Upwork

Good pay for each minute spent, excellent learning platform, great work life balance, a good option to start a second career after a break, many career options to choose from.

Upwork is great to find work, but their commission pyramid is a killer for small jobs. Unless you can get long-lasting clients (which does not always happens on several fields like graphic design and translation), you have to pay 20% over the first 500 bucks, and then 10% from $501 to $10,000, and then 5% after that. This means that Upwork keeps a huge slice of your payment, they are essentially your "partners."

That, added to the fact that the client ALSO has to pay a commission on the work they hire out, means Upwork is a silent partner in almost all of their freelancers' businesses.

If they cut down on their rates, they'd earn that last star. The website works great and there are countless opportunities to get work.

The other issue is that there are a LOT of bots and a lot of "one cent" freelancers from India and China who use auto-posting scripts to flood all jobs with over 50 offers, so I imagine it must be daunting for a client to go through that many offers and find the most competitive and professional one that fits their needs.

I've had an account from the time when it was ODesk, and that has helped me continue to get good jobs because of a very active profile filled with reviews from clients, but from what people with new accounts have told me, it is very difficult to get hired with a new account and no reviews. The flooding of offers by bots and low cost freelancers from abroad make it hard for newbies to find jobs.

In general, I do recommend Upwork, but IT CAN IMPROVE.

I am an audio production specialist. In 2018 I started with $5 an hour and now I get paid $25 an hour. Upwork is the place where professionals can get great value.

(There's a Suggestion for Upwork at the end)
To Survive at Upwork, you need to be a Salesman, which is a Requirement by Upwork, not by the Client. As Once if you get hired, Client has Nothing to Do with you Selling Skill.

If you are not a Good Salesman, doesn't matter how experienced you are, you will get SUSPENDED! Simply!

I have Seen Hundred's of Suspended Experienced (Field Expert) people from upwork, in fact its an Hot Topic on Google. (just query something like "upwork account suspended")

Client Requires Field Experts, Upwork Delivers them Salesman. This is how Upwork is NOT CONNECTING the Right Candidate!

SUGGESTION FOR UPWORK:
If someone is Not getting Hired, it doesn't mean he/she is not field Expert, it depicts he/she is not Good At Selling!

Upwork can easily Improve its Algorithm by Including the "Test Results" (Conducted by Upwork) to Determine the Experienced Professional. Define a Threshold, below that Threshold may get suspended (if they are not earning enough)!

I found upwork as a truly professional platform to work as a freelancer as they have a lot of features for both the party I mean for buyer and seller like me.

Upwork does a great job of maintaining a website that is very functional and feature-rich and organized. The options for protection, for client and freelancer, are valuable. I consistently make many 10's of thousands of dollars a year on Upwork.

The challenge is that Upwork is an open market, meaning anybody can post their job there, and almost anybody can join as a freelancer. This means, frankly there are an abundance of unqualified clients and freelancers. I understand the reasoning behind this - if Upwork were to assign themselves the role of judging who gets to join, running the business would become untenable for them.

And so, there is a portion of Upwork that is a race to the bottom in pricing, where clients believe design is not something they should pay a lot for, and many freelancers will happily do a logo for $30. And then the client is surprised that a $30 logo is not very good.

But there are many "professional" clients, as I call them, who have realistic budgets, and are looking for experienced pros like myself. So you simply have to do the groundwork to find them, and manage the project and the client properly.

I am happy to have Upwork.

Upwork has helped me to get quality, recurring work that pays really well and has helped me get my career up and running. I'm very thankful for the opportunities that I've received through upwork!

After quitting my offline job at it agency, I found it quite easy to take jobs like I did before directly from clients via Upwork platform. I am thankful to Upwork for such a possibility

Upwork is a great platform for freelancers like me to search for jobs and get hired! Also, I am confident that I will be paid since Upwork also verifies identity and payment method of clients.

Joining upwork creating opportunities for me, who came from Southeast Asia to work with International employer, earning dollars that converted to have better value here.

With Upwork, I won't only meet my freelancing goals but also develop exponentially in my chosen career path as I get to solve real word problems of clients all around the world.

Upwork takes no responsibility for anyones problems. They act like a middle man that doesn't have to resolve any issues putting sole responsibility on the freelancer and the client. When the freelancer and the client are on bad terms though, you come to find out there are no real solutions and when money is involved, this is a huge issue.

As a client, I've had 2 issues with freelancers and I'll leave it at that. I'd be writing a novel to describe my terrible experience with freelancers eager to sell their skill and desire to deliver on your project, to then only complain when they spend hours fixing their own mistakes. Blame you and get mad that it's a fixed contract price. I've wasted over $1,000 on this site with freelancers who treat their clients like crap. It's clear why they can't get clients on their own without this site. Upwork clearly doesn't care who works on their site. They should be focused on helping their customers who pay and actually make them money. They've done nothing to help and I'll be staying far far away from this company. I urge you to learn my my lesson and save your own money before going to this platform that should be shut down.

Its very professional supportive and good plate form for both buyer and seller, I highly recommend this platform for every to invest and start your own business

UpWork is a platform that contribute million of people lives better and become independent. It's a cross border platform so that you can do work from home.

The best online freelance platform. Offers a lot of opportunity for both new and skilled talents. I've been to many platform, but this one is the best!

Using Upwork since 2012 and work only through them since, a lot of client, sales/customer support/IT/Design/Legal/Translations they have it all.

Highly recommended!

Upwork is an amazing freelance platform that provides an opportunity to work with clients from different countries. An awesome place to start your freelance journey.:-)

Upwork is a great platform for a graphic designer that is looking for a job opportunity while working from home. It really helped me raise my monthly income and work from home at the same time.

I recently signed up at Upwork and had my first project which took me about 1 day of work. All seemed to be perfectly normal. I completed the project the client approved payment and then suddenly my account was blocked.

After reaching out to the Customer Service, they informed me that I had to verify several details. Which I did, then they asked if I could reach out to my client as there was a problem they could not explain. I reached out to the client and didnt get an answer.

Then I mailed Upwork during a period of 2 months several times, I hardly got any response, sometimes it took over a week to get a respond from Upwork.

Today I received the message (see screenshot attached) that because my client was fraudulent they won't be paying me for my completed work.

It has been a terrible experience working with this company. There CS is rude, unprofessional takes ages to respond and the worst: they won't pay me for my completed work.

I strongly advice to not work with Upwork if you don't want to lose your money. This company is a mess!

My name is Ikramul Kabir. I have been a freelancer for exactly 3+ years now. I'm doing a lot better, upwork helps me a lot. I am very happy with it and it was a great experience. Thanks.

Whether your hustle on thus platform is your main source of income or a side business to put some extra cash in your pocket, Upwork is the best place to be

I have been on Elance for just over a year now, this is one of the best sites for freelancers online, yet, there move to Upwork is a big negative step!
I wish Elance would stay up and running!

While Upwork does take a 20% commission, I believe it is worth it to have all your clients managed through one place and to have an easy hub to find jobs.