I've been saying this now since mid 2023, but I fully believe Upwork is officially dead. Up until 2023, I was doing over 100k each year on Upwork. I was Top Rated Plus and very close to Expert Vetted. I never really had to apply to jobs and just received invitations. Around the middle of last year whenever they implemented the boost system is when everything changed. My profile views dropped to ZERO and I couldn't get ANY jobs. I haven't landed a client via Upwork since mid 2023.
* For the love of God, moderators PLEASE do not send me a link on how to improve my profile *
Up until January 2024 I had not been playing the bidding/boosting game. I just thought it would be a waste of money. So around January 1st 2024 I decided to give Upwork one last chance and try it. I bought $500 worth of connects to spend for the whole month of January. What I did was a combination of a few different things. I boosted my profile with 75 connects per day. Meaning whenever someone clicked on my profile, I was charged 75 connects. The other thing I did which was less common was boost some direct jobs that I applied to. If I saw a job that really fit, I would boost it and this was usually anywhere from 50 - 100 connects per job. I stopped all boosting February 1st 2024 and here are my results. The vast majority of days Upwork would take out my 75 connects, but I never received a job invite or anything. So I supposed this means somebody clicked on my profile and then left. There were 2 occassions where I received a job invite. The first one was for a $25 job and the other one was for $5 per hour. I did not get or take either one of those jobs. When it came to boosting my propsoal to the #1 spot for anywhere between 50 - 100 connects, I never received a single reply to any of those jobs. So what was the outcome of my $500 test for January 2024................. well basically that I just wasted $500. The point of this test was to see if paying for connects and boosting was the way to get jobs in this new Upwork system. And it clearly is not.
But I went several years without having to apply to jobs and making well over 100k to now not being able to land a single job in a year. And now I've played the boost/bidding game and it CLEARLY doesn't work. It's crazy how many freelancers have complained about this system, yet Upwork does not give a crap. Upwork is clearly a drain of money and time at this point. On top of that it seems that so many quality clients have left the platform, which I don't blame them at all. If I posted a job and then my inbox was flooded with hundreds of unqualified people, I would also stop using it. They used to filter results by the most qualified and relevant freelancers. Now they just display whoever pays the most connects. Upwork has now just become this cheap casino full of unqualified freelancers who are willing to buy unlimited connects. At this point, all I can hope for is that someone will start building a new freelancer platform that is good. It's unfortunate that Upwork decided to go this route. But I think it's safe to say that "Upwork Is Now Officially Dead".
At this point it's gotten so out of control, it's almost comical. The other day I was playing around with my project catalog, and guess what they had an option for? You guessed it.......the option to boost. Before long every single aspect of the platform will require some sort of paying for connects. Want to log in to your account.....that will be 16 connects. Want to contact support......that will be 16 connects. Want to have the privledge of having an Upwork account.......that will be 16 connects per day. At what point does the corporate GREED stop? But to them it's justified because they had record profits in 2023. Forget that quality people are leaving the platform and it's become worse than Fiverr. But hey as long as the board members and shareholders are happy, everything is all good.
PS
Every time I turn on the TV now I see a cheesy Upwork commercial. There is no telling how many millions of dollars they are spending on these lame zombie commercials. Just think if they invested that money back into the platform to make it better.
But no, their marketing plan is to spend millions of dollars on tv commercials to drive new unqualified signups. Then their goal is to milk those people into having to buy connects. Sure, a lot will leave very soon after they realize they can't land a job. But that's ok because their awesome zombie commercials will continue to drive new sign ups. I'm not 100% certain, but I think they might have hired the marketing team from Bud Light for their recent marketing efforts. Now that Upwork has driven away a lot of good clients over the last few years as well as brought it's integrity into question by most freelancers, they've got some serious issues to address moving forward if they ever want to regain the trust of both clients and freelancers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR3SRJ0UQ8w
