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Updates to Showing Active Earners in Search Results

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

As we originally announced, profiles of freelancers who don’t earn on Upwork for a period of time are set to private. Freelancers can keep their profile public regardless of their earnings by subscribing to Freelancer Plus Membership and also have access to free options to turn their profile status back to public.

 

A few things have changed since this program was introduced almost two years ago, more importantly we have expanded our ID verification programs. We have also collected a lot of valuable feedback here in the Community and from other channels. As a result, we’ve made some adjustments to the program by increasing the period of time freelancers can go without earning before their profiles are set to private. 

 

Profiles of freelancers with a history of earnings on the platform will remain public unless they have not earned in more than 2 years. This will benefit freelancers who are active but may work on contracts with milestones that take several months or longer to complete. Profiles of new freelancers who haven’t earned on Upwork will be set to private after 90 days.

 

Freelancers will still be able to subscribe to a Freelancer Plus Membership if they don’t want their profile to be set to private if they don’t earn. Freelancers will also be able to request Upwork Customer Support to reset their profile visibility for free, as they have in the past.

15 Comments
wendy_writes
Community Member

Valeria, doesn't 2 or 3 months without earnings seem like a rather grandiose leap to 2 years without earnings?

 

I more than understand an extension up to 6 months ... but beyond that seems counter-intuitive to any reasoning beyond stacking the number of users.  i.e, DEAD WEIGHT and less than honest head count of actual available talent - no matter the competency level.

prestonhunter
Community Member

Whatever. If Upwork wants to include freelancers in search results even if they haven't earned anything in two years... that is up to Upwork. I don't think that is as helpful to clients. But it is what it is.

 

For freelancers, though: having milestones that take multiple months to complete is not a good idea.

 

My rule of thumb: Hourly contracts pay out once per week. Structure your fixed-price contracts so they pay out at least as often.

elyannie
Community Member
From the title of this post I was hoping this update would be going in the opposite direction. Wouldn’t Upwork benefit from showcasing their top earners who are actively earning on the platform? Not the freelancers who have abandoned their accounts? There are many accounts that get abandoned because some freelancers have a hard time figuring out how to close their accounts. This just creates more work for potential clients to sift through candidates. Showcasing and putting top earning candidates would make more sense.
gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

Preston H wrote:

Whatever. If Upwork wants to include freelancers in search results even if they haven't earned anything in two years... that is up to Upwork. I don't think that is as helpful to clients. But it is what it is.

 

For freelancers, though: having milestones that take multiple months to complete is not a good idea.

 

My rule of thumb: Hourly contracts pay out once per week. Structure your fixed-price contracts so they pay out at least as often.


Preston, I don't understand your comfort with setting yourself up as arbitrator of what is and is not good practice for everybody. Some people work in professional areas where an individual project may have a timeline that lasts the better part of a year or even more than a year. It is up to each FL and their client to decide what contract structure and schedule works best for them.

 

Preston, how about you do you and let the rest of us do us?

prestonhunter
Community Member

Phyllis:

There is nothing wrong with projects that take a year or more to complete.

 

But milestones that "that take several months or longer to complete" (to quote the moderator's original post) are a bad idea for freelancers.

 

For example, a project involves writing a book with 10 chapters, and each chapter is expected to take 1 month, then structuring this as a single milestone is a bad idea.


It would be better for the freelancer to break this down into 10 separate milestones, one for each chapters. Or 10 separate fixed-price contracts.

 

And it would be even more advantageous to break each chapter down further, into separate milestones, such that a freelancer is getting paid for her work more regularly.

 

As a freelancer, if a client pays me this week for the work I did this week, and pays me next week for the work that I do next week, that is better for me than waiting for "several months or longer" to see if maybe the client releases payment to me. Who knows what will happen over the course of those several months?

 

In pointing out something like this, I'm not advocating that Upwork change its rules or user interface to prohibit freelancers from working on milestones that take many months. I'm simpy pointing out what works best for freelancers.

 

This works best for clients, as well. As I client, I would rather set up a relatively short-term task for a relatively small amount amount of money. What if I set up a really large milestone for 3 months of work, and in the end, I'm not happy with the work? Then do I need to fight with the freelancer over who gets the money? It would be better to know within a few days that a freelancer isn't a good fit for my job, and then the amount of money involved isn't as significant. Maybe I can simply let that freelancer keep the money and hire somebody else.

 

Moreover, if I'm working with a freelancer who I know absolutely is doing tremendous, wonderful work for me, I would rather have that freelancer getting paid on a regular basis while working on my project, as opposed to working for months at a time before seeing any reward. I think that will lead to a better outcome.

e_luneborg
Community Member

Valeria K wrote:

As we originally announced here, profiles of freelancers who don’t earn on Upwork for a period of time are set to private. Freelancers can keep their profile public regardless of their earnings by subscribing to Freelancer Plus Membership and also have access to free options to turn their profile status back to public.

 

A few things have changed since this program was introduced almost two years ago, more importantly we have expanded our ID verification programs. We have also collected a lot of valuable feedback here in the Community and from other channels. As a result, we’ve made some adjustments to the program by increasing the period of time freelancers can go without earning before their profiles are set to private. 

 

Profiles of freelancers with a history of earnings on the platform will remain public unless they have not earned in more than 2 years. This will benefit freelancers who are active but may work on contracts with milestones that take several months or longer to complete. Profiles of new freelancers who haven’t earned on Upwork will be set to private after 90 days.

 

Freelancers will still be able to subscribe to a Freelancer Plus Membership if they don’t want their profile to be set to private if they don’t earn. Freelancers will also be able to request Upwork Customer Support to reset their profile visibility for free, as they have in the past.


Wouldn't 3 months be enough, since escrow can only hold funds for that period? So you can't actually work on a milestone for longer than that, or has that changed as well? If it hasn't it means you are not actively earning unless you submit work for a milestone at least every 3rd month. 2 years is overdoing it in my opinion. Why not rather let the freelancers who are using Upwork be the only ones being visible on Upwork? Or at least put the ones that aren't earning in the bottom of the search results if you must have them there at all. 

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

Preston H wrote:

Phyllis:

There is nothing wrong with projects that take a year or more to complete.

 

But milestones that "that take several months or longer to complete" (to quote the moderator's original post) are a bad idea for freelancers.

 

For example, a project involves writing a book with 10 chapters, and each chapter is expected to take 1 month, then structuring this as a single milestone is a bad idea.


It would be better for the freelancer to break this down into 10 separate milestones, one for each chapters. Or 10 separate fixed-price contracts.

 

And it would be even more advantageous to break each chapter down further, into separate milestones, such that a freelancer is getting paid for her work more regularly.

 

As a freelancer, if a client pays me this week for the work I did this week, and pays me next week for the work that I do next week, that is better for me than waiting for "several months or longer" to see if maybe the client releases payment to me. Who knows what will happen over the course of those several months?

 

In pointing out something like this, I'm not advocating that Upwork change its rules or user interface to prohibit freelancers from working on milestones that take many months. I'm simpy pointing out what works best for freelancers.

 

This works best for clients, as well. As I client, I would rather set up a relatively short-term task for a relatively small amount amount of money. What if I set up a really large milestone for 3 months of work, and in the end, I'm not happy with the work? Then do I need to fight with the freelancer over who gets the money? It would be better to know within a few days that a freelancer isn't a good fit for my job, and then the amount of money involved isn't as significant. Maybe I can simply let that freelancer keep the money and hire somebody else.

 

Moreover, if I'm working with a freelancer who I know absolutely is doing tremendous, wonderful work for me, I would rather have that freelancer getting paid on a regular basis while working on my project, as opposed to working for months at a time before seeing any reward. I think that will lead to a better outcome.


There are infinite hypothetical cases. IMO there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It's a moot point, anyway. Professionals should and will run their businesses as they see fit, regardless of what pontificating goes on here. 

wendy_writes
Community Member

+1

prestonhunter
Community Member

Specific language about "dormant engagements" (escrow payments that have been made 3 months ago and now must be sent back to the client because they're so old) can be found here:

 

https://www.upwork.com/legal#fp

 

Screen Shot 2020-03-09 at 12.22.48 PM.png

alphazomgy
Community Member

This is either a bad idea by Upwork or their idea to fudge the  "total amount" of freelances active on the platform.

 

Client invites are going to be wasted, leading to less income for hard working freelancers and more time wasted for clients.

 

Let's say I am one of those freelancers with nothing earned in over a year, but it hasn't been 2 years yet...

 

Why would I even care about an invitation from Upwork? Obviously I've been doing just fine without them and clearly I haven't had success there in the past, so why would I go back and pay their 20% fee? (Also, someone who hasn't earned anything in over 6 months probably won't quickly respond to an invitation from Upwork.) 

 

Lastly: Upwork is hurting the "good" freelancers to satisfy the ones who don't even earn them any money? What the heck?!