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Project Catalog™—now available globally!

lenaellis
Community Member

Over the past few months, many of you have helped us test and refine our newest Upwork offering: Project Catalog. 

 

Through your contributions, feedback, and support, we’re thrilled to announce that Project Catalog is now officially live for the entire Upwork community—talent and clients alike.

 

If you’re not familiar with Project Catalog (or just want a refresher), here’s a quick introduction:

 

Project Catalog is where the work you love finds you. Build and sell your own project offerings based on the type of work you want more of. Each project will be listed on Project Catalog, ready for clients to purchase for a fixed price in just a few clicks. Once a client purchases, they’ll fill out any requirements you’ve requested, and you’ll be set to get to work.

 

It’s an easy way to get more eyes on your offering and land new projects quickly—all while putting you in the driver’s seat. That means you and your clients can get started right away, and with confidence.

 

Check out this video to learn how clients will discover and purchase your projects. 

 

 

Stay tuned for more exciting rollouts 

 

Project Catalog is just the beginning of a series of exciting new ways to land clients on Upwork, adding to Talent Marketplace, the current platform you already know and love.

 

But no matter how you choose to use Upwork to grow your independent work, know that we’re dedicated to helping you build the strong and profitable relationships that are the foundation of a growing business.

 

We want to thank you for your hard work and the contributions you make to creating a thriving community on Upwork.

 

Happy New Year—may it be your most rewarding one yet!

 

 

824 Comments
golamrabbani17
Community Member

Hello Creative peoples,

I have created couple of projects catalog. I saw some of our freelancers get their first order but unfortunately, I do not yet. 

I don't know how Upwork rank or serial the project catalog. If there any legal rules or tricks to rank the project catalog? 

 

Thanks in Advance

 

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Nicholas and Joshua,

We hear your concern and want to assure you our intent with Project Catalog is not to force you to change how you work. It is just another option for freelancers to market their skills and for clients to get help with their projects on Upwork. It is not required and you definitely can continue using Upwork the way you always have.

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Thanks for sharing your experience, Steven. You can consider using pricing tiers to create three different variations of a project based on scope, such as included work, pricing, and time required. Pricing tiers would allow you to create different levels of service for this browser game, showing prices for each so you can set client expectations. You can describe exactly what would be delivered at each price.

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Golam, 

Project ranking depends on the search query, talent quality, and offering competitiveness. We are actively fine tuning and updating our ranking strategy to ensure fairness and robustness.

Here are some tips for improving your projects and making sure they are attractive to clients and catch their eye:

  • Highlight your project in simple, jargon-free language.

  • Choose professional images that speak to your work. 

  • Proofread your work so there are no typos.

  • Don’t use click bait, text-heavy graphics.

 

95cc25e6
Community Member
Yes of course
gina-herrera
Community Member

I was going to say a lot more but someone already took the liberty of stealing my reddit comment and pasting it here as their own Smiley LOL hilarious

Anyways, the general consensus among freelancers is that this program is trash and you will soon see that it's a failure - I can't wait to watch this flop. High end clients may get frustrated and not want to use the site anymore, and others who come here specifically because they hate Fiverr will now look elsewhere. Also, clients will price shop since they will have access to pricing right off the bat. Tl;dr - it's funny that Upwork seriously thinks this is beneficial to anyone including themselves.

2a05aa63
Community Member

Gina H wrote:

I was going to say a lot more but someone already took the liberty of stealing my reddit comment and pasting it here as their own Smiley LOL hilarious


Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess 😂

feed_my_eyes
Community Member

Valeria K wrote:

Hi Golam, 

Project ranking depends on the search query, talent quality, and offering competitiveness. We are actively fine tuning and updating our ranking strategy to ensure fairness and robustness.


Are these going to be the same "fair and robust" rankings that mark freelancers "Top 5%" when they've only done one or two projects? Or is Upwork concentrating on fine-tuning its ranking strategy for the new catalogue offerings, but not for the general marketplace?

 

 

feed_my_eyes
Community Member

Valeria K wrote:

Hi Nicholas and Joshua,

We hear your concern and want to assure you our intent with Project Catalog is not to force you to change how you work. It is just another option for freelancers to market their skills and for clients to get help with their projects on Upwork. It is not required and you definitely can continue using Upwork the way you always have.

But it IS going to force us to change how we work. The project catalogues will take away business from any freelancer who chooses not to use this feature, because fewer clients will post projects for us to bid on. I've decided to try it out because I feel like I have no choice, but I'm pretty sure that it won't work for me; if I have no advantage in being able to craft a tailor-made proposal and address a client's unique needs, then nobody is going to hire me over a cheaper freelancer. 

 

What worries me most is that Upwork is actually vetting project catalogue listings and rejecting them for things like images being low quality, or text that contains typos. Meanwhile, profiles in the regular marketplace continue to be auto-accepted no matter how terrible they are. So if clients look at the catalogue and see much higher-quality results as compared to doing a normal invitation-type search, then they're going to lean towards using the project catalogues.

 

sean_holland
Community Member

I just received my first order for a "project" under the new project format. My client has submitted the requirements and I started work, and then they changed their mind about what they wanted. This is fine, but it has now derailed the timeline. I now have a fixed delivery date for Monday which I seemingly can't change, and they have the ability to pull a refund for non-delivery. 

Unless I am missing something, the fixed delivery date is an obvious flaw in the project's system. Although I don't think my client is going to submit a refund, this hold-up, which is not my doing, leaves me exposed to losing the money in the Escrow AND looking like I have not delivered on time.

 

How do I reset the delivery date, with their permission? If this is not a feature, it should be. Things go wrong at the client's end all the time. They are often indecisive, have no clear picture of what they actually want and are prone to changing their minds mid-project. 

 

Advice please - I don't want to end up ruining my 100% perfect record because the system is inflexible when it comes to amending a delivery date.