Life as a translator on Upwork

[juanpablosans]

Hello guys,

I am contacting especially to translators to tell me their experience on Upwork. You see, with the new paid connections, I don't see any motivation to go on trying to connect with people.

First of all, clients posting on the jobs listing seem to want to pay pennies on dollars. Not only that, with the 20% commission Upwork takes off your price, it seems the situation is just a lose-lose for freelancers.

I haven't been able to crack the code on this platform for years, and the few times I have actually landed a job, it has been because I lowered my rate to ridiculous levels.

Therefore, my question is to my colleague translators: have you been able to make a decent living off Upwork? And when I mean a decent living I mean making over 40 USD/hour for a project (after commissions)?

And the other point I want to highlight: I am already an experienced translator, with more than 10 years of experience and working with important companies. 

However, it seems to me, and correct me if I am wrong, like Upwork works on a ranking system whereby you get more chances if you have had more job experiences, but you cannot get that experience unless you sell yourself cheap, which is something, of course, I am not willing to do, as I have enough well-paid projects to go and lowball and load myself with cheap projects just to rank up.

So, I was wondering if any of you has any inspirational story and can give me a hand on this.

Cheers

[petra_r]

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Juan Pablo S wrote:

Therefore, my question is to my colleague translators: have you been able to make a decent living off Upwork? And when I mean a decent living I mean making over 40 USD/hour for a project (after commissions)?

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Yes.

Thing is, your profile is gone already anyway (account closed or suspended) - so not much point, is there?

[versailles]

This translator bills $40/hour and $0.10 per word (which equals to more than $60/hour) and many others have similar experiences on Upwork, if not better.

Petra for instance kicks (German) asses.

Yes, depending on the language there is a way for highly skilled professionals to do well on UW especially since the platform is filled with people who think they are translators and who sell soups of words for close to nothing. 

Upwork is a tiered market. There is a low end market filled with cheap providers catering to buyers with low budgets. At the other end, there is a higher value market for professional clients and professional providers.

[lucidwebmarketng]

Hola Juan.

>> First of all, clients posting on the jobs listing seem to want to pay pennies on dollars.

Yep, most buyers on UW are here to pay much less than they would otherwise. It's not just for translators, you see this for any type of job.

I suggest to you and everybody else NOT to lower your rates just to get a job. Charge what you are worth and the value you provide. If you lower your rate for one client, you'll have to do it for all clients. This only encourages cheap buyers to continue doing so.

>> have you been able to make a decent living off Upwork?

You should not be on UW to make a living. Depending only on UW is a recipe to live poorly. Use the platform as ONE tool among others, but don't depend on it exclusively. There are many other ways to find jobs out there.

I don't think there are many people actually making a living only from Upwork jobs. In my field of internet marketing, there is just not enough available, good paying, jobs. I don't know about translation, it may be the same, lots of them but 90% would pay below your rate. Looks like there is a lot of content writing jobs here but here too many jobs only willing to pay a penny per word when good writers are much more than that and unfortunately, many writers willing to work for a penny per word.

I don't have inspirational stories, sorry. All but one long-term client were found outside UW, and even that exception is stop and go. That's why I say pursue jobs outside Upwork.

I do recommend to review your pitches. You need to make it so that, after reading a few seconds, the potential client believes you are the man for the job. Don't forget you need to stand out because there's a 100 others applying for it.

I'm waiting on a call today, unusual since I don't get many from UW jobs. I almost did not apply to it because there were over 50 applicants. But the description was good and just up my ally. My proposal mentioned I did similar work for past clients in the same field. It's inspirational only if I get the gig (and I really, really want it). We'll see what happens.