Upwork has to realise that profits increase is linked to client satisfaction which in turn is linked to freelancer satisfaction.
Client satisfaction is increased when the job gets completed successfully and for that to happen, it has to be easier for the client to find the right person for the job. Having tons of proposals thrown at a client works against that, hence the increased connect cost to apply. It's not a popular opinion, but I agree with this action.
Yet, when it comes to freelancer satisfaction, Upwork fails on a few fronts. One of them mirrors the client's frustration: just like they have to go through tons of freelancers' proposals, many of them inadequate, we have to filter through tons of useless job postings. What is being done about this? Nothing currently. We need the "connects cost" equivalent for clients, or freelancers' satisfaction is going to continue its downward trend and while the clients are the ones bringing the money, the freelancers are the ones putting them into Upwork's pocket. Ignore this aspect for long enough and nothing good can come out if it.
To mitigate this issue, Upwork could go about a few ways:
1- introduce a small fee for every job posting. I know this is not favored by some freelancers from what I've seen here and possibly by Upwork either, but it would discourage lots of job postings that are more like a google search "what would it cost me to have this done". It's not phrased like this most of the time, as no one would apply, but rest assured, many clients have no serious intention of hiring.
2- "Payment unverfied" jobs should cost nothing. If they're not willing to show that they're serious about hiring, then perhaps, sifting through 50+ proposals is an appropriate cost for asking questions/info, instead of us paying in order to educate them.
3- another way of discouraging clients to use Upwork instead of google, would be to incurr some kind of penalty after the hiring rate drops below 50%. This is acually not mutually exclusive to either of the two above, since it alone, wouldn't address the "payment unverified" merely curios or downright bored client.
There are, of course, many other ways to address this and my proposed solutions might not be the right ones, but I'm sure there are some.
tl;dr Increase the connect costs all you want, it's fine by me, cost of doing business and all that, but address the other half of spamming, that is job posting spamming, not just proposal spamming.
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