Momentum, Invites, and Interviews

snappyweb · ‎05-24-2020

Hello, friends. Longtime Upworker and forum lurker, first-time poster, here.

I did Upwork as an on-and-off side hustle for several years, but in the last few months have been making Upwork my full-time focus.

It has taking a lot of work in the past few months to start booking enough jobs to hit my goals for a full schedule. I'm finally at a place where I have enough work to keep me busy and want to take a break from applying for new contracts, as I should have enough to keep me busy for a couple weeks at least.

But I'm a little nervous about putting a pause on my activity -- both applications and starting new contracts. I'd like to hear the opinion of the pros on the forum. I have noticed that the more contracts I win and start, the more offers & interviews I get (both in response to applications and direct invites).

I know that, as I learn from experience, I am refining my proposals and getting better at identifying what jobs to apply to; that has to have some impact on having more contracts available to me. But the fact is -- I really don't think it fully accounts for the momentum I've experienced. I get a distinct impression that somewhere there is an algorithm that somehow rewards activity. Is that the case?

I feel like my increased activity -- whether it's interviews accepted, new contracts started, or hours logged on hourly jobs -- are somehow directly correlated to making me more visible to clients -- whether in searches or in the list of applicants for a job.

Does anyone have any insight into that? If activity is rewarded with more visibility -- how long can you slow down your activity without killing the momentum?

Say I don't apply to or start any new contracts for two weeks. When I come back to apply to more, am I going to have a much harder time getting responses (like I did a few months back when I was just beggining to attempt this full time)? Do I need to try to keep picking up at least one new super small gig every week to keep fueling the momentum that seems to feed itself?

I've learned a ton from the forums re: JSS, contract management, etc. Really greatful for those who analyze what works here and share it with the rest of us. Hoping one of the experts here knows something about this as well. 🙂

wlyonsatl · ‎05-24-2020

Try raising your pricing, Hannah, to find out the point at which you are as busy as you want to be and rewarded appropriately for your work.

You could, say, raise it 10% every 20 proposals you make and keep track of whether your work flow is increasing, decreasing or staying the same over the span of a couple of months. (Don't think of anything that happens over a week or two to be a pattern.)

As long as your total pay stays the same or increases, keep raising your pricing slowly buy steadily, assuming you'd always be happier to work less for the same amount of money.

You'll eventually find your pricing sweet spot, though you can always lower your pricing temporarily if work drops off or increase your pricing temporarily if you've got as much work as you want but you'd be willing to work a bit harder for a much higher-than-usual pay rate.

Good luck!

gilbert-phyllis · ‎05-24-2020

When it's your full-time focus and you've got all the work you can handle for the time being, you've made a successful transition from side hustle to earning a living. Congratulations! It also means you've come face to face with the existential quandary of freelancing. I FL'd for decades before coming here and my experience in the B&M world was (and remains) similar to here, in that the busier I am, the more and better opportunities I attract. When I hit slack water, I'm always worried the wheels will come off the bus completely. And sometimes they do, for a while. (It's Sunday -- metaphor day!)

It's a holiday weekend and I'm working straight through -- and not looking at job postings at all because I'm fully booked for the next few weeks. I don't like it. But things were almost dead quiet for me from late Feb to late April, so it's nice to make up for that. I was able to get a good vegetable garden in. Now I don't have time to weed it.

I agree with Will, you likely have room to raise your rate. My published rate is nearly twice the rate I started with on UW (which was considerably lower than my B&M rate because I was in a very slow period and wanted to get started). And my published rate represents sort of an average. My service offerings are varied and I charge a bit less for some kinds of work and more for others. Every time I raise my rate, I have anxiety about it for a while. But I try not to obsess about it because on Upwork, it's really impossible to conduct controlled experiments with your rate, your profile, your portfolio or anything else. They're constantly using us for A/B testing (often without telling us), running their own experiments with things that directly affect our marketing in ways we can't really measure. For instance, they recently changed "Popular Projects" to "Packaged Projects". Thankfully, they changed it again, to "Projects". Last year they were sticking silly, juvenile icons on our profiles (I think they stopped that but I'm not sure). There's no way of knowing how things like that read to a client scanning profiles in search of the perfect FL for their project.

Also, I experience ebb and flow with invitations. I think I wind up at the top of the rotation 2-3x a year but that doesn't always account for the variations I see in both quantity and quality.

Once or twice a year, I do a scan of FLs on the platform offering services I offer, to get a feel for who I'm competing with. But mostly, I stick to my own knitting. I know what I can do, what I want to do and what I don't want to get involved with, and try to price accordingly.

florydev · ‎05-24-2020

That's fear, not concern. Fear is the lizzard brain telling you that you are about to get ate. It's quite often useful and just as often not.

Success breeds success. You realize what works and you keep repeating that and it keeps working and without even realizing it you are refining all the time and it gets better and better. The better you do the more it spills over into your profile and the more it changes the way you talk, the way you approach a client, it changes everything. Iron goes into your spine. Soon you find yourself ego posting on the Upwork community forum...

You are doing good, keep doing good. Being able to get all the work you want is a definite sign that you need to raise your rates. Personally I like a little struggle anyway, if it's too easy it gets kind of boring but I also want my clients to make a decision that I am worth it. I want clients who will not think like that to self select themselves to somebody else. If you aren't cheap you don't have to worry about cheap clients and cheap clients are the worst.

Find a good pace, try to keep at it, and take a break (honestly this advice is for me).

snappyweb · ‎05-25-2020

Thank you all; I'll take all of your advice heart. Appreciate it!

jr-translation · ‎05-25-2020

When I see a job I am really interested in and feel I am the perfect match but I am too busy to start right away, I just tell the client when I am able to start. You will be surprised how many clients are willing to wait until you can focus fully on their project.

atreglia · ‎05-25-2020

Hannah W wrote:
I get a distinct impression that somewhere there is an algorithm that somehow rewards activity. Is that the case?

I feel like my increased activity -- whether it's interviews accepted, new contracts started, or hours logged on hourly jobs -- are somehow directly correlated to making me more visible to clients -- whether in searches or in the list of applicants for a job.

Does anyone have any insight into that? If activity is rewarded with more visibility -- how long can you slow down your activity without killing the momentum?

I have often wondered the same thing. I lost my Mom suddenly last year. I took it very hard and could not find it in me to take on new projects for several months. I can tell you without a doubt that the time spent away from applying to/working on projects has hindered me ever since and I seriously doubt I could ever be convinced otherwise. Invites ended for about five months; although I did get one invite when my profile was hidden and I'm not sure how that happened. This is why I believe that activity generates more activity and that they do not rotate freelancers as some here claim they do.

lysis10 · ‎05-25-2020

Anna T wrote:
Hannah W wrote:
I get a distinct impression that somewhere there is an algorithm that somehow rewards activity. Is that the case?

I feel like my increased activity -- whether it's interviews accepted, new contracts started, or hours logged on hourly jobs -- are somehow directly correlated to making me more visible to clients -- whether in searches or in the list of applicants for a job.

Does anyone have any insight into that? If activity is rewarded with more visibility -- how long can you slow down your activity without killing the momentum?
I have often wondered the same thing. I lost my Mom suddenly last year. I took it very hard and could not find it in me to take on new projects for several months. I can tell you without a doubt that the time spent away from applying to/working on projects has hindered me ever since and I seriously doubt I could ever be convinced otherwise. Invites ended for about five months; although I did get one invite when my profile was hidden and I'm not sure how that happened. This is why I believe that activity generates more activity and that they do not rotate freelancers as some here claim they do.

fwiw, I think being active helps too and have kinda felt like it's a factor for invites. It's one reason I try to bid at least once in the week in the open marketplace as much as I loathe it.

mwiggenhorn · ‎05-25-2020

My experience is somewhat different. I recently marked myself as unavailable for 2 months because I had shoulder surgery. The day I became available again, I got a direct invitation or two.

kfarnell · ‎05-25-2020

Anna T wrote:
This is why I believe that activity generates more activity and that they do not rotate freelancers as some here claim they do.

I believe the rotation thing because my invites and profile views cycle regularly. However, activity seems to make a huge difference. I normally do fixed-rate projects but since starting a large-scale hourly based project, I've seen views and invites go a *lot* higher. Maybe it's money being paid regularly rather than in fits and starts that triggers it?