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anima9
Community Member

Have you noticed a drop in quality clients and job posts?

Both a discussion and a question. 

 

I've been active on the platform for five years, have a really marketable profile, and I noticed since early 2019, I just don't see quality jobs or clients anymore. I also don't get invited to jobs as much as I used to. I went from up to three invites a day to zero in a month. 

 

Now, I understand that Upwork has done some major changes over how clients get freelancers here, but I think I read somewhere that they also implemented location-based job visibility as well as limited invites. I get the limited invites thing and how it could benefit me despite losing job invites in the process, but the location-based job visibility I think is killing my career especially because I live in Asia. I personally experienced being sent a job post suggestion by Upwork through email, only to be greeted by "Sorry, this job is not available in your area," or something similar.

 

My rates are catered towards those in the West and clients in Asia or near Asia would never hire me for those. I'm still getting by, but I'm teetering on the "average" side of my earning potential and it's half of what I'm used to, and it's scaring me.

 

That, and the fact that I get hired better on cr@igslist is also quite disturbing given that I don't have a profile to show except for a manually written CV and a few links. 

 

So yeah, that's my little complaint and opinion on the current state of the platform. I guess it begs another question: Is Upwork dying?

5 REPLIES 5
weinreich
Community Member

I'm in the same situation. I used to get many invitations but it's been quite a while since I received one. According to my stats, I've had 10 invites in the past 90 days. I have a narrow niche and high hourly fee, which already limits me, but I still received invitations for good projects. Luckily, I have more than enough work outside of Upwork, but I'm not optimistic that it's going to be a good source of clients in the future. It's not just a shame for me, but also for Upwork, which is not going to be making the same kind of fees off of me that it had been. They seem to have shot themselves in the foot with the changes they made on the client side. 

I have been around this watering hole getting close to a decade now and yes, it appears that quality clients are drying up. That could be the result in economic boom that we happen to be in.......as companies have more cash to hire internally to get the job done. That being said, I also think timing is everything and Upwork tends to be just out of sync when they make policy changes that affect both clients and freelancer in the guise of correcting the ship. 

anton_k
Community Member

There is a related discussion on the same topic - Is upwork dying slowly? (with more cases and opinions).

According to the comment by Mykhailo M:

Upwork adds a new membership policy for clients. You need to PAY a membership fee if you want to have the ability to select in search form TOP-RATED profiles. So, basically, right now we are competing with a lot of newcomers on Upwork.

I guess, such change could shake the grounds on its own 🙂

petra_r
Community Member


Anton K wrote:

 

According to the comment by Mykhailo M:

Upwork adds a new membership policy for clients. You need to PAY a membership fee if you want to have the ability to select in search form TOP-RATED profiles. So, basically, right now we are competing with a lot of newcomers on Upwork.

That's a ridiculously misleading statement and the conclusion is all wrong.

 

Clients have never previously been able to search for top rated freelancers, only for JSS in excess of 90% - which all clients still can, just as before. So just because a few clients can now specifically search for top rated, nothing changed about the ability of every client to search for freelancers with a high JSS (most of which are top rated and marked accordingly anyway)

sohailhafeez
Community Member

I also noticed the smae thing. Upwork clients are decreased after they change of policies. I have been a member of Upwork since 2018. During previous year, Upwork was an amazing place to get new clients and to work with but unfortunately after the change in Upwork policies, things do not seems to remain same. 

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