Interesting situation with a (almost) client

[#1]

I was approached by someone I had a job interview with a few weeks prior (but didn´t accept the offer) to work on his client´s content development tasks by improving the score inside SurferSEO.

We agreed on running an article as a trial and working from there.

I received the SurferSEO link and started working on the project.

As a side note, I don´t have access to the competitors selected so, I had no idea whether or not they were the most relevant for this article. My job was to improve the score inside Surfer.

To sum up the story, I was able to take the article to close to 50 to over 90 in Surfer. After delivering the article this person had a lot of criticism that didn´t make much sense to me.

I am not going to dive into any details about this because it´s very subjective.

Given there was no contract for this because, in his words, he needs to know how many words I would end up writing in order for him to create a contract. So, I accepted and risk to start working without a contract because this person had spent over $40,000 in Upwork with a 4.28 rating so, I thought there was very little risk here.

So, my question in the scenario this person ends up publishing MY version of the article...What steps can I take here on Upwork to "force" him to pay me for my work? Thoughts?

[#2]

None. That is why Upwork insists on never starting any work until the agreement has been accepted. You took the risk and hopefully the client pays for it but I do not think they are obliged to pay, which sucks, but, those are the rules.

[#3]

You worked for FREE.

[#4]

There might be a ToS violation with regards to IP transfers, but at most the client can be blocked. Sure, the client has a high average rating and has spent a lot of money, but that doesn't mean the same person is on the other side of the screen each time. Seems likely that the cause of their sub-5 star rating is at least one person posting small jobs and then soliciting free work.

The fact that they solicited free work IS a violation of Upwork's ToS, so you can report that. But you won't get any compensation. Please report them, because you undoubtedly are not the only victim. Just be cautious in the future. At the very least, use read-only watermarks as a protection and non-extractable images for showcasing "trials" - make it hard on them to cheat you!

[#5]

How can I report him if there wasn´t a contract?

[#6]

Through the job post itself or from your direct messages.

[#7 · Accepted solution]

"he needs to know how many words I would end up writing in order for him to create a contract"

But contracts are not written in stone. You can require a different amount for a milestone when you submit it. So the client could have created a contract with a generic amount in the milestone (editable according to the work done), or even better he could have offered you an hourly contract. 

Surely not knowing the scope of the work is not a valid reason for not setting up a contract.