Hi Robyn,
Yes, there actually are legitimate jobs on Upwork. I see jobs like that all the time. Right now, it's really unfortunate how many spam/scam jobs are being posted. And I agree with you that there should be more support dedicated to dealing with huge volume of scam posts.
But, if you still want to see if it works for you, one thing you can do is figure out how to read a job post so you know which ones are the better bets to apply to.
You can copy and paste this search term into the search window and run a search: (t.me OR Telegram OR wa.me OR whatsapp OR "*@*.*"). This should pull up a lot of jobs you probably don't want to apply for. Take some time to read through them and get a sense of what they're like. What will you notice? Most of the ones this search will pull up have contact information that provide ways of contacting clients off-platform. Since it violates the Upwork Terms of Service to do that, you don't want to apply for these jobs.
What else can you notice? They all have really high budgets, often for entry level work. It's unrealistic to think that most clients are going to offer you a lot of money to do entry level jobs. Sometimes you'll notice that there isn't a lot of information. On it's own, that's not necessarily a signal of evil intentions, but if the clients have also supplied contact information, you're going to want to give those posts a miss too.
If you look at the menu on the lefthand side, it gives you options to see only the jobs where the client has previously hired on Upwork. While there are clients who are posting for the first time who aren't trying to scam you, it might be a safer bet to go with someone who has hired more freelancers. With these clients, you may be able to get a better sense of the feedback freelancers have left for them. You can click through to their client page to see their hiring histories. There's a lot of information there that you can use to decide if you want to apply.
After that, you might want to search a few keywords that fit with your experience. You might pull up posts by clients who haven't hired on Upwork before, but what you'll want to look for is detailed job descriptions. Not all first-time clients are great at describing their jobs, but the ones who are might be good clients to work with because they're thinking about how to explain their jobs. I find people who take care in describing their jobs are often really good clients.
There are a few things you can look at that will help you sort out scams from real jobs. Wes, one of the other freelancers, spent a lot of time putting together a really good post on red flags for scams. You can find that here:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Community-Blog/Top-Red-Flags-for-Scams-From-Community-Member-Wes-C/b...
Also, it's a really good idea to get to know the terms of service, so you'll know if the job posts you see violate them.
https://www.upwork.com/legal
You'll also get a sense of what you can and can't do on the platform.
I don't envy anyone who's just starting out right now because Upwork is probably an extremely confusing, frustrating, and demotivating place to be looking for contracts. And it's probably slower to establish a foothold if you don't have a lot of experience. But I know there are a ton of legit jobs available.
