Upwork Suspending Freelancers for Not Getting Hired

December 5, 2016
by Jason Dulay 
Jason is the founder and CEO of Work from Home Roadmap and VA Bootcamp. Aside from teaching Filipinos how to succeed working from home, he likes traveling, playing board games, and drinking coffee.

How to Create a 100% Complete Upwork Profile: https://vabootcamp.ph/complete-upwork-profile/

Tips to Not Get Your Upwork Account Suspended

Lately, I've been getting reports of Upwork suspending accounts due to the freelancers not being hired. So what's this all about. Well, recently in our Facebook group, work at home pinoys, we had a couple of members who got their Facebook, who got their Upwork account suspended together with an email like this,

 We are contacting you to let you know that we are suspended your access to Upwork indefinitely. Our decision is base on a careful review and the fact that you've submitted a high number of proposals for jobs on our site without many contracts or earnings. Unfortunately this means the jobs posted by clients are not a good match for your skills. I know this news is likely disappointing to you but our goal at Upwork is to enable freelancers to successfully connect and collaborate with client who need their skills and expertise. Unfortunately this means we must part ways with freelancers whose skills are not in demand in our marketplace. If you want to appeal this decision you can email us. Email us at marketplace/[email protected]. Please note each case will be manually reviewed by our trust and  safety team to decide if your account can be reinstated. Please know we don't make decisions like this lightly and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. Regards, Upwork Trust and Safety.

Okay, so what they're basically saying is that for freelancers that have submitted a lot of proposals, have been applying to a lot of jobs but don't have a lot of, or aren't hired a lot or don't have a lot of earnings Upwork is starting to suspend those accounts. And you might be wondering, why is Upwork doing that? Well, over the past couple of months or the past year or so Upwork has been trying to improve freelancer quality and the reason they're doing this is because a lot of clients, a lot of companies have been complaining that they're being bombarded with freelancers who applied to their jobs that aren't, aren't of  of good quality. They are hiring people who are misrepresenting themselves on Upwork. Who are saying they have certain skills, they're able to do jobs but in reality they are not able to do so. An overall the consensus between the online community of companies is the, or the  client community is that Upwork's freelancers are of low quality, Upwork has been trying to improve that quality.

We can see evidence of this. First of all, they've been increasing the minimum hourly rates from a $ to 3$. So you'd have to deserve it more. You'd have to be of higher quality if you want to charge $3 an hour versus $1 an hour. Also they've been not approving profiles so a lot of new people applying for Upwork profiles have their profiles not approved. And we've seen this happen a lot lately. That they've been receiving emails that there's no match for their skills, for freelancers that don't have a match for the skills. And the most recent email I showed you earlier Upwork suspending accounts due to them not being hired a lot.

All right so, as a freelancer it can be very scary. It can specially, if for new freelancers it can be very scary to see how tough it is to succeed on Upwork. But we have to remember that Upwork is doing this because they want to improve quality. If they made it easy for everybody then there will be  a lot of low quality freelancer and you'd be competing with those that are bidding minimum rates. Bidding things like a $ an hour for  jobs that are pretty complicated we saw that in the past. So how do you as a freelancer prevent this from happening? How do you succeed on Upwork? And not get suspended due to not being hired.

Well. I do have a couple of tips for you here.

First of all, is to create a killer Upwork profile. Even before you start applying for jobs. Even before you go apply for your first job make sure that you have a very strong Upwork profile. As much as possible make sure your profile completeness score is at 100% so you take tests, you add your previous work experience, you fill up your profile, you add your skills as is there in the profile completeness score. I do have a blog post I'm going to link it below this video as well so that you can see the article and get your profile to a 100%. Sometimes we even see freelancers who have a rising talent badges immediately even before they see the, before they apply for their first job and we see that a lot with our students in VA boot camp and the how to get Upwork success course that their profile is strong enough that they get those rising talent badges even before they've applied for a job so work on your profile. Spend time working on your Upwork profile focus on the kind of jobs that you're applying for.

And second, our second  tip is to only apply for jobs that match your profile. If your profile is for a Virtual Assistant and your applying to programming jobs then your definitely you're not going to get hired for that. Or if your profile is for a graphic designer and then your applying to data entry jobs you're probably not going to get hired. Make sure that the job you apply for are a match for your profile and if they're not, maybe you need to change your profile to match the kind of job that your are applying to. If you're applying to more data entry jobs make your profile be focused on data entry. If you're applying for more web design jobs make your profile focused on web design.

Our third tip is to customize cover letters for the jobs that you apply to. Okay so we, as a client I myself,  I'm a client on Upwork and a lot of time when I post a job I can tell when cover letters are copy pasted. that they're not personalized. They are not customized. So our tip here is to customized cover letters for the job because clients can tell when you're copy pasting information even it's just the second half of your cover letter it's very easy to tell when somebody is just copy and pasting their cover letters and as I client I like,  most of the time I just reject these cover letters because they're not high quality freelancers they're not putting in the effort to write a cover letter for the job opening that I have.

Okay. As Upwork is continually trying to increase the quality of freelancers that are applying for jobs we may see more actions that they're going to take to stop freelancers from, stop low quality freelancers for applying fro a job and even suspending accounts as we saw here in this video. However you should take a look at these tips. Remember this tips and be reminded that if you are  high quality freelancer your account should not be suspended and you should be able to get those jobs that you're applying to.

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by Jason Dulay 
Jason is the founder and CEO of Work from Home Roadmap and VA Bootcamp. Aside from teaching Filipinos how to succeed working from home, he likes traveling, playing board games, and drinking coffee.

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One comment on “Upwork Suspending Freelancers for Not Getting Hired”

  1. UpWork is a Bullshit platform designed to suck your earnings. They just wanted 20% commission fee and they really don't care about people who work hard. If there is any dispute, they will only take client's side.

    Clients in UpWork are beggars who are looking for free work. For instead if there is a project cost $100, the one who posted the job (client) asking from the person who applies for the job to pay the 20% commission fee. It's like working free for bullshit idiots.

    Avoid UpWork and there are better platforms to work online.

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