Compassion and consideration in these difficult times

[#1]

May I call on Upwork to remove the connect fees that were introduced not long ago and return to the free connects allocation per month for a few months. In these uncertain times of hardship for everyone, do your bit, I am sure you can manage for a while on your considerable 20% comission fee on each transaction, it is within your interest to support the freelance community that you rely on in these times of difficulty.

Lets work together people

[#2]

Hi Vladislav,

I'm sorry to hear about your situation. The safety and well-being of the Upwork community is our number one priority. At the moment, we aren't aware of any plans to make changes to Connects or offer free ones. We'll continue to monitor developments with COVID-19 closely and certainly notify our users if there are any changes.

Thank you.

[#3]

If Upwork gave me free connects, I wouldn't even know what to do with them. I'd never be able to get rid of them. lol

In the 4.5 years I've been on here, I've never been below like 180 connects. lol  I think even now with the 6 connects per job thing, I don't think I've gone below maybe 160ish.

[#4]

+ 1 to Christine's suggestion.

[#5]

I've already seen countless more applications to jobs (even an hour after posting) that normally wouldn't have any. So no thanks, no need to lower the threshold even more for one-timers or those wanting to quickly make the switch. 

[#6]

Well said Gary.

To bad this thread turns into a cheerlader, drink the kool aid, Upwork has to do nothing for dime a dozen freelancers. Frankly this thread and forum is not a community. I find it full of useless information and I stay away from it. 

The bottomline is will Upwork do anything to help freelancers make ends meet. Maybe Upwork could hire a PR expert to make us feel better during this crisis.  All my bill collectors have sent me emails to ease my anxiety. I find it odd and concerning Upwork has done nothing to address this issue. The world had changed Upwork, dont bury your head in the sand. Let us know you care. Thank you

[#7]

Thanks for sharing your concerns. The safety and well-being of the Upwork community is our number one priority. Upwork fees help to cover the costs of acquiring new clients and providing services like payment protection, customer support, and the platform infrastructure. We'll continue to monitor developments with COVID-19 closely and notify our customers if there are any changes. Stay safe!

[#8]

Understand the difficulties

Hope Upwork can come up with even a token gesture.

[#9]

---

Arul R wrote:

Hope Upwork can come up with even a token gesture.

---

I'd rather Upwork stays in business.

[#10]

---

Arul R wrote:

Understand the difficulties

Hope Upwork can come up with even a token gesture.

---

This time the token gesture may need to come from the community side (both freelancers and clients). Some could stop circumventing the system - just for a while - and pay the commision on the jobs. Another very useful gesture (much easier to implement) is to limit the number of requests for support / disputes /etc during this period to a minimum.

[#11]

Heart touching note.  I support compassion and am doing my part to assist those in need in the U.S. 

I surmise the primary reason behind issuing connects at a cost is to make financially unviable for contractors to issue high-count blanket responses.  There were the days where every job listing garnered "template" responses measured at 30, 40, 50.  I experienced these as an Upwork hiring client and they were indeed distressing.

It is time to sharpen the proverbial pen.  Make sure one's profile is in pristine, highly competitive shape.  To focus more deeply on proposal responses -- pick and chose wisely so as to limit investment in marketing and sales.  Which, as we consider ourselves privately owned businesses, is exactly what we invest in with connects.  Marketing and sales.

Then consider, each time we respond.  There are other freelancers out there in states of distress and it has most surely become the driving mission of some of those competitors to be the one to win the work.

Perhaps, maybe just perhaps.  The answer is to amp up our competitive natures.  Work harder to win work.  Out compete the competition.  Then with one project win gained by that competitive effort delta, the cost of connections for weeks, months, a year, years, is afforded.

[#12]

---

John B wrote:

Heart touching note.  I support compassion and am doing my part to assist those in need in the U.S. 

I surmise the primary reason behind issuing connects at a cost is to make financially unviable for contractors to issue high-count blanket responses.  There were the days where every job listing garnered "template" responses measured at 30, 40, 50.  I experienced these as an Upwork hiring client and they were indeed distressing.

It is time to sharpen the proverbial pen.  Make sure one's profile is in pristine, highly competitive shape.  To focus more deeply on proposal responses -- pick and chose wisely so as to limit investment in marketing and sales.  Which, as we consider ourselves privately owned businesses, is exactly what we invest in with connects.  Marketing and sales.

Then consider, each time we respond.  There are other freelancers out there in states of distress and it has most surely become the driving mission of some of those competitors to be the one to win the work.

Perhaps, maybe just perhaps.  The answer is to amp up our competitive natures.  Work harder to win work.  Out compete the competition.  Then with one project win gained by that competitive effort delta, the cost of connections for weeks, months, a year, years, is afforded.

In difficult times for all of us, thanks for cheering me up John. If we all upped our competitive delta efforts, the world would be a much be better place.

---

[#13]

Gary, you should know that Upwork's structure, tools, enterprise solutions, teams and professionals are the reason this platform is one of the only  known for attracting dozens of multi-billion dollar companies to come hire freelancers like you and me.  And all that costs a lot of money! I've had the opporunity to work for mutliple F100 and F500 companies on Upwork over the past  9+ years due to the reputation this platform has built.

They indeed support the community of freelancers and one of the things I love the most about Upwork is the 24/7 live chat support team! I know the support chat is a basic tool but I just love it because I used it ALL THE TIME! 🙂 Which other platform offers that?  One? However, other platforms have disabled that and many other features due to COVID-19 and Upwork is still providing their 24/7 support by allowing their support team to help us from their homes.

I know without a doubt that "returning to the free connects allocation per month for a few months" will not help freelancers at all in any way. We as freelancers already get plenty of FREE connects every month to search and apply for jobs.

It's in times like these that we as a community need to sharpen not only our skills but also the art of applying to jobs. We need to re-invent how we treat clients when submitting applications and proposals.  We should strive to WOW our potential clients at the application point and not after "securing the job". 

Clients don't need 1000 applications to find a single professional to help them, they only need a handful of well qualified professionals applying so that they can struggle in picking the best out of 6 and not in going over 100 applicants to find 6 worth speaking to.

Freelancers also dont need 1000 free connects to find a job, all they needs is to constantly send well crafted and targetted proposals to get their client's attention, earn their trust, build relationship and get the job. 

Also, making things FREE would not only make the company lose revenue but it would also affect their earnings and the earnings of other freelance professionals on the platform because it would drastically lower average price per job with hundreds of people sending lower than average bids which in all just affet the market value of the work we strive to provide our clients with excellence. 

As for the fees:

- 20% is discounted from the first $500 ONLY

- 10% up to $9999

- 5% after $10000

- And then after 2 years there's the option of also working directly with your client if he or she chooses to do so as longs as the conditions of Upwork's Terms of service are followed. No other platform offers similar terms and opportunities to their freelancers.

I wish you and everyone from the community the best of luck and stay safe!
Hugo

[#14]

BRAVO @ L.S.

Everyone else - read the above and stop behaving like **Edited for Community Guidelines**.

[#15]

'Upwork is still providing their 24/7 support'
but why signing CoS has not 24/7 support???
If I don't send my CoS in US work hours, I'm usually waiting a lot of time. is it big problem to sign CoS???
why Upwork can't make service for automatically signing CoS, why I need always ask support to sign CoS??

[#16]

Hi Aleksandr,

I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy with the response time and the assistance you received on your recent requests. I checked and see that even on your most recent requests you've received the information you requested within the same day, a few hours after submitting your request (outside the US working hours). Let me know if we're not looking at the same support requests and I'll be happy to take a look.

[#17]

All,

A few posts have been removed from this thread as they were against the Community Guidelines. We understand that this is a very stressful time for everybody and many of our Community members may disagree with each other. However, please still be mindful of the Guidelines and refrain from making personal attacks. 

Thank you.

[#18]

As Valeria says, play nice people.

I don't need anything from Upwork. Upwork is a portal I pay a 20% commission per job and a monthly fee. I should be honored to be allowed to do so with all my years of experience. All I ask for is a small email from a company who's Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide stay-at-home order to its 40 million residents. The stay-at-home order sounds like it will help Upworks decimated stock price of 6 bucks a share. Just Google "Companies Giving Back During The Coronavirus Pandemic." and you will see Upwork is late to the party again. Public relations is a important part of navigating a competitive online world. Give me a call Upwork and Ill suggest positive moves with the crisis surrounding coronavirus.

[#19]

---

Stephen R wrote:

 Just Google "Companies Giving Back During The Coronavirus Pandemic." and you will see Upwork is late to the party again.

The best thing Upwork could do, would be to give CLIENTS incentives.

All the connects in the world don't help if there are less clients and more freelancers with more connects. That will just result in everyone losing out big time.

People need to stop thinking that more connects lead to more earnings for them. The opposite is true if everyone has more connects. BIG TIME.

[#20]

Petra,

I don't need connects. I don't even use mine. 99% of my work is invites. 

Upwork ignoring freelancers during this Pandemic does not ease the fact freelancers are losing clients because the clients now have no income. I don't want connects. Maybe reducing the 20% commission for a limited time would help freelancers pay their bills or offer incentives like you suggested.

Frankly I don't want a thing but for big brother to acknowledge there is a world crisis and give some guidance to us peons who pay a small percentage of there salaries. 

If I were worried about connects and all the BIG TIME freelancers with hundreds of connects biding on jobs I would close up shop today.

I amazes me a company with a 714.354M market cap cant draft a press release with a plan on how they will navigate this crisis. 

[#21]

---

Stephen R wrote:

Upwork ignoring freelancers during this Pandemic does not ease the fact freelancers are losing clients because the clients now have no income.

---

ARE freelancers losing clients, though? I can only speak for my own category (graphic design), but I've been bidding on projects for the past couple of days and haven't noticed any decline in the quantity or quality of projects available (there are way more bids on everything, though). I'm not saying that it won't happen, just that it doesn't seem to have happened yet. There have always been lots of freelancers in the forum saying that they can't find work here; the only difference is that now they have something new to blame.

[#22]

Hi Christine,

I am a graphic artist and have had long time clients put projects on hold. It all depends on the what they make and sell. My other clients are proceeding with caution. The world has changed. All companies need to adjust to survive. We have a world pandemic that will touch all of us. There will be less jobs in every creative market. I'm sure Upwork will be fine. 

Have a great day!

[#23]

Isn`t time to the Upwork start to giving discounts on Connects' prices?

With the whole world going into isolation at home, it is becoming very difficult to get our proposals accepted and I am spending a considerable amount of money just buying Connects that are spent with no return.

I hope that Upwork is socially aware and aware of its responsibility in this moment of global crisis where freelancers are having a hard time.

[#24]

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Compassion-and-consideration-in-these-difficult-times/td...

[#25]

---

Ricardo B wrote:

Isn`t time to the Upwork start to giving discounts on Connects' prices?

With the whole world going into isolation at home, it is becoming very difficult to get our proposals accepted and I am spending a considerable amount of money just buying Connects that are spent with no return.

---

Ricardo, giving more freelancers more (or cheaper) connects does not help individual freelancers win more jobs.

In fact, the opposite is the case.

The more freelancers spend more connects, the less each freelancer gets hired and earns money. This is a very simple, very basic fact.

Unless there are more clients actually hiring, more connects means LESS work and LESS money.

[#26]

To us, Upwork seems like a (relatively) simple app that accounts for profiles, portfolios, job listings, applications, etc.  The infrastructure to run our business.

Sitting behind this is an Enterprise-IT-class system with millions of lines of code.   It would take, by a conservative estimate, 100s of thousands of dollars for Upwork IT to make the changes you indicate.  From there, changes in contractor support materials - help screens would be needed.  Retraining of all customer service agents to handle questions about free connects.  And in general put Upwork IT into a two, three, four month long development cycle.

From there, freelancers who have hit hard times would start flooding the airwaves with proposals, so we would see '20 to 50' proposals spinning up for commonly delivered services.

What seems like a simple, good-natured move to help Upworkers out with some free connects, is most probably a downstream large-scale change to an Enterprise IT system involving an entire team of programmers and impacting a million lines of code system.