Tips: Optimise your Upwork Profile

Robin

Intro

Profile optimisation seems like some sort of mysterious dark art; never quite sure what impact you're going to have on both the algorithm and prospective clients. Can we demystify this together?

Purpose

I create this thread in order to encourage sharing rather than myself being the expert… also, this not being a thread about individual profiles specifically… but more about sharing knowledge of the platform & algorithms and honing in on what works, what does not, and what does harm.

I'm interested to receive & get tips out there from those who have and are currently doing well on Upwork, getting found in search & getting profile views, and regularly receiving invites and winning contracts.

The reverse experiences are also valuable & valid. The more experiences we have, the more we may be able to pick out patterns & effects across & within them.

Upwork Life & Strategies

Are the days of sitting back and waiting for invites now truly gone? Have Upwork damaged something as regards search & hiring in order to favour us burning through Connects?

Let's see if we can pick out effects & identify strategies in people's experiences. But also just straight up sharing known positive (and experienced) effects.

How are people using platform features such as Categories, Specialized Profiles, Consultancies, and Projects? Are there associated formulas for Upwork success? What measures can we take to improve our profiles & offerings? How important are these? How can we manifest those precious invites?

Please share any experiences & knowledge. Perhaps this might start to function as a little social knowledgebase…

Alexandra

Robin I'm not sure about specialized profiles, but I do know that the Project Catalog makes no sense for my potential clients. It seems that having to choose between packages is hard for clients when they have to count words or pages or minutes.

Probably as a result, I get more direct messages now, which is a nuisance for me because the clients ask me to open their files, tell them what something would cost, etc., and in most instances, I get no feedback from them as to why they decide not to go ahead.

There is no efficiency gain for me. Especially since most of my potential clients now seem to be on a strict budget well below European standards, more like side hustle make-a-quick-buck budgets. (But that's a perennial gripe, I know. I won't dwell on it. )

Robin

A little about my own experiences in a hopefully useful format:

Upwork Experience:

Pre-2023: Regular invites for highly-paid business application work. Good money earned on good contracts with established and quite sizeable clients. Never worried about Connects, had a good sized stash, never really used them.
Career Status: Largely easy, positive & financially rewarding. Other side of coin: Not much innovating possible working with large clients.

Post-2023: A slowing down culminating in almost total ceasing of invites (one or two every now and then, rarely for good sized contracts). Bids & invites for lower value work came off. Fulfilled those contracts whilst focusing on creation of IP (perhaps to later sell as Projects). Some bids for both lower and higher paid work, very occasional success (low no. of Proposal views, feeling of Connects being burned). Occasional invite for shorter-term app-building projects. Wanted to do some implementation coaching… did do some coaching via the platform.
Career Status: Confusing, changeable, transitory, concerning. Decided to take more than just money… created IP, hopefully can use it. Wolf kept from door; no giving up.

Recently: Something of a return to Upwork Talent Scout invites, only 1 from (an underpaying) client. Seeing more good jobs being posted.
Career Status: Room for optimism to a return to good contracts + prospective selling of packages/IP.

Strategies

Pre-2023: Sole focus on one skill area (CRM software implementations, heavily skewed to one product). Offerings: Main Profile/Skill only. No Consultancies, no Projects.

Post-2023: Implemented Specialized Profiles for above skills area plus VBA programming / Python scripting due to deepening skills. Added hire-as-coach language to both profiles. Added skills & categories in Account Settings -> Profile (went from one Category to 6/7 🫢).
Offerings: Main Profile, 2 Specialized Profiles, 2 Consultancies (one booking in 18 months), no Projects.

Recently (1): Removed all but two Skills & Categories. Rewrote & Reformatted Profile Headings. Immediate uptick in profile views for several days (from none to 1-3 per day… still some 0 days, esp. weekends).

Recently (2): Unpublished Specialized VBA/Scripting Profile; left main Specialized Profile Published (do not know if this helps or is now superflous due to other Specialzed Profile being unpublished?) – Results: awaiting.

Feedback, knowledge & your experiences all welcomed.

Ravi

Thank you, Robin.

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013750068-Create-a-specialized-profile#:~:text=To%20unpublish%20a%20specialized%20profile%3A&text=If%20you%20have%20one%20specialized,draft%20of%20your%20specialty%20profile.

Robin

Ravi Hope it helps. Either way, I'd be interested to know your results, Ravi.

Robin

Ravi Also wanted to mention, for myself, I'm disabling my second skillset's Specialized Profile to see what impact that has on my main profile's search position/views, but I'm going to republish it occasionally to apply for jobs.

That might make things awkward / difficult to track the effects of, as I'll need to keep the profile there with its skills and rate until clients hire for open jobs.

I'd love to be able to have better control over which of my profiles appear in search, which titles and rates are shown for various searches… (the platform should do some of this automatically, but it does not, and only shows your main/general profile title & rate in search results).

I recommended some mods on this to Upwork, and they implemented it in part, but not the whole way as per the above idea (dynamically showing the profile title/rate in accordance with the search).

Eve

The thing I've noticed in the 8+ years I've been on Upwork is that the higher the hourly rate I have, the better clients I get. And the more I have in Upwork earnings, the more direct contacts or quality invites I get. Everything else with specialized profiles, projects, consultations, and all of that doesn't have that much of an impact. This is why I keep my clients on Upwork. The more I earn through the platform, the better my profile looks, and the more quality clients I get. To me, a 10% fee is well worth it (especially because I just bake it into my rates) to have clients come to me instead of wasting time trying to find them myself. In the last 5 or 6 years, almost all jobs I've had on Upwork were jobs where the client came directly to me, without me sending a proposal first.

josefinathegreat

Does anyone have a tip how to get visible after 10 y and hundreds of projects while being top rated because I'm completely invisible for some time now, whether I apply for job or not, whether I boost or not. Once in a while when they do show me I get jobs but it's so rare as if I'm always at the end of whichever list there is. How do I shake out from invisibility?

anovikov

I haven't used Upwork for a long time due to having long term clients offline (annual turnover is down from $600K+ 2.5 years ago to only $110K now, with the bottom being around $80K when i restarted 5 months ago). And it feels just how difficult it is to gain clients with the near dormant profile! I barely landed one which brought 50K with a promise of 50K more and struggle to get anything else. Profile views and invites are down to a trickle. It already feels it will be a struggle to get back to desired $1M or so annual turnover...

Kelly_E

anovikov Yes. While Upwork really doesn't seem to like any high-level professionals as much as it used to, I've heard over and over that dormant accounts have extra troubles.

But if you've already landed one, you're no longer dormant, so now it's just the usual "what the heck happened to Upwork since 2022" struggle we're all dragging ourselves through. 😬

anovikov

Kelly_E to be fair, in 2022 i landed massive projects with ease. I only stopped trying from late 2022 because i didn't need to, had too much to do offline. Landed 2 considerably big ones, 2 tiny, and 1 mid-sized which sadly failed, in 2023 without trying, they came in by themselves. Just that they made a tiny proportion of my revenue and i didn't care. Basically, the only one i took and doing now, that will eventually go on to be $100K+, also came from invite without trying.
It's just that it is negligible and won't make a dent in my company running costs or living costs if things go on this way, i need to bring in at least $500K in gross revenue to stay afloat, and it looks like doing this on Upwork from the position my profile is in now, is going to be a struggle.

TopRatedTroll

I went from thousands of profile views every month to maybe 6 a day. I gotta redo my profile sooo bad. Upwork has definitely changed the way search works. I'm going to redo mine again. When I lost views badly in 2022 I redid my profile and got views again. I lost them again in late 2023 and I haven't had motivation or time to spend a day figuring out what to write.

Lisa B.

Yeah, it sucks. I just rewrote my profile after 8 years or so of putting it off. Lived off invites since 2018 or so until rotation of my profile stopped when they introduced boosting. Now the only thing that works to get views and invites is boosting my profile, unfortunately.

Alexandra

I considered rewriting my profile, but then I realised that clients always turn up ahead of public holidays over here (when their regulars aren't available) -- and hey presto, there come the invites! (Bane of my life: being the back-up or stand-in for strangers.) So I decided to keep adding to my portfolio instead.

Sein

Alexandra Yeah tweaking from time to time is really essential to keep traction going in my experience. I wouldn't do a entire re-write, I like to edit and refine drafts until I'm happy with the updated version, and always keep backup copies of different versions with dates. Working in a kind layered process has been very helpful, keep making revised drafts until I'm 100% happy with it.

Robin

Minor update on my own profile wranglings:

I have recently had two invites on days where I've received no profile views. I consider that this means my recent profile rewrite – and in particular my opening two lines – is doing some sort of a job.

Getting invites without profile views presumably means clients have an invite button after seeing only your profile title & opening lines.

Hopefully this means that applications will more regularly turn to interviews, when I get back to submitting them.