clients through Instagram or LinkedIn, or do you use other methods such as cold emailing or direct outreach?

Hello fellow freelancers, i was on upwork for quite some time i had met a client who smhw was unpleased with my work and downrated me even when they got their work and money back sent to them so now i am struggling with my 50% job success rate after it was 90%

I need help in how to solve this issue since i had no offers after that incident.

can anybody tell me how to get the first client on the upwork

Got my account restricted without any voilation... All of sudden, I received an email, asking to verify my identity which i did sucessfully and account got back to normal.... 2 days latter the same notification of restriction was hanging on dashboard, this time without any email... Submitted my appeal the next day and its been almost 1 month and no response from upwork.... I am seeing that alot of people are facing the same issue... Did any's account get the back to normal ... if someone do, how much time did it take .... this is really frustrating situation .... I don't know what to do ...

I came across an Australian client about 2 years ago, and he wanted mento develop multiple projects for him one by one which i did. And in one instance the project did not work as intended, so I told him he has hardware issues which he needs to upgrade, and then again as expected same issue came, after which he becomes unresponsive, i had already charged him for the project and i tried to optimize it for his system, i tried contacting him multiple times over the year , he paused the contract after some months and yet did not respond me on any medium.
Now he has given me 2 stars stating the project did not work and he refuses ti elaborate and states that I charged him for work that I did but I said I would not (I never said that)
Is there anyway to remove this feedback as my success score had gone to 33% just because of one feedback (our of 15 ling terms projects)

I am a software engineer who has been working on Upwork for a long time, and I used to have a Top Rated badge. I needed to take a long break, about six months.

After coming back after six months, I looked at my Upwork profile and saw that they wiped out my Top Rated badge. Also, my Job Success Score is now 81%, down from 100% before.

So my question is: what the heck is this, actually? I don't think I'm going to get another job with this profile. It is a real disaster.

I’ve received around 100 views on my profile in the last 5 days, but still got 0 invites.

I’m trying to understand what could be the reason. Is it my profile, niche, pricing, portfolio, or something else?

Would really appreciate feedback from experienced Upwork freelancers. What do you think I might be missing?

Why am i getting ghosted when with such low asking and after everything is agreed upon.
In months these are the most far I have gone still no hires.

I also did freelancing back in 2022 and I had much better success back then. People still saying AI is just hype keep learning but I have learned enough to the point technical skills have never been a issue

People who are freelance web devs what are you even doing anymore?

Has anyone dealt with something like this on Upwork?

I completed a project for a client more than 3 weeks ago, and I still haven’t been properly paid.

The contract originally allowed up to 10 hours per week. I completed the assignment, which took me approximately 5 hours and 29 minutes. including the work required for the project.

Now the client has apparently reduced the weekly limit from 10 hours to only 3 hours, and it looks like I may only be paid for 3 hours even though the job already took about 5 hours to complete.

What concerns me most is that the work was already completed before the limit was reduced.

I’ve been contacting Upwork Support for more than 3 weeks trying to get help, but so far I haven’t been able to get the situation resolved. From what I understand, Upwork’s Hourly Payment Protection may also depend on whether the hours were tracked through the Work Diary rather than entered manually.

Has anyone experienced a client lowering the weekly hour limit after the work was already performed?

A few things I’m trying to understand:

• Can a client reduce the weekly limit retroactively and affect hours that were already worked?
• If the contract showed a 10-hour weekly limit when I performed the work, should that original limit apply?
• Is there a way to escalate this beyond regular Upwork Support?
• Has anyone successfully recovered payment in a similar situation?
• What documentation should I provide Upwork to prove what the weekly limit was when the work was performed?

I have screenshots, the project instructions, communication with the client, and documentation showing the work was completed.

I’m not trying to get paid for work I didn’t do. I simply want to be paid for the actual work I completed under the contract terms that were in place at the time.

Any advice from freelancers who have dealt with this would be greatly appreciated.

7 days a week for $700??

Imagine working nonstop daily to earn $700 monthly?

I'm still very new on this platform, but from what I can tell this isn't parody or satire.

Dude wants a COO with 15-20 years of experience + AI saaviness for $3/hr.

(and they have the galls to ask: "6. Why this type of environment appeals to you". What type of envrionment?? Abusive and exploitative environment?)

If anyone is interested to apply, job link is here: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022096318600510727867

​

Just joined Upwork for the first time and I’m trying to understand how it works.

From what i see, you have to pay for Connects just to apply for jobs, and then if you actually get paid, Upwork takes a percentage too. So it feels like you’re paying on both ends.

On top of that, I’m seeing people especially indians offering to work for literally $1–$2/hour, which makes me wonder how beginners are supposed to compete without basically working for free.

Yet tons of freelancers still use Upwork, so I feel like I’m missing something. Is it actually worth it once you understand how the platform works? How do you guys make it profitable?

- Does your client location check changes when they are new?

- Do you change proposals for them or doesn't matter?

Any tips you would like to share.

I've seen posts saying 60% of the money the client pays going into agency's pocket - considered still "ok", when you do all the work.

I'd say 60% would be "ok" only if you're in a full-time employment (FTE) position (vacations, layoff period, sick leave are all included in FTE contract and it gives some sort of security, which would "explain" the higher percentage of the total budget taken by the company/agency)

If it's a one-time, no guarantee of anything (if we get more clients, maybe we will contact you, maybe we use someone else) - then I'd be ok with 30% cut for the agency, as I do all the work.

What's your view?