Upwork 2023 Something changed drastically?

[#1]

Hello everyone 🙂

I am a Graphic Designer and Illustrator from Montenegro (a beautiful small Mediterranean country in the middle of Europe). I worked on the platform for almost 10 years now. You can check out my profile here if you are interested. @https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01f33b9c23e878714d
I noticed something drastically changed on Upwok from the beginning of 2023, maybe a couple of months earlier than that.
Invitations from clients dried out (which I was getting pretty regularly before, not too many but consistent), even after applying to jobs more than I usually do. I used to get replies after every couple of proposals I sent (my profile is complete, a lot of portfolio items, I really love what I do, etc.) But recently it seems like everything slowed down drastically.

I noticed that other freelancers are complaining about that too, but maybe I am just looking for what I want to hear :).
And I am sorry if this topic has been addressed already, I would just love to hear more about it from other successful freelancers.

Is there an explanation for why this is happening? Something I should be aware of? ....except of course: The global Pandemic, War in Europe, Recession, People being cautious about the uncertain future, etc. which can very well be the reason for all of this - these are all big reasons I am sure.
But is there something that changed in how Upwork does business and how they plan to do things in the future, am I missing something here? Maybe they choose not to promote my work anymore because they have a different strategy. (for example: maybe only the top 1% of best freelancers are getting jobs, or something similar (just an example))
Also, I keep seeing aggressive ads for ZipRecruiter on all the podcasts, youtube videos, etc. Which is some kind of Freelance platform for the USA market ...are they taking over the USA market and Upwork is maybe losing its competitiveness?

These are just some thoughts I have, and I would love to hear if someone has a better explanation of what is happening - I would love to hear what You think about it 🙂

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

::All the best::
Z

[#2]

It has been like this for most of us veterans...our status doesn't mean anything anymore since now it looks like most of jobs are taken by "creative" persons who bid 600 connects and all...

[#3]

Upwork can always blame the cooling of the freelance market after the pandemic, but in the last 2 years the only new features and "improvements" to the platform were targeted at the people that have never worked remotely as freelancers and were forced by the situation. People started thinking freelancing is easy money with no effort of building your career just like a "normal" job, because there were also a lot of clients that couldn't hire local. Not only that but someone out there thought, it's easy money to paywall that features for extra profit. Upwork Plus, connects, availability badges, and now that abomination of the bid boosting. The quality of the platform declined so much it is unbelievable. Now that many people are gone back to local employment, Upwork is trying to milk the desperate ones by selling "exposure" in the form of "boosted bids".

It's pure gambling and it hurts everyone 

• clients see boosted proposals at the top with zero guarantee they will be the best fit (in most cases they are not) 
• vet freelancers need to either pay a fee or get buried in a pool of spam 
• even the new freelancers with no money to spend are f**** because agencies outbid almost everyone

I don't even want to comment on freelancers that are delusional and say that "paying $50 for boosting is worth it if you get a job for $5000", because sooner or later there won't be "big" jobs if something doesn't change ASAP. 

[#4]

I don't even want to comment on freelancers that are delusional and say that "paying $50 for boosting is worth it if you get a job for $5000", because sooner or later there won't be "big" jobs if something doesn't change ASAP. 

I'm sincerely sorry that your freelancing experience has been so bleak that you consider what is many people's everyday reality "delusional." 

That said, I absolutely agree with you that soon there won't be many if any good jobs on Upwork. But, I don't think it's "unless something changes." I think it is because of the very intentional changes that are underway.

[#5]

Thank you Radoslav for your response and I have to comment on one point. "Paying $50 for boosting is worth it if you get a job for $5000" is certainly a good deal, except for one minor inconvience : you have to apply for many jobs to get one at $5000; each one costing $50.  If one is very fortunate indeed, you may get 1 out of 50 jobs on a consistant basis (my stats are way worse, but lets play this out), the outlay is $2500.  The commission of 10% is $500 off the top.  Therefore nett income is a meagre 40% of the clients payment, with Upwork getting the larger share.

The logic of paying to boost is so flawed that it will eventually fail and be withdrawn.   A better policy is to boost with the intention of getting someone else to waste their money to jump over you.  Eventually, they will deplete their resources.

[#6]

If you're getting one out of 50 jobs, you're doing something catastrophically wrong. I only bid on jobs where I am confident that I will be one of the top 2 or 3 candidates, and only boost on jobs where I have that confidence AND am especially interested in working on that project. I've sent 17 proposals so far in 2023, and my stats tell me I've spent 77 connects on boosting in the past six months--about $2/month.

[#7]

Don't forget you are also an American 😅

[#8]

All time greatest comment right here (or is that your signature?), and this is coming from an American.

In all seriousness though, I just want to echo that from where I'm sitting, Upwork has gone down the toilet, in the same time frame that the OP mentioned, and for the same reasons. My freelance career was more or less on autopilot and humming along nicely since around 2016 due to Upwork alone. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Thanks Obama!

[#9]

It is not that your freelance career is over, just that there are no clients here in Upwork.  I started here in 2015 and the combination of Upwork attracting clients, their escrow services and credit card anti-fraud systems made it still a good deal vs invoicing clients myself. I am also figuring the next stage of my life.

[#10]

But, that's the point. Upwork gave up trying to sort freelancers into legit and scams and let them do it themselves, and it seems to be working.

- if you bid a lot but you are not any good, you won't get jobs anyway, so you will burn money uselessly and get out of business.

- if you are good but don't bid a lot, you get out of business too because customers will never see you

- so you need to be good and bid a lot to be seen. the better you are, the more money you make, the more you had to spare on connects bidding, the easier it is for you to get jobs

Result: top of the list for clients is filled with relevant people - because those who aren't relevant, or don't want to spend to get to the top, will eventually go out of business.

That sounds like a natural selection, survival of the fittest, and that's because it is.

I can't see how this can cause a decline of quality jobs. Because client's response lists don't worsen in quality. I can attest they don't because i'm a client too and i was surprised with good offers i seen in my response recently.

[#11]

Guess the "BOOSTED" bids feature is a reason, as you have now to PAY more to get jobs.

It looks alike  that Upwork turned into an AUCTION system to winning jobs, a system based only on how to CONSUME your profits.

[#12]

I have sumbitted to many jobs that are now over 2 weeks old, client never inteviews, hires anyone, or closes the job. These are clients that are payment verified, and have posted mutiple previous jobs that were completed and payed for.

Also have several top bid boosted proposals that never get viewed at all.

[#13]

Did you know that "payment verified" only means that the client has a valid credit or debit card? As both a freelancer and a client, I can confirm how easy it is to create a job and never bother to open it again. I became "payment verified" even before funding a milestone or hiring the freelancer I needed. I could have $0 in my bank account and still be verified.

That being said, it is probably common for legitimate clients to want to "test the waters". However, it is unfair to force freelancers to pay for such inquiries.

[#14]

Well, that explains a lot. I'm just beginning to understand how much I'll have to "invest" in order to "eventually" get a job. Thanks.

[#15]

Never ever bid for a job older than one day. 

[#16]

ZipRecruiter is not for single project or short term freelance, or like Upwork. It's more of a part-time/full-time long term employment job site. They host your resume/profile, and employers can post job openings.

ZipRecruiter does not handle your method of getting payed, or any type of contract service between businesses and employees. They do not get a cut or percentage of your pay.

[#17]

Thank you for the insight, at least one of my concerns is crossed out  🙂

[#18]

They also charge a lot for job postings, limiting the type of companies and type of postings that end up there.

[#19]

Yes—we have no transparency on the reason from UW, but from the number of freelancers, veteran and new, all saying on the forums that a sudden change happened in their ability to get a job, somewhere between maybe November and January, it seems pretty likely that... a sudden change did happen, somewhere between maybe November and January.

It happened to me too. Slowly and steadily seeing UW improving as a source for business, then It Fell Off A Cliff. Now, nothing. Less than nothing—barely even getting views, never mind people reaching out, or job offers.   😞

You'll get lots of "improve your profile! have patience!" responses, if this thread goes like the others I've been reading—but the truth is, it isn't you. If you know you were doing okay according to your personal definition, and improving, and suddenly you've tripled your efforts but you're seeing no results... that's what loads and loads of people are also reporting.

Options I can think of if we're experiencing this, are that we can hope for some kind of turnaround, and whoo it needs to turn quickly, after months already of trying the patience route... or find a new home for our efforts and our fees.

[#20]

It's just a speculation but I am pretty sure the problem hit the clients satisfaction of the platform first, and if UW handled it like they are handling the things now, by ignoring it for months... Well yeah we are now feeling the fallout of the rapid decline of new clients entering the platform. The majority of contracts are one time clients that want to get a job done and if it is such pain to find appropriate freelancer they would try something else. 

[#21]

Yes—we have no transparency on the reason from UW, but from the number of freelancers, veteran and new, all saying on the forums that a sudden change happened in their ability to get a job, somewhere between maybe November and January, it seems pretty likely that... a sudden change did happen, somewhere between maybe November and January.

I don't understand why everyone persists in acting like this is some kind of big secret/mystery. Upwork very clearly stated in its investor update call (which has been recapped in detail here) that it had changed its target market in advertising to draw in clients. 

[#22]

I have noticed this as well, along with a severe drop in clients reaching out about/purchasing any of my projects or consulting call options, which for a very long time have been extremely consistent. Without wanting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'm curious if there has been a change in the alogrithm, a change in what types of projects they are trying to surface most to clients, or if there is some kind of platform-based cause for this, apart from any external social or economic factors. 

I've looked through several different forums to try to find a response from an UW employer, but I haven't seen anyone weight in yet. 

[#23]

I agree that changes have negatively impacted a lot of freelancers, but I think the changes started as far back as late 2021 in response to the pandemic. I think both business and technical changes have been implemented over the past 1.5 years and the effects are still being felt, and will likely remain this way for a while.

I believe freelancers are suffering from a "superstorm" of Upwork's issues, and the issues are not all related to algorithm changes. But if we focus on algorithm changes--which I think could be one of the biggest reasons for the negative effects being felt by freelancers--I would consider this:

• Upwork occasionally makes changes to its various algorithms. The reasons for the changes vary, but I think the majority of changes are designed to help increase client-spend. I think one or several planned algorithm changes occurred recently (maybe 6-8 months ago) that still negatively impacts many freelancers, including Top-Rated and Top-Rated Plus.
• There are bugs in Upwork's applications and its algorithms. It is possible that an unknown technical issue is negatively affecting many freelancers. Upwork will probably never disclose this type of issue--even after it is fixed.
• Upworks' algorithms are machine learning algorithms, which means they are constantly "learning" and trying to predict future behavior. The algorithms do this by monitoring a variety of metrics including freelancer skills, supply and demand, success indicators between freelancers and clients, data on millions of completed projects, and other things. Constantly ingesting that much data and information and making decisions based on it, is bound to create a multitude of problems.

Those are a pretty big storms by themselves, and they are not even half of the issues affecting the platform.

[#24]

You are definitely not alone in this. I remember years ago I was not top rated. My JSS was like in the 70s or 80s and I used to get a lot invitations every week and usually more than 1 per day. Then when I hit "rising talent" I was connected with an Upwork talent manger that worked with me and invited me to premier jobs with excellent quality clients. Fast forward to today and I am "Expert-Vetted" and I maybe get 3 or 4 invitations per week. I have to put in a ton of proposals to get an interview and when I do land interviews the clients do not typically have much of a budget or they're looking to hire strictly on commission or they just never make a hire. A couple of years I worked with some amazing clients on this platform. I worked with a company owned by a royal family, a person on the Forbes list, and a couple highly funded Silicon Valley tech startups. However, these days the only types of clients my team and I are seeing are solopreneurs with very limited budgets and very small companies that struggle to pay us at our rates and often try to negotiate lower rates with us. I've been trying to figure this out myself. I don't know what happened either. The "Expert-Vetted" badge hasn't really done anything for me and I can't imagine how tough it must be without it. I've conducting hours of research online trying to figure out where the clients have gone but I honestly do not know. I really hope Upwork bounces back because it was an incredible platform at one point.

[#25]

I am not sure if this is funny or proof that something went tragically wrong with Upwork algorithms. I have been on the platform for almost 10 years, 100s of clients, 100s of jobs, 100%JSS,  ....and yet I receive an email from Upwork on “How to get my first Freelance Job”. This shows how out of touch Upwork is with the people who work for them. I can really start noticing the misalignment.