Invitations and profiles views hit rock bottom. What am I missing?

[#1]

Hi, I've been working on Upwork for over 5 years now, and while it was hard at the beginning I've made over 200 jobs, and have had a Top Rated Plus badge for quite a while. At some point I received almost 5 invitations to interviews a day. But now, it has dropped to zero, and even when I send proposals, they are not seen by clients.

I know there were some changes, you have projects and consultations, biddings and what now, but I can't explain this. Is this happening to somebody else? Can somebody help me getting back on track? Thanks!

[#2]

Hola Cristian,

Can you condense the size of your profile summary into 5-7 sentences at most? It looks too long right now..

Try to "sell yourself (product/services) in the first two sentences. OK?

Your profile looks really good. It just needs an update in the summary section.

Tell me about your proposals. How many are you sending per day and per week?

Sometimes clients never view proposals. Even if you "boost" the application. This happens. You have to move on from it, and not focus on that - keep trying!

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Good luck, brother.

[#3]

With all due respect, William, are you serious?

Cristian has been a member of the platform for five years. He's Top-Rated Plus, with a 99% JSS and over $100,000 earned on the platform.

You worked 19 hours total and earned $20.

You appear to be a nice person, but you are not in a position to dismiss his experience-based criticism with such naive advice.

[#4]

I love your confidence 🙂

[#5]

---

William C wrote:

Hola Cristian,

Can you condense the size of your profile summary into 5-7 sentences at most? It looks too long right now..

---

Your profile overview is longer than Cristian's.

[#6]

Hey Cristian,

You're not alone. This issue has been raised countless times already. As far as I know, Upwork is perfectly aware of it.

In my opinion, this is caused by their horrible talent search engine. There's no ranking system and apparently, they stopped using any sort of best-match algorithm. It doesn't reward freelancers with a solid history on the platform but randomizes the results to allegedly help new ones.

The problem with this philosophy is that it can snowball really fast. Clients become frustrated because they end up hiring someone unfit for the job with potentially terrible results (or not hiring anyone at all). Competent, time-proven freelancers become frustrated because they stop getting invites and their proposals seem to go unnoticed. 

In the long run, most likely this will lead to both quality freelancers and clients leaving the platform, which in my opinion, might be what we're already experiencing right now, given the drastic decline in job quality and quantity (at least in my field).

Upwork urgently needs to redesign its search engine from scratch and also start working on an effective quality assurance system to control the huge number of people who get in every day and undermine the quality of the platform, resulting in a terrible user experience for clients and competent freelancers alike. 

Here's my stats, for comparison:

[#7]

Thank you for your response, Rafael. It's disheartening to hear that many of us have been experiencing a drop in invitations and profile views for some time now, and that Upwork hasn't addressed the issue.
I created this post in order to determine if I was doing something wrong and to get back on track. However, I've been forced to explore other platforms to obtain more clients. My work is my livelihood, and I cannot wait for Upwork to resolve this issue.

[#8]

I always tell people to never trust one source for your income. Always have a few other sidelines that you can use for your skills you use on Upwork or in other areas.

Upwork is completely aware of the millions of unskilled freelancers boosting like mad for cheap, low skills jobs. This is apparently their new business model. I've been saying they looked like 5 vrrrr , and I think someone heard me, and decided, hey, that should be our business model! No, they have had this in the works since they started letting in anything, and I mean anything. Again, Upwork wants those people to make more than connects, so they do one terrible job and that's it. It's income. It's not good for the long term, but that doesn't seem to be a concern. Quality be dammed. (spelling error on purpose)

There have been a lot of signs like the open floodgates to anything that could figure out how to spend connects to send the good clients racing from the platform. Why else would you want 90% unskilled "freelancers" on the platform? They changed the algorithm on the search engines, and the results are different depending on searching as a client or freelancer. Upwork changed the fee structure; now why would they make such a change that penalizes large contacts, while lowering the fee for smaller jobs? There is more, but these steps alone tell everyone what is happening.

Be creative, think outside the box, and explore your skill set. Anything you can do to stand out in the crowd. If you are looking for the good clients who will pay more than pennies per word or $50.00 for something that will require hours, look to other sources. Even in great times, always have a couple of backups.

If Upwork or someone wants to correct my interpretation of Upwork's actions, please do.

[#9]

No corrections at all. Quality has definitely been dammed.

[#10]

Hello, Jeanne.

It would be a terrible business decision if Upwork truly decided to reduce quality in order to compete with the many other low-cost platforms available.

I honestly don't think it's possible because it would be such a bad decision.

I've tried every freelancing platform out there, and Upwork is the only one that offers high-paying jobs for serious freelancing professionals in my field. All of the other platforms are extremely cheap. 

So, why would Upwork leave a position of leadership where it has no competitors (at least in my field) to compete with dozens of low-paying, generic freelancing platforms?

Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't make sense.

To be honest, I believe what we're witnessing here is just the consequence of a sequence of really bad decisions. Typical corporate issue. They make bad decisions and then try to fix them with even worse decisions. Eventually, the whole thing becomes so messy that it's really hard to fix it unless you start from scratch. 

Just my two cents. 

[#11]

why would Upwork leave a position of leadership

Because they don't profit for years? They needed to change something.

[#12]

Yes, they do need to change something, but not for the worse.

I doubt that Upwork's profits would benefit from its transformation from a serious, reputable platform to just another lowballer.

[#13]

Jeanne's message is spot-on. Everything the OP and other freelancers are experiencing is directly related to not just one, but several decisions Upwork has made over the past several months to 1 year (or even longer).

Talk about quality? Upwork recently announced in its 2023 1st Quarter Shareholder letter that they made moves to streamline operations, which included a workforce reduction. They reduced the employee workforce by 137 jobs (approximately 15% of full-time employees), and reduced their contractor staff as well. This means, they went from 913 full-time employees down to approximately 776 full-time employees.

Additionally, they reduced their brand media investments; revised their hiring plans; and reduced vendor-related expenses. These changes--along with the reduction in employees--are expected to generate over $80 million in annual net cost savings and approximately $40 million of net cost savings in 2023.

When you allow a plethora of unskilled freelancers to enter the platform and you struggle to remove spam and scammers, and you remove 15% of your workforce, it's quite clear where your priorities lie. It's about saving money and doing what it takes to generate income, and as Jeanne and Kelly so eloquently noted, quality be dammed.

[#14]

I don't know about invites and views since I never received a lot so can't say if they're in decline. 

However, I needed to find a new project to fill my schedule, so I went job hunting last week. 

I hadn't sent any proposals in a while so I had around 400 or so connects piled up, so I bid on like 4-5 jobs, 1st/2nd place bid on all. All clients had good history, meaning not their first gig, verified payments all that. 

No views... nothing. On top of that almost none of the clients have even looked at their jobs posts in days, which is probably why there are no views, but still. I feel that a certain amount of seriousness is missing. 

I've never been the one to optimize my profile or maintain my portfolio or anything like that so the lack of organic invites and views comes as no surprise to me. However, I do feel that considering my 100% success rate, top rated badge, and the fact I bid 1st place on like 5 jobs should at least get me some views right? Like just a gimpse or two from possible clients? Otherwise what's the point in bidding?

EDIT: 

I just got 4 new views after writing this, guessing from all you fine people on this forum 🙂 Not the views I wanted, but they helped a bit. Next time you visit, subscribe to my channel and smash that like button I guess 😄

[#15]

Thanks to you and OP.
The bad news is you are 100% correct : (

The good news is I can focus elsewhere : )

[#16]

It's probably not you.
 
LOTS of other very experienced Upworkers are in the same boat.
 
See also:
 
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Did-some-Upwork-projects-a-few-years-ago-Came-back-and-b...
 
 
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/75-of-Proposals-Aren-t-Viewed-What-are-your-stats-I-want...
 
 
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Upwork-2023-Something-changed-drastically/m-p/1272777
 
 
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Sharp-decline-in-invitations-and-responses/td-p/1253479
 
 
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Are-you-facing-the-problems-in-winning-the-new-jobs/td-p...
 
 
And MANY others.

[#17]

Thank you for the links, Kelly. Not what I wanted to read, though :S
I wish we had some kind official statement or clarification on the matter from Upwork.

[#18]

Cristian, I'm sorry to hear about your situation.  On the other hand,  I'm happy to hear that I'm not the only one.  Thanks for posting.

[#19]

99% of freelancer ads I apply for never even get viewed. Like people post ads for jobs and then never look at the magain by the dozens. No hires ever, no one ever looks at them again. I'm honestly wondering if the platform is dying and Upwork is posting thousands of fake Freelancer ads to get peopel to keep paying the monthly fees and buying Connects, which have gone up in price for no reason.

[#20]

Same here, Cristian. Top rated plus, 100% JSS since the beginning, almost 300 jobs and more than 100 hours, specialized profile and all... but my invitation/view rate has dramatically dropped in the last 8 months. I also made a post to show my situation and search for an explanation, but nothing came. 

And yes, I've also searched myself among the other freelancers: my profile is more or less on page 14 (and on the first page there are always the same freelancers for months). I honestly don't know what to do, no more, aside leaving UW.

[#21]

If you find a better alternative let me know, even Fiverr which was my side hustle has taken a hit, even my colleagues (illustration business) think the same. I have some savings but I'm not sure where to go...

[#22]

I really hope Upwork listen to us... This is really really disheartening. From 10 to 15 invitations daily last 2022, this early 2023 it reduced to 1 to 3 and even sometimes ZERO at one day... And What is really very alarming is the past 4 days. I did not get any invitations at all. This is the first time that this happened ever since 2018 ...  Bidding is also too expensive... I am really praying this will be fixed. 

  

[#23]

I'm facing the same issue. As a top-rated freelancer, I used to receive numerous daily views and frequent invites. However, now I only get one view per day. It has been two weeks since I last received any work. It's disheartening to think about the time and effort I invested in achieving the top-rated plus badge on Upwork, only to find that the platform isn't providing any assistance to us freelancers.