Heck, everyone ditched Digg in a matter of weeks due to a UI redesign. How on the same earth are people still using Upwork despite issues that are for more serious where people's livelihoods are affected?
I know of many freelancers who typically do between 40-50k on upwork plus other projects outside the platform. Personally, I have moved into consulting and do not rely on upwork. While still not a lot of money by standards here, I’m on track to 100k this year. I think the huge benefit is that I don’t have to deal with a lot of stress that comes with employment or nonsense the kind that the author talks about with upwork. Consider that platform your path to a sustainable freelance or consulting career. Gotta put in the grunt hours to move up. Of course there are many exemptions if you are in the right circumstances.
Upwork turned out to be a good solution for me. It took about three weeks of searching through Upwork job posts until I found a good fit. There were a lot uninteresting job postings to wade through. And being new to the platform (without any history or earnings) probably made landing a job more difficult.
But I finally found a great client who allows for flexible hours at a pretty good hourly rate. Most of our team was found via Upwork and with only one exception everyone has worked out well.
The Upwork screenshot/work monitor software is definitely intrusive but I feel that's the cost of earning trust in an environment where clients and providers don't necessarily know one another.
Now that I've earned over $10k working for this client, Upwork is "only" taking 5% of my rate. However I feel this is quite fair given the platform they provide. Anyway a body shop would be taking a much bigger cut. I'm also building up a history within Upwork and future gigs should be easier to land.
Just as with other trust-based systems like Airbnb, the longer I'm on Upwork and the higher my reputation & earnings become, the more I'm incentivized to keep using it.
Toptal is too much for scoring some beer money, Upwork may be too cheap and unreliable but I'm not sure sysadmins have a better way of finding clients.
Sure, Upwork is much easier than this but with this ease comes this huge risk of your livelihood disappearing into thin air at the whims and fancies of Upwork.
"A marketing company that wanted to work with me only hires freelance writers through @Upwork. So I signed up. I wasn't thrilled about it, but that's who they contract with and it's their marketing company." - the second tweet in the linked series of tweet