Vikram—Agree completely. Upwork's viability is definitely in question for me as well. If I want ZERO results for my good money, time, and heart, I can get that "on the outside," and for most of my self-employed career, I was "on the outside"... so after building happily in this walled garden for a long time, thinking Upwork and I were partners in success... I've been returning to building elsewhere.
To your excellent ideas, may I add my suggestions—
[Some of this could be controversial—I'm not really looking to have spitballs directed at me, I'm trying to give Upwork some thoughts. Big things have to happen to make big change.]
I sent this note privately to Upwork via several methods, but who knows if anyone got it. I've mentioned my wish for a suggestion box on the forum before, and since you've got one open...
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Upwork, you charge freelancers more and more but you don't take care of the basics to make the site WORTH more and more. Are you desperate? Are these your last gasping breaths?
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Automate finding and trashing duplicate listings. Automate finding and trashing listings with contact info in them... and go further, get rid of any links at all in listings, until a contract is in place. That takes care of many scammers, who hope to get in and out before you spot them. Be ruthless in banning scam posters, sockpuppet accounts, and other TOS violators.
Don't allow unverified client accounts. We get charged to connect with employers—charge them a tiny fee to connect with us, and make freelancers seem like they might have value. As it is, you devalue us first, before employers even get a chance to do so.
Find ways to encourage hires—
—Do you send an email for every proposal? Why not? What harm letting clients see the proposals individually before returning to the UW site?
—Do you send frequent-enough reminder emails during the next 30d? One on 2nd day (after which few hires are currently made) "32 Upwork freelancers are hoping to make YOUR job a great success!", one on 5th, one on 9th and 19th ought to perk up waning interest, maybe with randomly-selected proposals excerpted in them.
—Other...?
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Don’t allow jobs by U.S. employers to be posted for under the U.S. minimum wage (which is low enough!). Should be easy enough to carry that through to other countries and their minimum wages, as well.
Cull lowest quality freelancers, so employers get a better experience. That seems hard but doing the hard work is what you’re here for. Even consider a max of daily proposals per account to slow the firehose. (Since freelancers have to be verified, this should hopefully not be able to encourage sockpuppeting.)
Think a LOT harder about making the algorithm work to get your good/ better/ best freelancers employed, so you keep your base of experts who are in it for the long haul, loyal and happy.
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You need more clients, not more freelancers. Turn on the right spigot and turn off the other. I suggest hiring an excellent indie ad agency, such as [X - here I suggested an old friend of mine], to get more and better-quality employers flocking to the site. Nobody knows how to turn this morass into a miracle like my old friend [X] does, trust me. Tell him I said Hi.
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Make the site work better for the people who PAY you, and who could evangelize about you and help you grow the company if you were worth the praise—the freelancers. It seems a lot like you don’t know that you are the product and we are the customers. When you are more valuable, we hand you money and say thank you for doing so!
You can carve out a quality niche—or you can drive Upwork into the ground, wringing little bits of money from a larger, but lower-end pool of ever-less-satisfied freelancers... and become the junk you used to differentiate yourselves from.
