Account Locked, Profile Switched to PRIVATE

[Andrea G]

Hi Atul,

When a freelancer has not earned money on Upwork for a period of two years or more, we change their profile to private to improve client search results by only showing them active freelancers. This also rewards freelancers who regularly work and get paid through Upwork by ensuring that their profiles appear instead of inactive or unavailable freelancers in search results. I've reset your profile visibility back to public.

Thanks!

[Emmanuel I]

Hi, my account showing locked and Profile switched to PRIVATE. Switching it to Private makes things even worse for me. Kindly, can somenone assist me.

THANKS.

[Goran V]

Hi Emmanuel,

I’ve reset your profile visibility back to public. Just so that you are aware, freelancers with no earnings in 30 days will have their profile set to private (locked) automatically. To avoid this, you can resume earnings on a new contract or upgrade your membership to the Plus plan. You can check out more info about this here. Thank you!

[Emmanuel I]

 Thank you Sir, I really appreciate.

[Nathan B]

This just happened to me... and I find this to be a pretty unfair metric, to be honest. You've designed a rule whereby if someone is less successful than those around them, they are hidden away unless they pay a premium... how is that supportive or helpful at all!?

I've been trying pretty hard to gain traction on the platform. I suspect that since I have no reviews or hours tracked here, I haven't yet been able to gain many clients. I've tried sending proposals within an hour that work is posted, tried different styles of proposal writing, tried revamping my portfolio, adding things to my profile, I keep reading numerous posts about how to be awesome at Upwork and so far, sorry, but I'm not making a fortune off your site.

Your policy of hiding freelancers who don't make money is a great way to kick someone while they're down, and is counterproductive to actually helping them gain work. It's obvious that the policy only serves Upwork in that it promotes your premium, paid service - an additional expense for those who are struggling to begin with.

I was a little hopeful that this platform could be a great, encouraging community which could help me find new clients and consistent work. After discovering this little caveat today, I feel like I've uncovered the true colors of Upwork, and it honestly makes me question whether it is the community I thought it could be.

[Avery O]

I'm sorry to learn you feel this way, Nathan. There are different ways on setting your profile to public again, one of which is contacting us directly so that we can set your profile visibility to public.

If an established freelancer doesn't earn money on Upwork for 30 days, their profile visibility will automatically change to private. This is checked daily, not once a month. If you aren't regularly earning on our platform, your profile may be set to private, even if you submit proposals and interview frequently.

If the profile is set to private again after 30-days, or sometime in the future, check out the options listed in the email notification or in the pop up on Find Work page to set it back to public.
You may read more about this initiative on this support article. Please know that I have already set your profile to public. 

[Nathan B]

Avery - It looks like that support article doesn't work.

Well, thanks for setting my profile back to public, however, I don't see any incentive to continue putting the amount of fruitless effort I have into countless proposals on a platform that not only wants to take a percentage the payments I recieve, but also randomly sets my profile to private until I pay a premium fee. Frankly, this is not the type of environment I want to participate in.

[Valeria K]

Hi Nathan, could you please check if the link to the help article Avery added to her post still doesn't work for you? 

[Nathan B]

Valeria - yes it works now, thanks.

[Cristine G]

Hello, I have the same problem. Please help.