My 48 hour experience with Up work and my problems with connects

[leowriter]

This is my shared experience with Upwork during the last 48 hours.

After few trials to have my account validated, I received great news. Finally, Upwork team has validated my subscription. Now to work.

I have long lasting experience with freelance platforms, So I took a look on the platform, I can see interesting jobs, interesting way of creating specialised profiles etc...

Then , the chaos of "connects" have just come.

After all the time I spent on personalising my profile, adding suitable description and selecting skills, it comes to my attention that few days ago, freelancers were asked to buy for the number of proposals "connects"!!!!!!!!!!!

What, why is that! and how can anyone ask a freelancer to buy for job offers!!! I can see that in other platforms you are given a limited offers per day but never been asked to buy or leave.

Alright , I said to myself let's make a trail.I made few proposals thanks to the generousity of Upwork team (I think 20 connects for the first time) .It was clear that as other platformes, there are lots of of fake projects so I spent them on projects that turned to be fraud.

Later, I even bought few connects with my debit card and the same results as expected.

People need to know that for a newer freelancer on Upwork, he needs to build his reputation. So he will find difficulties in the beginning to get jobs.

only 40% of jobs are not fake and for this 40% , a newer freealancer in the platform is not the favourite candidate.

To sum up, I made about 12 proposals, buy more connects and receive only one message from an indian who has informed me that his published offer is not as the real one . In fact, his offer is 1 dollar for 1000 word creative writing!!!

for the other proposals, no interviews has been set, no invitation . nothing at all ...

As if you were asking people to buy things they don't exist.

Now my question is why!!! Ok do you want just to discourage new freelancer(if it's the case , you can just block new subscriptions and keep offering your old freelancers' squad 80 connects as I have seen on youtube) 

Or it's just a way to gain money. and if it's the case, I would beg your pardon.There is comptetion in the market so don't expect me to buy for jobs I am not guranted to receive. 

[petra_r]

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Wassim B wrote:

There is comptetion in the market so don't expect me to buy for jobs I am not guranted to receive. 

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I would agree with you.

It's best that you don't buy any connects.

[florydev]

I have been dying to ask this so I might as well ask it here...

So what if it is a way to gain money for Upwork? What exactly is wrong with that?

[leowriter]

I'll tell what's wrong with it Mark. But first let's remember the specificity of being a freelancer. We are not regular employees. We provide specific services for a specific period with no employment conditions.

Now let's get back to the basics. freelancers and service demanders are the keys players of our fields.

You are a company , you wanna get involved in the process; why not. at least we get advantages of a great platformes with interesting jobs and catchy design and in return you get as Upwork 20% of our revenue, 10% of payment sent by employees and 1% of any bank transfer.

You can even manage to set a membership plan where freelancers can optimise their chances to get the right project and it also seems fair enough for all partners.

However, when you decide that every freelancer must pay for making "PROPOSALS" ; not even to get a project but to just propose a bid, that destroys the whole concepts of what we do here.

It's not about gaining money, it's rather about forcing freelancer to pay a bribe that will give no benefit for anyone except for the firm and this is the fraud part of it. I mean, have you ever heard about someone who enters into a store and say to the stroekeeper: Hey listen I won't let people get into here unless you pay me.

Now another stupid thing about it which shows how this Upwork becomes greedy is the formula to get connects. Do you know that for each offer you want to propose , you MUST pay about a dollar! ( 6 connects) what does this mean. we know ,all, that 40% of offers here are fake and 60% are not all authentic in the information they require.What it means that a freelancer needs to pay a minimum of 200 dollars per month for just proposing 5 to 8 bids per day ;these projects that Upwork itself knows most of them are fake !!!!!!!!!! can you believe this!!!!

If you do, you better stay here and continue what you are doing. For me, I have other options. Thanks god we are living in a competitive industry where there is Fiverr and Guru and others. 

For anyone else who may read my message, remember that you work to get revenue for your service and don't let such greedy interveners steal your money because in this manner in 6 months from now, you will be asked to pay just to reply to a message.

[dzadza]

"because in this manner in 6 months from now, you will be asked to pay just to reply to a message."
you know that there's a site that actually does that? potential client sends you a  message, and you have to pay $20 to be able to read it?
lol

[petra_r]

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Wassim B wrote:

....return you get as Upwork 20% of our revenue, 10% of payment sent by employees and 1% of any bank transfer.

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Mate, you've been here 48 hours and have not actually worked at all. The above shows that you have no clue. Clients typically pay a 3% payment processing fee, freelancers pay 20% only on the first $ 500 with any client, then this drops to 10% and then to 5% once a freelancer has earned $ 10k or more from that client.

There is no 1% fee for bank transfers.

I agree that it probably makes very little sense for you to pay for connects because you'd likely be wasting your money. Clients won't be forming an orderly queue to hire you as a writer (not in English, at any rate...)

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Wassim B wrote:

What it means that a freelancer needs to pay a minimum of 200 dollars per month for just proposing 5 to 8 bids per day!!!!!!!!!! can you believe this!!!!

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If anyone needs to apply for 5 to 8 jobs a day every day they should probably not be here in the first place. Before paid connects were introduced, we had 60 free ones, and all proposals "cost" 2 connects. Most people I know never used all of theirs. Many hardly ever apply. 

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Wassim B wrote:

Thanks god we are living in a competitive industry where there is Fiverr and Guru and others. 

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Yup, I wish you all the very best of luck there...

[florydev]

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Wassim B wrote:

I'll tell what's wrong with it Mark.

Um, Upwork owns the store in this scenario...so if you are saying do I know of a store that you have to pay just to shop there, yes, yes I do.  We have a big one here called Costco.

I think though you are saying that Upwork is between you and the client and that is so because without Upwork, you would have no access to the client.  I also know another situation in my line of work in my country where recruiters charge more than a third on top of what you get to find you a contract job. Still don't see a problem with, I personally just choose not to do that (unless I had to)

Now another stupid thing about it which shows how this Upwork becomes greedy is the formula to get connects. Do you know that for each offer you want to propose , you MUST pay about a dollar! ( 6 connects) what does this mean. we know ,all, that 40% of offers here are fake and 60% are not all authentic in the information they require.What it means that a freelancer needs to pay a minimum of 200 dollars per month for just proposing 5 to 8 bids per day ;these projects that Upwork itself knows most of them are fake !!!!!!!!!! can you believe this!!!!

If you can accurately make this estimate of 40% being fake then you must know which ones are fake...don't bid on those.  I have been actively scouring Upwork for the last 90 days and I am averaging about 1 job a day.  But that is because I have a very narrow focus of what I do and not every client is suitable.  However, I would LOVE ot have 5-8 jobs to bid on a day and would gladly pay $200.00 a month as long as I got to win at the same rate I do now.  That would be fantastic.

If you do, you better stay here and continue what you are doing. For me, I have other options. Thanks god we are living in a competitive industry where there is Fiverr and Guru and others. 

For anyone else who may read my message, remember that you work to get revenue for your service and don't let such greedy interveners steal your money because in this manner in 6 months from now, you will be asked to pay just to reply to a message.

That's a valid choice to make.  I personally won't have anything to do with any organization that sets my prices for me.  I actually worry a bit about Upwork making that move (with their suggested pricing on hourly) and if that becomes more of a thing I will move on.

[tlsanders]

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Wassim B wrote:

What it means that a freelancer needs to pay a minimum of 200 dollars per month for just proposing 5 to 8 bids per day ;these projects that

It's lucky for you that you just showed up after the change. Before Upwork went to the current paid connects system, a freelancer indiscriminate enough to bid on 5-8 jobs per day would have had to pay $240-410 per month.

[lysis10]

A whole 48 hours and he's already QQing. Wait until you get a load of the client messages, buddy ol' pal.

[florydev]

I had to google that only to find out it comes from Warcraft 2...which explains why I don't know what it is, I never quite a game of WC2...I was dominant!

[lysis10]

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Mark F wrote:

I had to google that only to find out it comes from Warcraft 2...which explains why I don't know what it is, I never quite a game of WC2...I was dominant!

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It does. QQ more noooob. This is really the only legitimate response to 90% of the threads here.

[versailles]

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Wassim B wrote:

only 40% of jobs are not fake and for this 40% , a newer freealancer in the platform is not the favourite candidate.

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Got a cousin working at Upwork's HQ and leaking figures or did you just made that one up?