Upwork

I posted a job on Upwork for white-hat, quality link building. I got a response from a freelancer promising the following:
"I will carry out an extensive research based on industry vertical and first prepare a list of related blogs, bloggers, influencers and website owners and start with an outreach campaign to gain valuable link placement on authority sites. Backlinks will be on highly relevant and authority sites and will be permanent and contextual links. Recently, I've had a very good success rate building in-content links on already published articles on authority sites."

He ended up placing 4 links on sites that had the lowest quality writing. 1 was de-indexed in google indicating it had already been penalized for spamming; 1 used to be a French e-commerce site that went out of business, and the domain was bought for history/DA and turned into a blog to sell links (domain name was complete irrelevant to the niche); 3 had all traffic coming from referral and direct traffic, indicating a PBN.

I asked him to remove the links. He never did. I ended up having to disavow the links.

What made matters worse, is when I contact Upwork and asked if I could leave feedback so other businesses would have a warning, they told me feedback was only allowed when payment was made on a project, but that it would count towards the freelancers job completion rate. I checked the freelancers job completion rate, at it was at 53%. Obviously, if someone misrepresents their skills, there will be a dispute. And, given his completion rate, this likely wasn't the first time. He is still operating nonetheless. This policy facilitates bad behavior by freelancers, and is a shady business practice by Upwork.

I was looking for help, instead I got a con artist and UPWORKS allowed him to withdraw my money from an ESCROW account without performing any work

May 24,2018 update:

I see nothing has gotten better at UpWork since I posted a year ago. If it's any consolation, they are slowly going down in ranking, according to Alexa. They've been in a downturn for well over a year now since they upped their commission to 20%.

I sometimes jump into the "Community" discussion boards and read through the complaints, which are addressed by a small hand-picked group of individuals who lie and make excuses for UpWork. Like how UpWork can't be responsible for phony job postings, it's too much for them to keep up with so they rely on freelancers to figure it out for themselves and then report them. That's freaking incredible. Worst site ever.

April 1,2017 update:
I needed some Google compliance work done on one of my websites so I ran a job on UpWork and found a good guy who did a great job. That was all fine. But I was surprised that at the end of the billing week UpWork just chunked the guy's hours off my credit card without my being able to review and approve the work done.

So I have to leave my review at one star as they do try to automate everything and are control freaks. I wanted my web developer to review some advice from one of my SEO accounts and UW wouldn't allow me to message him the user name and password, as that would be considered paying him off site. What? Creepy site. Very creepy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you scroll down slightly you will see a review by J. M. Everything he says is absolutely true.

UpWork has subsumed Elance and it's the WalMart for freelancers: high volume + low prices + cheap labor = profits for Stephane Kasriel, the %&#@ CEO who sold us out.

And they are trying to automate the site and reduce staff, therefore boosting profits. I have an avatar pic of Queen Elizabeth I on my profile, I listed my hourly rate at $285 to mock them and I've never even bid on a job there, and yet I get an email telling me I am a "Top Rated" freelancer now and I need to jump to the site and starting quoting jobs. It's a scam!

I am going to describe about only true.
I have created my private upwork.com freelancer account in September.
Current I am using Freelancer.com now.
And I have invited my client to the upwork.com and I have worked client some project.
When I have finished first project, upwork team required Video verification(after upload the ID Card) and I have passed succussfully.
However there was the problem when I have got second project and started.
Some support member(Jeric Bambi Gaerlan) made my account as suspend.
After that Upwork support team member(Mike) asked again to upload my ID card and bank document.
Of course, This was not strange, In Freelancer.com aslo asked verification document(ID card and bank document and Passed and are using this).
As the result, I h ave uploaded the ID card and bank document, even this is private.
It also passed correctly, but some other support member(Lizzie B) made my account again as suspend.
So, I have sent the message to the suppor team about the reason.
Finally other support team member(Maya) sent message like this
"We've reviewed all of the information you provided, but will not be reinstating your account. The decision is final and your account is permanently deactivated. I understand this is not the outcome you were hoping for.

Please know we are unlikely to respond to further correspondence regarding this matter."
How can I understand about this?
I am very angry about this site support team member's working style.
I think it is easy to use Freelancer.com than upwork.com
Refund my client again From upwork.com

Upwork charges freelancers a 20% commission on work up to the value of US$500 (with each client). The commission rate drops for higher value projects, with 10% charged between US$500.01 and $10,000, and 5% once an individual client has spent over $10,000.

Some reviewers may find this unreasonable. I have a different take on it.

As a freelancer, I do most of my work myself. I don't hire anyone to help me. I do my own marketing, sales, billing, accounting, and then also have to do the actual work I'm hired for. As a soloprenuer, the economics aren't there to outsource some of the administration.

In previous years, prior to using Upwork, I've lost revenue because of being maxed out wasn't able to devote time to the administrative support tasks. With Upwork, I gained a significant amount of billable time back.

Let's do some math. The first $500 (per client) will cost me $100 (20%) to earn, so I only receive $400.

I could easily spend $100 on the following:
Finding sites,
Posting my resumes
Reading job postings
Writing Unique Cover Letters
Billing for my time
Accounting for the work I've done (justifying my billing)
Collecting on overdue invoices.

But with Upwork, I don't have to do any of that really. Once my profile was set up (easy migration from LinkedIn), I could start bidding on jobs immediately.

The system takes screen shots as I go (approximately every 6 or 10 minutes), and I don't have to worry about micromanaging what I'm doing. The screen shots are there for accountability.

I have the Time tracker open on my desktop, and it's another accountability tool. I keep an eye on how long it takes me to complete tasks, but don't have to also log the time while I'm doing the work.

Overall I would recommend UpWork to freelancers out there. My skills are in the area of administration anyway, so I find this is workable. (I don't know about other types of industries.)

It's better, easier, and right now, more efficient than paying an agent to represent me.