Upwork offering no help with JSS

grilady · ‎10-01-2020

I've had pretty bad luck with a few contracts lately, like a client who started a contract and then realized, his boss didn't need the work done and cancelled the contract, a gal who hadn't verified her payment method and took advantage of it, a guy who wanted a bunch of free work on top of what we had agreed and worked on and wanted all of his money back when I said I needed a new contract. Not sure, if these affected my JSS, but my score went down from 100% to 95% and I haven't had any new clients for weeks now, which only makes my JSS go down more because of the older, 5-star contracts that drop out of the range and no longer count.

I also suspect a bad private rating, because the score dropped by 2% before any of this happened. I wanted to take advantage of my right to have feedback removed, but when I ask Upwork to remove whichever one is bad, they won't do it. I have to tell them which one, but I'm unaware of any dissatisfied client, so how am I supposed to know? My score is going to drop more if I can't get it back up to a level where people will actually hire me, which means, my Upwork business is going to die after several successful years because of a few clients who wanted free work or couldn't tell me to my face that they were not happy with my services. Even an accidental negative feedback is a possibility, but I will never know because I can't talk to the person who left it. I get the "private" thing, but if they only remove the feedback from my score and not the public feedback, I will never know which contract got the negative rating, so this should not be an issue.

Private feedback enables dishonesty. Someone could totally destroy you without even knowing it. You could keep on working with a client, who thinks 7 out of 10 is great, drags down your JSS and you have no way of knowing, clarifying or stopping it. You have no way to know that something went wrong, what went wrong and how you can improve, which is bad for everyone involved including Upwork. I think they should get rid of it - as well as including bad outcomes of contracts that were totally out of your control and had nothing to do with the quality of work you provided.

tta192 · ‎10-01-2020

At 95 your Jss is definitely not a deal breaker for clients in hiring you.

You do raise an interesting point about not knowing which feedback to remove since the most important part - the private feedback - is not visible. There is no solution to that, other than maybe the exact time when the Jss dropped but that won't reveal much.

In the situation you describe, if you really want to use the perk and remove one of the contracts - I would choose based on the public feedback and ignore the private one. Either remove a low star feedbak or one with a comment you don't like.

Comments attached to the feedback have more effect than stars, meaning that a 4 star with a great comment attached can have a better effect than a 5 star with no - or with a bad - comment.

wlyonsatl · ‎10-01-2020

Mary S.,

A JSS of 95 is unlikely to be a dealbreaker - I regularly got new projects when my JSS dropped below 90 for a while due to private feedback from a client who wanted free work and gave me five star public feedback. You should consider keeping your powder dry in case a really difficult client comes along in the next 10 weeks.

The JSS is designed to help clients, not freelancers. So, don't expect any change in the private v. public feedback problem - it's here to stay.

It would be helpful if Top Rated freelancers could know for sure which client's feedback needs to be removed. A freelancer can waste the feedback removal perk on the wrong client or, even worse in some ways, use the perk to remove feedback from a client whose consistently negative feedback for freelancers means Upwork doesn't include them in their freelancers' JSS calculations anyway.

grilady · ‎10-01-2020

Unfortunately, a high JSS matters, if you're a graphic designer. There is a lot of competition of which some charge a ridiculously low rate. So if you want to get hired at a fair rate, you have to be at 98% or higher. I got jobs regularly at 100%, but even when I went down to 97%, I no longer got hired by new clients and it's not for a lack of good reviews. I don't have any bad reviews, so I don't know.

wlyonsatl · ‎10-01-2020

That is unfortunate. I see I am lucky to be working in less competitive specialties.

lysis10 · ‎10-01-2020

Mary S wrote:
Unfortunately, a high JSS matters, if you're a graphic designer. There is a lot of competition of which some charge a ridiculously low rate. So if you want to get hired at a fair rate, you have to be at 98% or higher. I got jobs regularly at 100%, but even when I went down to 97%, I no longer got hired by new clients and it's not for a lack of good reviews. I don't have any bad reviews, so I don't know.

Interesting.

a_lipsey · ‎10-01-2020

Jennifer M wrote:
Mary S wrote:
Unfortunately, a high JSS matters, if you're a graphic designer. There is a lot of competition of which some charge a ridiculously low rate. So if you want to get hired at a fair rate, you have to be at 98% or higher. I got jobs regularly at 100%, but even when I went down to 97%, I no longer got hired by new clients and it's not for a lack of good reviews. I don't have any bad reviews, so I don't know.
Interesting.

This bit from the OP's profile might also be a deterrant to some clients. It's okay to not accept low budget offers, but adding this to your profile sort of comes off as an attitude and some clients may be off-put by it.

"Please understand that it's impossible to provide unique quality designs for 50$ or 100$. Expect a designer to put an average of 10 hours into logo. You get what you pay for they say. I don't accept low budget job offers simply because I would not be able to deliver the quality designs I want to for budgets this low"

lysis10 · ‎10-01-2020

Amanda L wrote:
Jennifer M wrote:
Mary S wrote:
Unfortunately, a high JSS matters, if you're a graphic designer. There is a lot of competition of which some charge a ridiculously low rate. So if you want to get hired at a fair rate, you have to be at 98% or higher. I got jobs regularly at 100%, but even when I went down to 97%, I no longer got hired by new clients and it's not for a lack of good reviews. I don't have any bad reviews, so I don't know.
Interesting.
This bit from the OP's profile might also be a deterrant to some clients. It's okay to not accept low budget offers, but adding this to your profile sort of comes off as an attitude and some clients may be off-put by it.

"Please understand that it's impossible to provide unique quality designs for 50$ or 100$. Expect a designer to put an average of 10 hours into logo. You get what you pay for they say. I don't accept low budget job offers simply because I would not be able to deliver the quality designs I want to for budgets this low"

Yeah, I I were OP, I'd get rid of that.

grilady · ‎10-01-2020

Amanda L, thank you for your input. I've had this info in there for a couple of years at least and never had trouble getting hired. But I've always had a JSS of between 98% and 100% and totally noticed the change when it droped below that. I might still get hired at some point, but the only time it was as difficult as it is now was when I first started and had no feedback at all. I might still take that part out, but it's not the reason why I'm not getting any new clients.

feed_my_eyes · ‎10-02-2020

Mary S wrote:
Amanda L, thank you for your input. I've had this info in there for a couple of years at least and never had trouble getting hired. But I've always had a JSS of between 98% and 100% and totally noticed the change when it droped below that. I might still get hired at some point, but the only time it was as difficult as it is now was when I first started and had no feedback at all. I might still take that part out, but it's not the reason why I'm not getting any new clients.

Mary, it's very unlikely that a 95% JSS is responsible for your lack of new clients; that's still an excellent score. I'm also in the graphic design category and was at 100% for years (just last week went to 99%) but I've had only two new clients and virtually no invitations on Upwork for the past three months, so a high JSS is no guarantee of work. If it weren't for repeat business and referrals, I'd be really worried. The fact is that Upwork is letting thousands of new freelancers join every week regardless of whether they have any skills or not, and it's just become more competitive and harder to get noticed. I'm pretty sure that I haven't rotated to page 1 of the search results since mid-June, whereas that used to happen about every six weeks.

I think that what matters most when you're a graphic designer is not your JSS score, but whether or not you have portfolio samples that match what the client is looking for. But when every project has 50 bids, then there's a pretty good chance that clients aren't even seeing your proposal.

grilady · ‎10-03-2020

Christine, thank you. I get lots of invitations though and applied to numerous jobs that I hadn't been invited to, but haven't been hired once. Before the drop, I had more work than I could handle and they came from invitations only. My portfolio has improved if anything. The only change is the JSS.

a_lipsey · ‎10-01-2020

Mary S wrote:
Unfortunately, a high JSS matters, if you're a graphic designer. There is a lot of competition of which some charge a ridiculously low rate. So if you want to get hired at a fair rate, you have to be at 98% or higher. I got jobs regularly at 100%, but even when I went down to 97%, I no longer got hired by new clients and it's not for a lack of good reviews. I don't have any bad reviews, so I don't know.

I've hired two graphic designers with less than 100% JSS. One had less than 90%.

stefaniaforbes · ‎10-02-2020

I am in the strategic planning category, and my JSS fluctuates but always above 90, other than once. I find that sending samples similar to what the client is doing is the best predictor, and the more samples the better. There are also certain regions that seem more interested in me than others (like Australia for some reason). It would be interesting to see if there is a true correlation between increasing JSS and hires. For me, when I see perfect scores it can be off-putting since it can seem fake - it is like seeing a perfect 5-star rating for a restaurant on Google reviews - that does not necessarily seem authentic.