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e7e86243
Community Member

Hello, new to Upwork, can I put a Warning on my proposal?

Hello, everyone, I'm new to Upwork, not even a week in and I've had nothing but scammers asking for work.  Either they want to talk on Telegram or me send them interviews questions ( by email) outside of Upwork, with no contract in place.  Just like most of you here, I'm wanting to make an honest living, and not deal with these knuckleheads. 😂  

 

My question is, when I send a proposal can I put a warning on my bio/about me page? 

 

Something like.  WARNING: If you need work done, I will only respond/interview on Upwork, until a contract is in place. 

 

Would like your thoughts.

 

Thank you

Meloney Garner (Nikki) 

 

9 REPLIES 9
prestonhunter
Community Member

There is no Upwork rule that prohibits freelancers from adding warnings such as you describe to their profile pages or proposals.

Okay, Thank you so much

Nikki

pgiambalvo
Community Member

Sure, go ahead. Might help scare of the some scammers from bothering you.

martina_plaschka
Community Member

I wouldn't do that. 

Why? A serious client might resent being put into the scammer category, or being suspected of it. 

You are telling clients that you have had bad experiences and want to avoid them. A serious client doesn't care about your prior bad experiences. He only cares about your skill to do his job. You are starting with a negative tone, and that's not good marketing. 

You might deter some scammers, but I highly doubt it. I have a reasonably good profile/JSS/hundreds of jobs, and scammers still invite me to the tune of 5 a day. I want to scream at them: Don't you understand that I am very experienced and can spot a scam from miles away? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME! 

So in conclusion, it's better to have to delete a few invitations/responses than lose good clients. But it's your profile, if it works for you, by all means do it. 

Yes, that was the one down fall of me adding a warning, because I thought the same way, that someone might think Im already insulting them,  I don't want to be that person.  For now I'll just delete.

 

Thank You for your feed back. 🙂

Nikki Garner


Meloney G wrote:

Yes, that was the one down fall of me adding a warning, because I thought the same way, that someone might think Im already insulting them,  I don't want to be that person.  For now I'll just delete.

 

Thank You for your feed back. 🙂

Nikki Garner


In the end, this message is about you and your needs, when your messaging should be about the client only. 

Edit: forgive me for being blunt: your profile is weird. First, it's only about you - first mistake. Second, I'm really not sure if you are trying to tell people that you are divorced or something, but please change that darn text. What I said before applies: it has to be about YOUR CLIENT, and NOT about yourself. 

😂  I'm not easily offended, so I don't mind you being blunt.  Yes, I need to change my profile, which is why I've been on Upwork most of today, working out the problems I may have.  

 

Thank you again

Nikki

roberty1y
Community Member

I'd say don't do this. Clients don't like being treated as potential scammers, so it will have a negative effect. In fact, when you get used to Upwork you'll probably be able to spot all scammers without even sending a proposal, so this issue won't arise.

e7e86243
Community Member

Thank you for your feedback.  Yes, I agree, I am glad I decided against a warning, the last thing I want is to lose potential clients. I'll just have to be careful who I respond to and/or who reaches out to me for a job.  So far I've been able to spot the scammers, pretty quickly.  

 

Thank You again.

Nikki

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