[Henry]

Chatter has been slow on Twitter lately but Reddit tells a different story, a lot of freelancers are reported massive drops in profile views and invites after major changes made to Upwork in 2024 focused on charging freelancers for “connects” to apply to jobs even when they were manually invited to respond to a job post by a client. Have you other Upworkers noticed this lately?

[Margaret]

Experience with Upwork in 2024 is not good as before
byu/nirmal_web inUpwork

What is wrong
byu/CryptographerLast908 inUpwork

posts like these are popping up on r/Upwork almost daily now during the last several months it is not good

[Noah]

a lot of freelancers are reported massive drops in profile views and invites after major changes made to Upwork in 2024

what do you think is the main cause?

[Sharon]

Every “personal stats” graph I’ve seen shows near the same thing. Around April, May, June 2024 suddenly no invites. That is exactly the same time when Upwork changed to requiring connects even when you’re invited to a gig.

I don’t really understand it. Surely requiring connects can’t be the only reason why freelancers lost visibility?

[Evelyn]

damn. I thought Upwork was the place to be!!

[Ruth]

This one pretty much sums it up… WTF happened to Upwork 😭😭😭

WTF happens with Upwork?
byu/Afraid_Difficulty_91 inUpwork

“As the title says, I guess due to policy changes and change to their structure, the metrics are just going downhill and it gets impossible to find clients these days.
I’m a Toprated plus freelancer with over 900 finished projects, 100% job success score and over 200k+ earned, and yet I get barely 1-2 invitations per month ( while before it was like 7-8 per DAY ) and my profile view just tanked this year.”

[Alexis]

you’re not imagining it and it’s not because of the “connects” which is perhaps even a good idea.

I think the quantity and quality of clients has simply got got in half. remember at Q4 in 2023 is when Google’s HCU really starting destroying everyone… it took several months for people to realize it, but eventually many people shut down their niche sites (etc) and stopped hiring new freelancers… plus with all the AI stuff, it just made it worse imo

So I think it’s like:

1. half of websites got killed by HCU in 2023
2. many tech savvy people are using AI tools for some of their solutions now (code fixes, script writing, etc)
3. SquareSpace and Wix and Shopify keep growing more popular vs. self-hosting WordPress
4. Upwork has tried to show off to their investors with some stupid new AI tools that nobody really uses

I think this combination of things made 2024 horrible for Upwork.

And I don’t have much hop for 2025 based on what I’m seeing because none of these things will improve next year seems.

[Kathleen]

Some of the comments in those Reddit threads also accused Upwork of spending less on PPC to bring new clients.

I’ve no idea if that’s accurate, but it’s what many freelancers are accusing them of.

[Larry]

I also suspect Upwork is falsely boosting newer freelancer accounts… the experienced freelancers used to outrank everyone easily but not anymore, many of the search results are brand new accounts, sometimes not even good profiles

[Louis]

tl;dr too many freelancers, not enough clients

that’s why they created the Connects system in the first place

[Carol]

Upwork clients hiring more “third world” freelancers than ever before

[Author]

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