Feature suggestion: connection rewards for completed jobs

[ari-bloss]

I feel like it might be a good idea to implement something like this. You could get additional connections for every contract you complete. It would provide greater incentive to submit proposals and reward busy workers. It would be more ethical AND more efficient at reducing spam than a paywall and overall it'd attract more users.

[martina_plaschka]

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Ari B wrote:

I feel like it might be a good idea to implement something like this. You could get additional connections for every contract you complete. It would provide greater incentive to submit proposals and reward busy workers. It would be more ethical AND more efficient at reducing spam than a paywall and overall it'd attract more users.

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Upwork is desperately trying to get freelancers to submit less proposals, which is why they will be charging for every proposal submitted very shortly. 

[petra_r]

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Ari B wrote:

It would provide greater incentive to submit proposals and reward busy workers.

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Upwork does not want to provide an incentive to submit proposals because clients are already drowning in proposals. The aim is far LESS proposals, not more....

"Busy workers" tend to not need more proposals, because they have enough work already.

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Ari B wrote:

and overall it'd attract more users.

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The only users Upwork wants to attract is clients.

The whole point of the "pay for connects" thing is to get rid of some of the huge percentage of surplus freelancers.

[feed_my_eyes]

That would be great, except that it would reduce Upwork's profits, whereas the new policy is designed to improve their bottom line. (FYI, I don't see anything unethical about a company wanting to make a profit instead of a loss.) Also, they're trying to reduce the overall number of freelancers, so putting policies in place to attract MORE freelancers wouldn't make any sense.

Something that I think would make more sense would be to award bonus connects for repeat projects. I'm sure that Upwork loses a lot of business after freelancers make the initial contact with clients and then take follow-up projects off of the platform. (And yes, I understand that this is against the TOS, but there's no way to enforce it so I'm sure that it happens more often than not.) Giving better incentives for repeat business would probably work out in Upwork's favour in the long run. 

[gilbert-phyllis · Accepted solution]

What about people like me? I never have more than 2-3 projects active in a month but earn thousands most months on projects that can last for four months or longer. How is that fair? I should be rewarded, not penalized. Not that I need more connects. In any case, as others have pointed out, the objective is not to punish FLs but simply to limit the number of connects that are available before all the good clients get fed up and depart for good.