Unresponsive Clients

[792ca737]

Freelancers,

I've sent proposals for a number of job postings where the client ends up not viewing the job for many days.

Is there a time limit where I could be refunded my connects?  I've withdrawn a lot of proposals because potential clients haven't viewed their job posting in upwards of 10 days.  How do we know these aren't just fake postings with the intent of consuming connects?

Honestly, I'm down to my last few connects and have been completely dissappointed with upwork.  I won't be purchasing any more and I'm likely to stop making attempts at finding work here.

Looking forward to hearing about your experiences.

Thanks!

Heath

[williamtcooper]

Heath,

Fifty percent of the Client Job posts don't end in a hire.

In addition if there are 50+ freelancer proposals, it highly likely a freelancer's proposal will be ignored on average.

[msimon_pm]

Hi Heath,

Withdrawing a proposal won't refund connects, unfortunately.  See https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062898-Understanding-and-Using-Connects

"Sometimes, a project may get canceled or a job may be removed from Upwork without a hire. In the following cases, these Connects will be returned:

• If a project is canceled by the client before a contract is made, Connects you used on that proposal will be returned. This does not apply to expired job posts.
• If we remove a project’s post because we believe it violates our Terms of Service, Connects you used on that proposal will be returned."

We get 80 connects/month for free, enough for 3-6 proposals to jobs that are 1-3 months or longer.

Just make sure you don't waste your connects on crap job posts, shady/unverified "clients" or any with low job-award ratio. I usually ignore clients who has worse than 1:2 job award rations (1 awarded for 2 posted), and avoid job posts that have 20+ proposals. Rejected proposals lower the number of (visible? active?) "proposals" of the job post. Any job post with more than 20 proposals after 12 hours from posting, is likely abandoned by the client for the time being. Later, with 50+ proposals, there's even less chance that the client shall ever go through all the proposals and reject or message the freelancers.

[grimesr]

Just to clarify

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We get 80 connects/month for free,

Is for those that sign up for Frelancer Plus, an extra fee. Freelancer basic (which is what most of us are) provides 10 free connects/month.

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062898-Understanding-and-Using-Connects

[msimon_pm]

Thanks, Robert, for successfully underlining my key message: submitting proposals costs a lot of $, while 90% of the proposals are never viewed by "clients".

Being expert vetted, top etc. doesn't help when the algorithm prefers newbies.