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realwebdeveloper
Community Member

Freelancer leaving Upwork

Why do so many freelancers want to close their account on Upwork.
I am just new here and I was surprissed that is 7 months time their are more the 600 pages with requests to close their account.

 

Is their a policy change at Upwork or is there another reason why so many people leave.

13 REPLIES 13
lysis10
Community Member


Jasper C wrote:

Why do so many freelancers want to close their account on Upwork.
I am just new here and I was surprissed that is 7 months time their are more the 600 pages with requests to close their account.

 

Is their a policy change at Upwork or is there another reason why so many people leave.


A lot of them are doing it to create a new account and think they won't get caught this way.

I understand that making 2 accounts is against the idea upworks has. But these are a lot of people that are not banned, but they request to remove their account.

It's because they're terrible at freelancing but think that by starting a new account they won't be terrible anymore.


Jasper C wrote:

 But these are a lot of people that are not banned, but they request to remove their account.


It's also people who created an account and never earned anything or won a contract, which is the majority of new freelancers. Only a relatively small percentage of new freelancers ever win a contract, so whilst some of the ones who can't win work just abandon their profiles, others want to close their accounts.

 

Thousands of people a day try to create an Upwork account, Most never actually make any money with it, so it's not really surprising that some want to close their account.

 

resultsassoc
Community Member

I'll be closing mine shortly after at least fifteen years. I dropped out after 2014 following a heart attack, cardiac arrest, triple bypass surgery and a stroke. Came back briefly, but most of my work after a couple years on the internet boards was off-platform anyway. Worked for about a year and a half before I found out I was diagnosed with an incurable disease that's a one-way ticket to non-Alzheimer's dementia. I don't have dementia, but I won't know if my cognitive functions begin failing. My clients depend on me to give them advice in existential situations, and I couldn't guarantee that I was still up to it.

 

I've maintained my account only so that I can log on and look at jobs a mentee is considering. Like most freelancers/clients with a few years, I can spot a scam, a client who will be a pain to work with, and somebody who will try to expand the scope of work without expanding the budget, so I look over the ones he's considering on his behalf. I'm wheelchair-bound now, need emergency oxygen on standby and can no longer type at any speed. I was a grumpy old man to start with, and this hasn't made me any  easier to work with.

 

I still hire occasionally on UW and another board - specialists for a friend who had a marketing responsibility thrust upon her, writing for SEO for another friend trying to break into blog writing. An occasional illustration for a novel.

kinector
Community Member


Jasper C wrote:

Why do so many freelancers want to close their account on Upwork.
I am just new here and I was surprissed that is 7 months time their are more the 600 pages with requests to close their account.

 

Is their a policy change at Upwork or is there another reason why so many people leave.


It's probably out of frustration of not getting anything going after months and months of trying. The Connects cost money and at some point, people realize their balance is constantly negative. When at the same time there's nothing in sight that would change it for the better, people make their conclusions. It is perfectly reasonable and good for their freelance businesses. By quitting, they can use the time on something more productive, and therefore, earn much more.

 

Only those with very specialized services manage to start quickly. It's about the mere quantity and scale of things, the number of other freelancers on this platform. The smart ones figure out how not to compete with thousands of others in the beginning.

 

The other side of the story might be that many people seem to join Upwork with the hope of becoming a freelancer. The ugly truth is that Upwork is probably the worst place to start freelancing from zero (i.e. not very strong substance/core skills such as programming, no business skills, no customer-handling skills, no references, no portfolio item, no freelancing skills in general, and therefore there's nothing to show). Even senior freelancers with more than 5 years of full-time freelance business experience elsewhere might not manage to get anything going out here, no matter the effort. Then just quit.

 

I'd hate to see you going that way by the end of the year, so here are some free tips.

 

In your case, you might want to offer something a bit more specific than generic front-end and back-end development... just check how many others you battle against. All the others have something to show and their stats don't show $0 which makes all of them more credible than any newcomer... It's tough.

 

Your chance of breaching zero earnings is much higher in a small and well-defined niche market than in a mass-market where there are thousands of others more senior over here than you.

 

A couple of questions that might help:

 

1. What is it that you do better than all the other Upworkers like you? (I.e. competitive advantage.)

 

2. Who needs you most? (Target only those people, since only those people would pay a lot.)

 

3. How would potential clients perceive your competitive advantage? (Nobody will hire you unless they understand that you are indeed better than all the alternatives... by whatever criteria your target clients would typically have.)

 

Also, take a look at the official guides. Both Freelancer and Client parts. Better even, become a client for a day to see how this actually works. Most people don't realize that it is one of the quickest ways to learn how all this works.

Thank you all for responding.
I am not a freelancer, my regular guy asked me to create this account, but I found out that Upwork doesn't like it that people use each other account, so I will be closing this account.
I was thinking of opening an account to find new freelancers. But my search on the internet last night showed me that Upwork is not the right place for me to find freelancers.
I also found tons of frustrated freelancers about the Upwork policies and the lack of customersupport. Wel even found out myself that it is hard to get in contact with customersupport.

 

Mikko R: You are forgetting 1 major point, I think you have to be cheap in the beginning, without any positive reviews it will be hard to ask a normal price. But as soon as you proved that you are as good as you think you are and you can prove this with reviews, than you can raise you prices.


Jasper C wrote:

Thank you all for responding.
I am not a freelancer, my regular guy asked me to create this account, but I found out that Upwork doesn't like it that people use each other account, so I will be closing this account. There is no need to close this account just because the ToS (which you already agreed to) does not allow freelancers to share an account. This is to protect freelancers and clients.
But if you close this account you cannot create a new one in the future.

My guess is that your regular guys wants you to hire him through Upwork so he create a profile. This is a red flag and cn get both accounts suspended. Why should a new client and a new frerlancer that could make business without paying Upwork fees agree to pay the fees? Does it violate the ToS of the other platform if you two continue on a different platform? That would get you two suspended as well.
I was thinking of opening an account to find new freelancers. But my search on the internet last night showed me that Upwork is not the right place for me to find freelancers.
Upwork is as good and bad as all the other places. There are scammers everywhere and you need to filter freelancers as well as clients carefully. Upwork does not provide this filtering service (nor does Upwork remove reported scammers)
I also found tons of frustrated freelancers about the Upwork policies and the lack of customersupport. Wel even found out myself that it is hard to get in contact with customersupport. Yes, this forum is the better place to get help. Many of the regular freelancers have complained after the ToS last year which no forbids to exchange contact information before a contract is in place thus enabeling the use of Calendly. The reason for it was that new freelancers bombared the forum and CS after they got "hired" outside Upwork and then didn't get paid. They ignored the messured in place to be protected and now the rest (clients and freelancers) has to pay for it.

 

Mikko R: You are forgetting 1 major point, I think you have to be cheap in the beginning, without any positive reviews it will be hard to ask a normal price. But as soon as you proved that you are as good as you think you are and you can prove this with reviews, than you can raise you prices. I think this is where you are wrong. If I want quality, I am willing to pay for it. If I see someone offering to work for way below market price, I expect to get scammed and do not bother to look further into the profile. A profession freelancer knows his/her worth and will charge accordingly. The only reputation one can get this way is being a cheap freelancer.


Jennifer R wrote: My guess is that your regular guys wants you to hire him through Upwork so he create a profile

 

No, worse than that... The "regular guy" wants him to create a profile that regular guy from China then use that account himself.

 

Basically an Upwork reject or formerly banned one pulling the "Lemme use your Upwork account via teamviewer" scam. 

 

Jasper, in the end, would then be not only responsible for all the work the scammer does, he'd also have to pay taxes on the scammer's entire income and if the scammer defrauds a client for thousands of Dollars (which they frequently do), Jasper will then be responsible for that too, financially and, in a  worst case scenario, legally.


Petra R wrote:

Jennifer R wrote: My guess is that your regular guys wants you to hire him through Upwork so he create a profile

 

No, worse than that... The "regular guy" wants him to create a profile that regular guy from China then use that account himself.

 

Basically an Upwork reject or formerly banned one pulling the "Lemme use your Upwork account via teamviewer" scam. 

 

Jasper, in the end, would then be not only responsible for all the work the scammer does, he'd also have to pay taxes on the scammer's entire income and if the scammer defrauds a client for thousands of Dollars (which they frequently do), Jasper will then be responsible for that too, financially and, in a  worst case scenario, legally.


So far I am not worried, he does not have the password of my account. Also there are no lies on my account. It is just useless for me, because I do not do freelance work. I already have a job at a company where we hire freelancers.
So thank you for the advise, I better close this freelance account and open a client account.

Thank you, but I would never hire a freelancer without any reviews. No matter how nice their profile works or how many things they claim te have made.
So you need to create a base.
There are a lot of jobs, that are realy easy and fast to do for a freelancer, but not for the client, so in those cases it would be an easy way to create good reviews.
And if the freelancer has no proof of his experience, the only thing he/she has is the price.
Nobody will hire a freelancer, because of their nice blue eyes 😉


Jasper C wrote:

Thank you, but I would never hire a freelancer without any reviews. No matter how nice their profile works or how many things they claim te have made.
So you need to create a base.
There are a lot of jobs, that are realy easy and fast to do for a freelancer, but not for the client, so in those cases it would be an easy way to create good reviews.
And if the freelancer has no proof of his experience, the only thing he/she has is the price.
Nobody will hire a freelancer, because of their nice blue eyes 😉


A freelancer without any proof of experience is not a freelancer but someone who heard that freelancing is an easy way to make money.

No work history on Upwork is not the same as no experience.

Agree, but never trust a profile. A lot of them are full of lies. There are even freelancewebsites that offer a better profile if you pay them, to give the idea that the freelancer is more experienced

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