My lowkey theories are that Upwork changed its search, it now marks everyone as best match (people have reported over 10 best matches now so you don't stand out anymore), and they've changed the importance of certain aspects of profiles. One of these days I will change my profile, but these are my conspiracy theories!
Top-Rated Plus Software Developer with $450K Earnings Struggling on Upwork
It very much seems like clients are not using Talent Search, or are not being directed to it during the job-creation process as much as they were (again, guesses, as I do not hire on the platform).
But something is really, really up (well, down).
I score in the top page or two for my skillset in Europe, and am no.1 or no.2 in the UK depending on just text search or text search + obvious category.
Top Rated with 100% JSS. And very few invites.
It doesn't make any sense.
I made almost $4M and still have a trouble getting hired now... Although clients see and reply to my proposals, just won't hire :/ I guess it's just a general market downturn.
anovikov Do you find that they think you farm out? I feel like once I crossed the $1m mark, people think I'm farming out. I get asked somewhat often or they approach it in a way where they talk about freelancers not doing their own work and feel like they got scammed, prompting me to tell them I don't farm out.
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There was a lot of discussions in the previous forum about whether it's a market downturn or not.
I agree with those who say, "It's only on Upwork" (or maybe other marketplaces as well), not the entire freelancing universe. I again haven't bid on Upwork for a few months already now as I have pending jobs from outside and I'm not a "manager" (or farmer).
As for why it's a downturn in Upwork, it's because of their change of vision which is entirely understandable to me. In short, they're allowed to milk their users instead of making them happy, when the latter only brought them losses for nearly a decade.
Milked users can still happy (profit) if they are willing to join the game and know what they're doing.
And talking about the freelancing universe; my cousin (45 y.o.), who is in a completely different field than me, just decided to go freelance after calculating that it would be better in many aspects.
TopRatedTroll Do you find that they think you farm out?
Some tasks cannot be done alone. I have a strong feeling his clients already knew that. I recall seeing them refer to him as "team" in their reviews.
TopRatedTroll I never pretended to do the work alone. I'm not hiding we are a company and i have a company account. Only work fixed price, never using hours or tracker, so it's according to the ToS: if you are doing fixed price, and tell clients in advance that this is a company not individual, you can take projects in the name of the agency owner (myself). That's how i work all the time.
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anovikov I got my first "online client" from a local discussion forum. I joined online "marketplaces" only about two years after I started freelancing.
Most of my current clients are repeat clients, some of whom I've worked with for over a decade.
My cousin whom I mentioned earlier, is going to focus on clients within his offline network. I just met him a few days ago, where I told him to, carefully, try Upwork and the likes.
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I can say that my current clients (over the past few years, during the "changes of Upwork") are quite diverse. Individuals, businesses, nonprofits, mostly from the U.S., where I haven’t noticed a downturn within their economy.
anovikov oh my bad. I feel like I'm the only person on Upwork who does their own work. lol
TopRatedTroll You aren't. There are at least two of us.
TopRatedTroll I do my own work…eventually
Hi everyone,
I'm in a similar situation and wanted to share my experience.
I'm a web developer, on the platform since the Elance days, 100% Job Success Score, all 5-star feedback, Top Rated Plus. I've had a steady stream of work from regular clients for the past four years and rarely needed to search for new projects. Recently the work has started drying up. I've noticed that clients are very hesitant to invest in new features. Most are only maintaining their current systems.
I had accumulated 1000 connects over past year and applied to around 40 jobs over the past few weeks, carefully picked only those that align with my niche and past jobs. I never had problems landing jobs, I think I know how to write a good proposal.
10 proposals were viewed by clients, 7 clients reached out to me, 1 job was awarded to someone else, 1 job turned out to be technically impossible.
With the remaining 5, I had detailed discussions with two clients, agreed on specs and budget (both small projects), but then they disappeared. So 40 proposals, zero hires.
I still have about 700 connects left, and I'll keep trying until I run out. Maybe it just takes more applications, 80, 100? It is crazy because it sometimes takes an hour to write a good proposal. Not worth the investment.
I feel the market is overcrowded and the best clients are gone. And AI: Upwork job feed is 90% agency bots using AI to apply to job posts written by AI. AI talking to AI and Upwork collecting connects.
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BetterDeadThanAlien I sent 136 proposals over the last 4 months and I wasn't hired once. Only about 1/3 or my proposals are viewed, and only about 1/3 of the viewed ones did contact me. About half of them aren't hiring at all (various kind of scams or tire kicking). What really bothers me is that not even once I had a technical or skill interview. It looks like serious companies are gone and no-one really bothers how good you are. I've got exactly 1 (one) invite over 4 month despite availability badge (I applied and the client is not reponding).
All in all, only 1/3 of all jobs I applied did eventually hire someone on Upwork. Half from all hires are ended up with <$40/hr rates, even though I skip obvious cheapskates and don't apply on jobs <$50/hr. It looks like Upwork is running a race to the bottom where good freelancers are vastly outnumbered by cheap ones. At least in native iOS development.
To all: what are yours statistics?
P.S. The situation might be slightly different if you are in the US, since there is substantial amount of US-only jobs with higher rates. They aren’t supposed to be visible to freelancers outside US, however I see them from time to time due to the glitch (though I can’t apply).
Those are really astounding and concerning figures. I remember creating a Community Forum post about the lack of seriousness on the platform about 18months or so ago. Was such a strong feeling then.
Tbh I think it plays into something going on generally in society; there is a lack of seriousness imo in all kinds of ways.
Society has become unreal. It's unravelling imo.
To my mind, the solution is to buck the trend and to be more & more real. We've become superficial as a people in Western societies. Somebody has to hold up 'real'; and the good ones will see it, be drawn to it, and stick with it.
Meanwhile, we know that numerous, most people, will not be real with us. I'm starting to feel that I just have to get used to this and accept it, learn to spot it early and don't get upset by it.
And then occasionally something will hit real; the others will do nothing or extract what they want and I will remain philosophical and let them go.
15 days later
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Circling back to this thread, I think the freelancing industry has an issue of being known as low quality work. It's been flooded, and we have the issue of people just flat out scamming clients. Generally, I think people go to freelancers and think they will get low quality work until they find someone they really like.
I've had clients make some really truly awful tactical errors but I feel preachy telling them. Like I had a client fund $1000 in escrow and then immediately release. I did the work, but I think a lot a lot a lot of freelancers would have screwed him over. Unfortunately, doing well is the exception to the rule.
I'll always hate on scam freelancers a lot because their actions are really harmful to honest freelancers. Personally, when I was hiring years and years ago for an enterprise client on Elance, the worst freelancers to hire were new people asking for a chance. They usually would ghost and then when I'd ask if they were going to do the work, they outsourced it or just never responded.
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I have stopped looking for projects because it's a waste of time. We need to wait out the downturn.
Ah and yes it's not just Upwork. I'm talking to people who sell through different channels and different verticals. Coding projects have disappeared entirely and for one guy i talk to for instance, in the volume of initial contacts that would normally land him 10-15 deals totalling over $1M, in the last 3 months, he closed 0, with one $15K project still a likelihood... And it's not on Upwork, less than a third of those contacts are from Upwork. People come, interview, talk to a lot of people, and then leave hiring no one.
It's a general downturn in coding. Gotta wait till the interest rates drop.
It's no downturn! It's a revolution! AI is here to stay because it offers speed (if not accuracy), which people want above all else. I know this sounds polemical, but we will see many roles disappearing and being replaced by resource-intensive machines. Marketplaces will become obsolete once it's the fake RFP writers' turn.