Private Earnings

[medhedy]

As a freelancer plus you have the option to hide your earning, if you enable this feature people won't be able to see your historical earnings on your profile. BUT if you submit a proposal or accept an invitation, your earnings not private anymore and the client will be able to see your rate for active or closed contracts.

Yesterday I had an awkward conversation with a new client during our call. He said to me " your hourly rate is high and you already working with low rate ".  Probably he saw old contracts with lower rate (in hold or closed), I think most of the clients won't do the same but it may change the direction.

People are working hard here for years to build a great profile and look for better future...

[petra_r]

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Mohamed Hedi B wrote:

if you submit a proposal or accept an invitation, your earnings not private anymore and the client will be able to see your rate for active or closed contracts.

Correct.

Hiding your earnings also excludes you from many search resultsb and will result in fewer invites because clients are (rightly, in my opinion) suspicious of what you are hiding and why. In the opinion of most successful freelancers hiding your rates is a bad idea.

If you are having such "awkward" conversations with a client you are likely  not managing your rate decisions as well as you could. 

[prestonhunter]

I think sometimes clients might use that as a negotiating tactic.

But I believe every client who is intelligent enough to use a computer and navigate Upwork already knows that freelancers who may have once charged one rate now charge a different rate.

This is the kind of thing I generally just ignore or politely deflect when clients bring it up.

[medhedy]

Yeah exactly!! Some client use that to negotiate, and that was my first time experiencing that.

As you said not everyone will see it from the positive side!!

Thanks

[tlsanders]

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Preston H wrote:

But I believe every client who is intelligent enough to use a computer and navigate Upwork already knows that freelancers who may have once charged one rate now charge a different rate.

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I'm pretty intelligent, and when I see a freelancer whose actual work history is at a significantly lower rate than the rate posted on their profile, I think that they are either dishonest (in posting a rate they know they can't command) or consistently desperate for work. 

I have never raised the issue with a freelancer because both possibilities rule them out in my mind, so I never end up interacting with them.

[medhedy]

Yeah I know  it excludes me from search results but enabling this feature is temporarily. And you can't keep working with the same rate forever, while improving your skills and experience it s fair to rise you rate time to time.

That was the first time a client talked about my other rates, I think it's normal to work with slightly different rates sometimes because projects are not the same. For example there is short term projects (few hours) and long term projects.

Thanks

[sfguido]

I'm a long-term employer. For me, the problem with "Private Earnings" is that the Freelancer also states their Hourly Rate on the same page. When I see that a Freelancer has a lot of jobs with "Private Earnings", I tend to think the Freelancer charged less than their stated Hourly Rate.

This Freelancer might want $50/hour, but he will work for less. How much less?

So Private Earnings introduces a new element of uncertainty, friction, and mistrust into the very early stages of the hiring process  This Freelancer's price is stated...but what is the REAL price?

[medhedy]

Make sense!! However as soon as you start a conversation with the freelancer you can see the hourly rate of each contract (old or new).

[sfguido]

I did not know that—good to know!

[13b0bd5e]

Can anyone corroborate this (that when freelancer applies or when messaging with them, Private Earnings are no longer private)?

There are a few freelancers that have applied for an active job posting of mine.  In their proposal, their earnings are still displayed as 'Private Earnings'.  

At least one of them I have also messaged, and it still displays as 'Private Earnings'

[petra_r]

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Michael F wrote:

There are a few freelancers that have applied for an active job posting of mine.  In their proposal, their earnings are still displayed as 'Private Earnings'.  

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Yes, that is still correct, but you have to be logged into Upwork to see the rates and prices and some contracts (with certain Enterprise clients for example) always show without the rates and prices.

[13b0bd5e]

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Petra R wrote:

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Michael F wrote:

There are a few freelancers that have applied for an active job posting of mine.  In their proposal, their earnings are still displayed as 'Private Earnings'.  

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Yes, that is still correct, but you have to be logged into Upwork to see the rates and prices and some contracts (with certain Enterprise clients for example) always show without the rates and prices.

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Thanks for the reply.  

So I'm seeing odd behavior then.   For these two particular freelancers that have submitted proposals, all of the earnings history still shows Private Earnings.   I just tried logging out and logging back in, same thing.   This goes for both jobs/earnings showing on the Proposal as well as their profile.   

[petra_r]

To be honest, over the last few days the platform has been massively misbehaving. On Safari I can actually no longer use it at all, so this may just be another bug.

I can't even see any freelancer's previous contracts at all unless I change to Firefox.

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi Michael,

By design, once a proposal is sent or an invitation is accepted, potential client will see freelancer's past contracts' rates and totals even if they'd made them private. However, we currently have a bug that results in earnings information still being hidden even in proposals. Our engineers are working on fixing it and I've let them know about your report as well. 

Apologies for any confusion or inconvenience cause by this.