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jlipkin
Community Member

Terrible website, terrible service and terrible all around

Anyone that thinks you have a chance at actually making a decent income on this site is **edited for Community Guidelines** out of your mind. I have been working as a professional video editor and producer on ACTUAL tv shows for 16 years. I came here to try and pick up extra work but, my lord, what a **edited for Community Guidelines** show.

 

Let's first just ignore the INSANE lowball expectations for pay that these "clients" are looking for. They might as well just ask their 10 year old nephew for help. But what kind of job site charges the WORKER to work? Since when does the client not pay the fees and costs? I have to PAY to work? **edited for Community Guidelines**

 

Okay okay, let's put that aside as well. I said, fine, let's see if the work can make up for the discount I apparenlyt have to pay to this **edited for Community Guidelines** site. So yay, all signed up and ready to go! I have like 50 connects that reloads each month, I send off maybe a BAZZILION proposals (putting real thought and time into each one) and it's crickets. I feel like I have a better chance getting swiped right on Tinder by a supermodel, than I do getting work here. So not making money. Sucks, right? Not as much as getting an email from the "management" of the site telling me that because I am not making money, (and thus not making them money) my account has gone private and I don't show up on searches anymore. **edited for Community Guidelines** Let me get this straight....I am not making you enough money so your solution is to make me invisible and make it harder to make you money?! How the **edited for Community Guidelines** is that supposed to work? Why not feature me, instead? Or bump up my profile? **edited for Community Guidelines**

 

So yeah. Here I am not writing a scathing review on their own site (which will most likely get pulled down) and will eventually cancel and remove my profile. By the way, when I eventually complained about being set to private, I was reinstated BUT all my credits were gone. Glorious!!! Just to come full circle, anyone that thinks you have a chance at actually making a decent living on this site is **edited for Community Guidelines**

26 REPLIES 26
florydev
Community Member

You are the second person to call me crazy today!
They didn’t take your connects for going private. You can request to be made public any time and if you think about it logically the reason is to make people who stop using their accounts be invisible to invites.
As for the rest of it...maybe someone could help you, give you some suggestions, but your are not asking for that. You just came in to drop a load.
jlipkin
Community Member

They did take them away. I had over 40...was set to private unannounced (when I clearly was actively submitting proposals, so no...your logic doesn't make sense here), requested to be made public again, was granted and poof, credits gone. Congrats if you are doing well, for the other 90% of people, it's trash and killing real professional trying to fight for an actual value for their work.

florydev
Community Member


Joshua L wrote:

They did take them away. I had over 40...was set to private unannounced (when I clearly was actively submitting proposals, so no...your logic doesn't make sense here), requested to be made public again, was granted and poof, credits gone. Congrats if you are doing well, for the other 90% of people, it's trash and killing real professional trying to fight for an actual value for their work.


So what are you trying to accomplish by doing this?

tlsanders
Community Member


Joshua L wrote:

Anyone that thinks you have a chance at actually making a decent income on this site is bat **bleep** out of your mind.

 

Does that include the many of us here who are already doing it?

Clearly not. But let's not toss around the term "many" so easily. Some? yes. Many? Probably not. The 10% of people doing well. Congrats, you cracked the code. But 90% of people are not.


Joshua L wrote:

Clearly not. But let's not toss around the term "many" so easily. Some? yes. Many? Probably not. The 10% of people doing well. Congrats, you cracked the code. But 90% of people are not.


It's true that most people don't do well here. You're way overestimating the percentage who are. Most registered freelancers have never made a single dollar on Upwork.

 

The thing is, it works for a lot of us. Many of the people you'll see regularly posting in these forums have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on Upwork. Many of us were seasoned professionals long before Upwork existed (or before the internet existed) and like the site because it reduces our administrative and marketing time to near zero. 

 

If many of us can make it work and others can't, it seems to me that declaring that the site just doesn't work is counterproductive. If it doesn't work for you, fair...it's not for everyone. But, it CAN work for many people, if they choose to learn how to make it work. No sense obscuring that fact for those who might like to try.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. You've done well, clearly with your "guru" status. More postings for your to take. I think you are truly underestimating the level of success on here. You did it so good for you. But way to many people are selling themselves short because the few success stories get marketed over and over.

 

And I am not stating the site doesn't just not work for me. I listed many reason why it is a terrible system. Not sure what your industry on here is but for what I do, it is a **bleep**ing knife in the back with a twist to hard working, valuable people out there. 20% of my pay to the site!?! Are you kidding me? 

 

Thanks for your feedback and enjoy the site.


Joshua L wrote:

Whatever helps you sleep at night. You've done well, clearly with your "guru" status. More postings for your to take. I think you are truly underestimating the level of success on here. You did it so good for you. But way to many people are selling themselves short because the few success stories get marketed over and over.

 

And I am not stating the site doesn't just not work for me. I listed many reason why it is a terrible system. Not sure what your industry on here is but for what I do, it is a **bleep**ing knife in the back with a twist to hard working, valuable people out there. 20% of my pay to the site!?! Are you kidding me? 

 

Thanks for your feedback and enjoy the site.


See, I think people are selling themselves short for exactly the opposite reason: because they think they have to. I want them to realize that how they conduct business on Upwork is up to them.

 

I'm a writer. Every single day I see people posting about how it's impossible to make a living as a writer here and everyone wants to pay $5/post and that sort of thing. I personally know quite a lot of writers consistently charging $75-125/hour on Upwork. Can everyone do that? Of course not. But, everyone who has something significant to market can stand by his or her rates and focus on the jobs most narrowly-tailored to his/her skills and experience.

Again, my experience is not what you keep trying to sell. I don't sell myself short becuase I "feel I have to." I know my value, I propose my value, I stick to what I know my work is worth. I have spent more hours than I can count putting up thoughtful proposal, giving details of my work, showing my high end examples. They just have to many "cheap" options. You can keep trying to justify your success for everyone but you are just one of the lucky ones. Take it and run and enjoy.

Running a successful business has little to do with luck, as I'm sure you know.

It's not clear to me why you can't just say "Upwork doesn't work well for me" and walk away from it without projecting that onto other freelancers who may just be getting their feet wet and inclined to take your discouraging view at face value.

Because like I have already explained, my opinion is NOT that it just doesn't work for me. I believe it is a system that works for a small set and takes advantage of the majority. The site will continue to charge workers over and over again for credits and outragous percentages when the site knows that you can spend 1000 credits and most likely never get a gig. End of story. 

 

And a successful business has A LOT to do with luck. Luck and hard work. 

 

It's not clear to me why you continue to think your experience is normal on here.


Joshua L wrote:

 

 

It's not clear to me why you continue to think your experience is normal on here.


Joshua, as I've said several times now, I don't think and never suggested that my experience was "normal." What I said, and meant, was that it is ATTAINABLE for many freelancers.

 

I've been told I was "lucky" about career opportunities for three decades. In every single case, I could clearly explain to you the exact steps I took to make those opportunities happen. A lot of people are unwilling to take those steps, but many others just don't understand the connection between the steps and the outcome, or don't know how to formulate the steps. I regularly help newer freelancers (and occasionally people in other arenas) with that.

 

You want to convince prospective Upworkers it's hopeless. I want to share what helped me succeed in hopes they can do the same. Were it not for the rage dripping from your posts, I would believe that we both want to help other freelancers and just disagree on the way to do that.

petra_r
Community Member


Joshua L wrote:

Again, my experience is not what you keep trying to sell.


Nobody is trying to sell you anything. You can't make Upwork work for you`? Close your profile and be done with it. Simple as all that.

 

All anyone can try and explain to you is that your original, opening statement is false:

 


Joshua L wrote:

Anyone that thinks you have a chance at actually making a decent income on this site is **edited for Community Guidelines** out of your mind.


There is a chance. People *ARE* making hundreds of thousands of Dollars here as their sole source of income. others use it to supplement theirs, or as one of several sources of work and money.

 

Does everyone? Absolutely not.

Do the majority? Nope.

 

Is that so different from any other entrepreneurial venture? It isn't.

 

jlipkin
Community Member

Thank you for proving my point.

 

"Does everyone? Absolutely not.

Do the majority? Nope."

 

A small sect of participants actually make money here. Yet countless talented individuals spend their hard earned money on an idea that this system is successful for everyone. I am going to close up my profile but I feel it is important that someone here tells the reality. Congrats that is works for you but people need to know that with every handful of "success" stories, there are hundreds of thousands of fails that had **bleep** stacked against them. And this site profited off all of them.

 

"Is that so different from any other entrepreneurial venture? It isn't." YES IT IS! When I am an entrepreneur, the system I am working in doesn't charge me a fee while knowing that all the cards are stacked in their favor. 


Joshua L wrote:

 

A small sect of participants actually make money here.


You're spot on. The vast majority of people who have an account on Upwork are not making any money at all or very little. This is true in general on B2B platforms for they are overcrowded with freelancers who compete for a limited number of clients. It's highly Darwinian and brutal.

 

I don't think anyone for whom the platform doesn't work should waste their time here. You made a good move in deciding to dump Upwork. I wish you the best luck and a lot of success!

 

 

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless


Joshua L wrote:

Whatever helps you sleep at night. You've done well, clearly with your "guru" status. […]


LOL Community Guru Shaming

what about that fake or no reply client projects, which are posted many more daily and close autometiclly without any responce or heiring, In this case freelanceres money loose. who is the responsible for this.. If upwork allow for paid connects, 20% service charge, membersip account charge, who is responsible for these all..??

How expensive you make it.. Client never paid like that... Example- Its real $200 job is really amount, Client wants to pay $100 or $150 and some freelanceres ready to work in this amount also includng Upwork all type of charges.. So think how big Unemployment is in the market and thats why upwork increse the fee how much possible to his end.. Freelencres are Helpless here... 

If you made freelancers rule  then client also have some rules.. Like minimum budget, whats happning if client not replying on proposal and many more....

 

I know a reply is comes frm your side which goes to Upwork goal. Think honestilly and then get my point what i want to say and whats happning actually here... Money sucking here.. to making many rules only one end.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Joshua, 

I'm sorry to learn that you didn't have a good experience using Upwork for your freelance business.

 

I checked your Connects History page (Settings > Membership & Connects > Connects History), and can see from there that you used up the 60 connects that you have on July 31. If you check your Connects History, you will see how much connects were used for each proposal you sent out. I would like to confirm that the Connects were not removed from your account when your profile was set to private. 

 

I would also like to note that 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. There are different ways of setting your profile to public again, one of which is contacting us directly so that we can set your profile visibility to public.

If your 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 in this help article. 

 

As a gentle reminder, please be mindful of the Community Guidelines when posting in the Community. Thank you for your understanding.


~ Avery
Upwork
jlipkin
Community Member

This site is terrible. Thank you for confirming.

 

 

florydev
Community Member


Joshua L wrote:

This site is terrible. Thank you for confirming.

 


Well...bye.

Joshua - It seems to me that you might have had better luck with working on Upwork if you had a better profile and maybe better proposals. What I mean is, instead of talking so much about yourself, you might have given and shown all the great things you could do for a client. So, because of your profile and maybe your proposals, you are blaming Upwork and other freelancers for your own shortcomings.

moonraker
Community Member

The people that it does not work for are those who cannot/will not make it work.


Jamie F wrote:

The people that it does not work for are those who cannot/will not make it work.


I don't believe he cares about that at all.  To me it is evident that he only really cares that Upwork does not work for him and wants to feel that it is not his failure but that it instead systematic, and to his point, the system is not perfect.  He certainly doesn't want to hear "you are doing it wrong".  He also appears to be trying to position himself as a crusader and, at least for me, it's not working.

 

The funny thing is, I don't disagree with some of the things he is saying, I am just disagreeing with the way he is saying it.  The fact is there are too many lowball clients.  I believe that, at least in part, is caused by  too many people willing to do things regardless of cost because they are desperate for the work.  I think there is a chance he is one of them.  That he took jobs that diminished his rate because he took fixed rate projects that probably worked out to small fractions of his published rate.  If I am right then he, in my opinion, is part of the problem.

 

But this is a market and this is how a market works.  Not every client is my client.  Not every project is my project.  Sometimes I have to look at a client, who let's be honest wants their work for free if they can get it, and convince them that what they really want is success and for that you have to pay for it.

 

Nobody gave me my clients.  I wasn't lucky.  I made an argument and convinced them that I was worth it and then I backed it up by delivering results.  

 

But that wasn't his experience, not his beliefs, and I don't know why.  The reality is this site does not work for the vast majority of the people who come here.  But where we disagree is, I don't think it is the site's fault in the overwhelming majority of cases.


Mark F wrote:

Jamie F wrote:

The people that it does not work for are those who cannot/will not make it work.


I don't believe he cares about that at all.  To me it is evident that he only really cares that Upwork does not work for him and wants to feel that it is not his failure but that it instead systematic, and to his point, the system is not perfect.  He certainly doesn't want to hear "you are doing it wrong".  He also appears to be trying to position himself as a crusader and, at least for me, it's not working.

 

The funny thing is, I don't disagree with some of the things he is saying, I am just disagreeing with the way he is saying it.  The fact is there are too many lowball clients.  I believe that, at least in part, is caused by  too many people willing to do things regardless of cost because they are desperate for the work.  I think there is a chance he is one of them.  That he took jobs that diminished his rate because he took fixed rate projects that probably worked out to small fractions of his published rate.  If I am right then he, in my opinion, is part of the problem.

 

But this is a market and this is how a market works.  Not every client is my client.  Not every project is my project.  Sometimes I have to look at a client, who let's be honest wants their work for free if they can get it, and convince them that what they really want is success and for that you have to pay for it.

 

Nobody gave me my clients.  I wasn't lucky.  I made an argument and convinced them that I was worth it and then I backed it up by delivering results.  

 

But that wasn't his experience, not his beliefs, and I don't know why.  The reality is this site does not work for the vast majority of the people who come here.  But where we disagree is, I don't think it is the site's fault in the overwhelming majority of cases.


Just quoting you to say this is spot on. 

 

Also, I don't think UpWork made the promise to every freelancer that joins that they would make a full living through UpWork. What you make of it is up to you. For some people it will be a good source of income, for others it won't, but it doesn't mean UpWork Bad, Me Good, because it doesn't work for me (it does work for me though). Why someone can't just be okay walking away from something that isn't a good fit for them but has to put down the entire system makes me think there are other problems in their business. It wasn't a good fit for you, that's okay, go find a tool that will be a good fit. I don't think UpWork is obligated to find anyone work. 

 

Is UpWork perfect, no. Nothing ever is. Can you make it work for you? Sure, if you're willing to use it the way it's meant to be used. I think a lot of complaints are from people who want UpWork to be something it's not. 


Amanda L wrote:

Mark F wrote:

Jamie F wrote:

The people that it does not work for are those who cannot/will not make it work.


I don't believe he cares about that at all.  To me it is evident that he only really cares that Upwork does not work for him and wants to feel that it is not his failure but that it instead systematic, and to his point, the system is not perfect.  He certainly doesn't want to hear "you are doing it wrong".  He also appears to be trying to position himself as a crusader and, at least for me, it's not working.

 

The funny thing is, I don't disagree with some of the things he is saying, I am just disagreeing with the way he is saying it.  The fact is there are too many lowball clients.  I believe that, at least in part, is caused by  too many people willing to do things regardless of cost because they are desperate for the work.  I think there is a chance he is one of them.  That he took jobs that diminished his rate because he took fixed rate projects that probably worked out to small fractions of his published rate.  If I am right then he, in my opinion, is part of the problem.

 

But this is a market and this is how a market works.  Not every client is my client.  Not every project is my project.  Sometimes I have to look at a client, who let's be honest wants their work for free if they can get it, and convince them that what they really want is success and for that you have to pay for it.

 

Nobody gave me my clients.  I wasn't lucky.  I made an argument and convinced them that I was worth it and then I backed it up by delivering results.  

 

But that wasn't his experience, not his beliefs, and I don't know why.  The reality is this site does not work for the vast majority of the people who come here.  But where we disagree is, I don't think it is the site's fault in the overwhelming majority of cases.


Just quoting you to say this is spot on. 

 

Also, I don't think UpWork made the promise to every freelancer that joins that they would make a full living through UpWork. What you make of it is up to you. For some people it will be a good source of income, for others it won't, but it doesn't mean UpWork Bad, Me Good, because it doesn't work for me (it does work for me though). Why someone can't just be okay walking away from something that isn't a good fit for them but has to put down the entire system makes me think there are other problems in their business. It wasn't a good fit for you, that's okay, go find a tool that will be a good fit. I don't think UpWork is obligated to find anyone work. 

 

Is UpWork perfect, no. Nothing ever is. Can you make it work for you? Sure, if you're willing to use it the way it's meant to be used. I think a lot of complaints are from people who want UpWork to be something it's not. 


And I am just quoting you back because you are spot on.  I don't like something, I just walk away.  The only thing I can think is they believe they were treated poorly in some fashion.

 

 

Nothing works for everyone 100% of the time. I am new to Upwork so I started out bidding low to attract clients. I refined my profile, portfolio images and the cover letter until it was effective and  I got some clients. I built my Upwork business gradully until now I have a 100% JSS and am a top rated Upwork service provider. Nothing happens overnight but for those that are patient, work hard and ACT PROFESSIONAL (Are you listening) it will happen.

 

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