Where are the Quality Jobs?

[#1]

I've been an Upwork Freelancer for 3.5 years and have checked the site every day in that span for new jobs to apply to.  I've applied to nearly 2,000 jobs at this point.  

In the past week, I've seen zero jobs worth applying to, and very few in the weeks prior.  The total quantity has gone down and the only ones I see are offering rates far below the cost of living anywhere in the US.  (And many are seeking US based talent).  

Is anybody else seeing a total absence of quality jobs and a rapid detoriation of average job pay/quality? 

And what can Upwork to do motivate / engage quality, high-paying companies to hire here again? 

My Expert Vetted talent contact says that Upwork gives presentations at various large companies to show what kind of talent is on Upwork.  My feeling is these meetings might need to be way more frequent, or structured in a different way.  There are hundreds of thousands of companies in the world - if there isn't a single quality company posting in my category in the span of weeks, that is proof that Upwork isn't doing its job to foster this community and to grow the platform.  

[#2]

You have to bid to win - Upbid advised me today by email. The quality job will come with your 2001-st bid! 

[#3]

we need a laugh reaction not just upvotes😄

[#4]

.

[#5]

And so you decided to open another topic to the thousands already opened. No clients - no work, everything is logical. Upwork no longer needs clients; newcomers can be milked with fakes\bots, is enough for profit.

[#6]

I believe that when the noise in here gets loud enough, Upwork Upper Management will have to take action.  Posts like mine and the dozens of others every month are the written record of Upwork destroying its own platform as quality clients disengage.   

[#7]

I hope you're right. But we see that all this is useless. Yes, the forum is loyal and no one will delete our dissatisfaction. On the other hand, no one cares about.

[#8]

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 Thomas J M wrote:

I believe that when the noise in here gets loud enough, Upwork Upper Management will have to take action.  Posts like mine and the dozens of others every month are the written record of Upwork destroying its own platform as quality clients disengage.   

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I’m not so sure about that, but I surely hope you are correct!  My thoughts are that we’ve been squawking for years and it hasn’t made a difference.  To me, the only thing that will get their attention is shareholder discontentment so I’m kind of placing my hope there, dismal as that seems.  My hope is that perhaps shareholders will realize, if they haven’t already, that they’ve been taken for a downward ride right along with us.  I mean, some of them had to have realized by now that the company they invested in has switched trajectory from a freelance business to a connects warehouse.  If I were that investor and learned they really only fill about 1 of 10 jobs, and that the rest of the revenue is from auctioning off blind opportunities for the other 9, I’d be pretty upset right about now.  Who knows, maybe there’ll even be a demand for full disclosure on the financials.  Doubtful, but one can hope, right?

[#9]

Among us in the community, can we figure out an estimate of how many jobs actually result in a hire these days?  (What percentage?) It would not surprise me if it were as low as 10%.  I know that I'm hired less than 1% of the time... but for the site as a whole, what percentage result in hires?  

[#10]

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 Thomas J M wrote:

Among us in the community, can we figure out an estimate of how many jobs actually result in a hire these days?  (What percentage?) It would not surprise me if it were as low as 10%.  I know that I'm hired less than 1% of the time... but for the site as a whole, what percentage result in hires?  

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Good question because, unlike what was mentioned in the “Bad Math” thread, it cannot be reliably estimated based on published financials because they’re conveniently missing the requisite components of that calculation.  I imagine we can do it here, but then we in the forum are only a small sampling of freelancers.  Still, it’s a start.  I remember near the end of 2023 a bunch of us published our stats in the forum, including myself, but we did not count non-hires.  Those posts may be searchable.

I don't boost anything, and my stats for 2024 are:

6 proposals

3 viewed

1 hire

Of those six jobs, 3 hired, 3 did not.

Sorry my stats are so dismally small.  I’m sort of biding my time until hopefully this nightmare eases up, and only "bidding to win!" as my connects are about to expire.  Also, for the last year or so I’ve been seeing a substantial increase in the number of U.S. based clients looking to pay $5.  Hey, I consider my rate low enough considering my experience, and this is a side-thing in my retirement, but I won’t do $5 bucks.  I won’t even wake-up my sweet mac for that amount.

[#11]

I've applied to over 300 jobs in 2024 (3 hires)... when I have more time this week I'll do the math on how many of those resulted in hires.  I'm certain it will be less than UW's stated 50% figure.  

UPDATE: I looked at my own results from those 300+ jobs and I found that 19% resulted in a hire.  Significantly less than the 50% that UW reports.  

[#12]

This is the merit of the upwork workers. They believe that they can set the price and dictate it to customers. During the one of payment protection discuss the upwork employee was so impudent that he told me the reason: I was denied protection because I asked for $5 higher than the average for the section. And they didn’t charge me the difference of 5 dollars but they took everything! Maybe he should gain at least 10 percent of my experience before assessing and telling me how much I should be paid? It's outrageous. I can understand a client who resorts to racial and territorial discrimination in order to get work for free. But I think that upwork employees are minding not their own business.

[#13]

I didn't know that payment protection could be denied!  You were denied payment protection beacuse an agent at Upwork said your hourly rate was too high?  How is that possible?  

[#14]

All this users was denided with different reasons. Some used manual time, some have no sreeshots because time tracker stuck, some didnt filled memo. Within last year very popular reason is "fraudulent activity". I didnt faced with that but saw posts many times.

You see client "verified by Upwork". Great, lets start. You doing works and waiting for money. Client dont pay (scammer, have card expired, Paypal bug...). Protection activated, agent checking job. And... "refunding" whole awaiting balance bacause it was fraudulent acrivity (in my case my rate was highter than average). Undiscusseable, decission if final, go away! You worked for free. This is Upwork "protection". Here i wrote about "protection" where Upwork took my money for week of hard work.

A joke with fraudulent activity reason is generally beyond praise! Fraudsters hired you so activity is fraudulent, logically. This means that the protection only works with legal activity when the client pays. 😸

[#15]

Seems like you were not tracking/logging your hours properly that was why Payment Protection kicked in when the Client's payment did not pushed through.

If you were logging your hours properly even if the Payment Protection kicks in, all your hours will be paid even if the Client's payment did not pushed through.  This is how Hourly Payment Protection works, make sure to read it so that you will be protected when doing Hourly Contracts.

[#16]

Check my profile: 476 jobs done. I know how to track time properly. 🙂

[#17]

That's crazy!  Upwork needs to stay away from making unilateral decisions like that.  Your rate is your rate, and that's what the client agreed to.   End of story.

[#18]

Yep, i think so.

Upwork happy with my rate when taking fee, but say that it is large when need to cover own faults. 🤗

[#19]

This is absolutley insane - I am so sorry that you were screwed out of your earnings!  

[#20]

And you are expert vetted so talent also give more opportunities to those community that also have to calculate

[#21]

There is no way to have accurate data when the numbers come from Upwork, and we have no access. If we have no starting numbers, all we can do is our personal numbers, or make guesses.

So, while we may all feel that hiring is a certain percentage, we can't prove it without the hard numbers.

Most of the active freelancers never post here. The freelancers who are here likely are not finding work, so it skews the numbers. We would need, at least, a random sampling.

I'm not dismissing the severity of not finding genuine jobs, but we do not have the necessary empirical data to determine exact numbers.

[#22]

agreed

[#23]

Their financial report said "Revenue from ads & monetization products grew 93% year-over-year" means by connects their revenue is increased 

[#24]

Right, well I guess there are millions of people that believe "You have to bid to win!".  Ooof.

[#25]

Upwork never listen, they just impose their own rules. Due to inflation and unemployment, everyone is trying to start freelancing. This has caused an increase in profits. after zombe tv ad upwork is died, upqrok don't have new client and this is easy way post scam jobs increase connect price, the job postings are filled with irrelevant and low-paying jobs, and it seems that only social media influencers and YouTubers posting jobs here. We need to consider switching to a  own business or a job as the time for upwork is over.