Let Loose the (Boosting) Hounds of War!

25005175 · ‎01-19-2023

So, not even three days ago, there were discussions about the insanity of users boosting with the maximum Connects balance and about the fairness of the competitive edge that Agencies had due to having double the Connects capacity of freelancer (FL) accounts.

We may never know if this decision was a response to those discussions, but here it is: UNLIMITED CONNECTS!!!!!! 😲😲😲

And thus, we may now spend $100, $200, or even $1000 on a single bid! 🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑 (Well, technically $99.90, $199.95, and $999.90, but who's counting?) That is up from the previous limits of $30 (FL) and $60 (Agency). The only limit is the size of your digital piggy bank and the number of times you are willing to make separate purchases of Connects bundles!

So now, what are your thoughts? 🤔🤔🤔 Personally, my reaction is: 😱🤢💀. Okay, maybe not quite that literal, but certainly in the range of 😰. If you want to comment on the update directly, go here.

I foresee sky-high bids that make the 100-200 range look like piddling pennies. I foresee early-to-bid Agencies and FL's bidding unholy amounts to scare away other Agencies and FL's from even submitting a proposal. This bluff could even result in small 3rd place bids, resulting in these ridiculous sums getting refunded back to the holders of the 1st and 2nd slots. And I think that will continue to happen until other users sacrifice themselves to call those bluffs by sending the 3rd place price almost as sky-high. 💎💥💎 Then, after the stories of several such financial rebukes make the rounds on various social media and forums, there will be a return to something resembling normalcy (which will still be higher than the average Boost is now).

Anyways, I figure that Upwork has let the proverbial dogs out. Fortunately, yanking them back in will be much easier than herding the proverbial cats, should they ever choose to do so.

ETA: fix a broken link after mods merged two threads.

84798706 · ‎01-19-2023

☹️

atreglia · ‎01-19-2023

Perhaps Upwork has finally found it's niche in gambling. Or, it could be they're looking to deglobalize since it mostly hasn't worked well for them anyway. Who knows.

But if they're really trying to clean house I don't understand why they feel the need to do it with their own product. Now, they've essentially pitted us against eachother not by skills, but by money. Shame on them. I see the freight train coming.

df602768 · ‎01-19-2023

Jonathan, I don't think this is an issue. You'll land jobs if you have a strong profile, proposal, and communication/soft skills.

Seriously, this is fine. I rarely, if ever, bidded for a job and still landed it or got an interview. In fact, lots of times, the proposals on the jobs were in the 20-50+ rates. And, I still landed the job having spent 2-4 connects.

Why?

Because clients know the value of working with someone who knows what he's doing/someone who's going to give them VALUE.

I could go on and on, but what's the point? I'm not the one who's going to offer free advice on how freelancers should position themselves and how they should view their Upwork as a real business and themselves as the image of said business.

And working online is a vast, immense world. It requires determination, passion, diligence, and expertise to succeed. If you have all of those, you'll make it just fine on Upwork - unlimited connects or not.

e74d757a · ‎01-19-2023

I totally agree with you.

elisa_b · ‎01-19-2023

miriam-ocampo · ‎01-19-2023

This must have been a well-thought-out model or else why would they have implemented it? What I can't understand is what they plan to achieve. (besides financial gain).
Is the site as we know it going to disappear?
Do they expect to retain a certain kind of profile or only agencies?

lysis10 · ‎01-19-2023

It's gonna be a connect bloodbath. lol tbh I had no idea there was a cap in the number of connects you could buy. I also never remembered how much they cost, but saw Tiffany's post saying they raised the cost. I think boosting would be not so important if they put best match back to 3-4 people, but if 15 people are best match, you don't really stand out anymore. Maybe that's the strategy -- dilute best match to where it doesn't matter so boosting is the only way to stand out.

tlsanders · ‎01-19-2023

This is the second time you've mentioned high early bids being a scare tactic? Do you have any reason to believe that motivation is on anyone's mind but yours? It seems to make very little sense, since freelancers who don't make the top three will get their connects back (zero risk) and freelancers who don't even bother to boost still have a chance (for dirt cheap) at getting hired.

The simplest answer seems the most likely: that people bidding early bid very high for jobs they're especially interested in because they won't get a chance to up their bids later if it becomes necessary.

25005175 · ‎01-19-2023

Many posts in this forum (especially in the United States group) showcase freelancers' misconceptions about Boosting. Many believe that Boosting allows one to "buy" the job. Not advertise their proposal. Buy the job. I have seen hundreds of posts and replies in which freelancers believe that they have no chance at getting a job because someone else "purchased it" by paying 50+ Connects for a Boosted slot. The root of the mentality is the winner/loser statuses implied by the "1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place" labels.

Also, as Jeanne mentioned in response to the first time you asked, users are posting to social media and other forums about how they use this very tactic.

tlsanders · ‎01-19-2023

That sounds less like a problem with the system than a problem with freelancers not bothering to educate themselves.

You'll probably think this is too harsh, but I would suspect that most freelancers who can't be bothered to learn how the system works weren't going to be very competitive candidates even if they were in the mix. Perhaps discouraging them from bidding will clean up the lists a bit and alleviate the problem of clients fleeing the platform after being flooded with garbage proposals.

25005175 · ‎01-19-2023

Some of those comments came from Top Rated and Top Rated Plus freelancers. And I've been inclined to believe that it is an issue with education until a few days ago, when I revisited my assessment.

It occurs to me that the published stats on the effectiveness (which I analyzed in Placebo Boosts? ) are from before the flood of freelancers last year. Why is that important? The posts and replies of many clients with regard to Boosting indicate that they get tired of wading through proposals by the 15th or 20th in the list, such that they don't read all of the proposals and select from the small sample boosted and organically placed at the top of their list - or give up altogether! While there are certainly diligent clients that review all of the proposals before making a decision, it seems unrealistic to think that many will wade through the morass of myopic spam.

So, I am re-considering my opinion of how effective Boosting is. I am, as yet, undecided, but I am certainly shifting towards the camp that believes it is important/effective.

emmamclaren · ‎01-19-2023

It might clean out the high ranking freelancers who just couldn't be bothered with the crap that is being listed, leaving the crappy clients with freelancers of the same level.

I've had barely any work come through since boosting began.and when people are boosting 50+ connects for a $10 job, you have to wonder what's really going on.

tlsanders · ‎01-19-2023

Maybe.

I've been on Upwork about six years, and I'd have been gone on day two or three if I was deterred by crap. I'd guess you and many others would have, too, because as long as I have been using the site there have been perhaps 2-3 out of every 100 jobs that were even remotely possibly worth clicking to read the full description. I'd guess one in 1,000 or fewer actually worth bidding on. Yet, I've made a lot of money here, and if you've been here for four years (I think that's what you said in another post) then I'd guess you have, too, or you wouldn't still be at it.

I couldn't care less how many garbage postings there are. I'm only interested in the tiny handful that are a great fit for me.

emmamclaren · ‎01-20-2023

8 years - or since it was elance. I've made money, and I still work with great clients here, but the low-paying jobs are really starting to filter through. $1 for 1000 words blogs (posted as a $100 job), $5 for 2000 words blogs, $3-$6 an hour for someone with an English degree. The decent paying jobs and clients are few and far between these days, and even when you come across them, people are boosting out their wahzoo that it's pretty much pointless.

27 submitted proposals in like the last month. Two jobs (two great jobs thankfully). Normally I wouldn't even need to put in five proposals to get a job. Oh and one of those - someone wants a dog walker that they advertised in the content writing area 🤔

feed_my_eyes · ‎01-20-2023

Emma M wrote:
I've had barely any work come through since boosting began.and when people are boosting 50+ connects for a $10 job, you have to wonder what's really going on.

Many freelancers noticed that their invitations and proposal success rate fell right off a cliff at the same time that boosting was introduced (including me), and have concluded that boosting is the cause. But I think that Upwork has been deliberately starving veteran freelancers of invitations and "best matches" in order to make us spend more money on connects. Boosting has little or nothing to do with it, but people spending 50+ connects per job is a sign of increasing desperation, IMO.

25005175 · ‎01-20-2023

Christine A wrote:
Many freelancers noticed that their invitations and proposal success rate fell right off a cliff at the same time that boosting was introduced (including me), and have concluded that boosting is the cause.

Elsewhere, I recently saw a post (I think by Jennifer), wherein the speculation was that the dropoff came not from Boosting but because of the change in the Best Match algorithm. Seems plausible.

lysis10 · ‎01-20-2023

Jonathan L wrote:
Christine A wrote:
Many freelancers noticed that their invitations and proposal success rate fell right off a cliff at the same time that boosting was introduced (including me), and have concluded that boosting is the cause.
Elsewhere, I recently saw a post (I think by Jennifer), wherein the speculation was that the dropoff came not from Boosting but because of the change in the Best Match algorithm. Seems plausible.

Yes, that's my speculation. You have boosted at the 1-3 spot, which I'm sure gets seen, but now there are 15 different "best match" so instead of being 4-6 best match, which I think is still competitive under the 1-3, you are 1-15 of the same best match. So now best match doesn't matter, and I think a lot of us doing well in the marketplace were hitting best match. Now there is nothing to distinguish us from the garbage at first glance, other than our profile amount and maybe TR badge, but everyone is TR now.

This is just my personal opinion trying to rationalize why a lot of oldtimers like myself were doing well and then poof didn't. I know they messed with search too, but they also said they made more changes and it seems people recovered. They also put me in the wrong category when they destroyed my main one, so lots of their changes affected me and I have to keep my rage off this forum or get a mod love letter.

My section is getting flooded, and I think January has always been the month for New Year's resolutoins, so we got a flood. I think wagies sat on cruise control in 2021 and 2022 in their 3 hour work week at home playing video games on the clock, but now these corps are telling them to get into the office and they don't want to so here we are. I think we are seeing similarities of a gym where it gets crowded up until March and then people drop out. 2021 gym time wasn't so bad, but I'm avoiding the gym right now because we got the noob flood. lol

melaniekhenson · ‎01-20-2023

Christine A wrote:
Emma M wrote:
I've had barely any work come through since boosting began.and when people are boosting 50+ connects for a $10 job, you have to wonder what's really going on.
Many freelancers noticed that their invitations and proposal success rate fell right off a cliff at the same time that boosting was introduced (including me), and have concluded that boosting is the cause. But I think that Upwork has been deliberately starving veteran freelancers of invitations and "best matches" in order to make us spend more money on connects. Boosting has little or nothing to do with it, but people spending 50+ connects per job is a sign of increasing desperation, IMO.

Hmm, interesting. I did notice a dropoff of invites but that's picked up again. Unfortunately, these rarely pan out for me as they're usually too low a rate. I rely primarily on return clients/ongoing jobs. So I rarely spend connects.

There may be something to what you say, but if Upwork needs more money from connects, why don't they just increase the cost of connects? That wouldn't be so weird or outrageous. Everything else has gone up in cost. Freelancers would freak out temporarily but again...everything goes up in price. Adding a dime per connect would surely get Upwork to a better bottom line more easily and reliably than some roundabout route of attempting to starve veterans of visibility, wouldn't it?

84798706 · ‎01-19-2023

Most will think they didn't get the job just because their bid was out-boosted or they didn't boost the proposal.

There are 37% more chances to get the job by boosting, which may increase now. If someone check stats, most of proposals are unread and that means most cliients don't wanna read proposals and just go with boosted ones or ones at top recommended by Upwork (excluding those who don't bother checking after posting jobs).

Besides, how many people click on ads of Google search? You can estimate effectiveness of boosting by that.

elisa_b · ‎01-20-2023

Nabeel A wrote:
There are 37% more chances to get the job by boosting

Source?

25005175 · ‎01-20-2023

The stats are from March 2022, based on results from a test run in 2021 - before the great 2022 Freelancer Flood.

Boosted proposal placebo auctions

Boost Your Proposal to the Top of List

feed_my_eyes · ‎01-20-2023

The results are also based on Upwork initially labelling the boosted bids as "highly interested", before they changed it to say "boosted".

84798706 · ‎01-20-2023

Source is Upwork. Upwork gave encouragement survey/test last month with stats and explanations.