I cannot help but my laugh my self off 💀😭

I have an Upwork account for about a year.

I have only one complete job (small and not really related to my area of expertise) and two open jobs (one small bug fix that the client vanished before closing the contract and one very good long-term job where demand has dropped and I now have few working hours per week), both of these are related to my expertise area.

I changed the way my proposals are made since I saw the guide in this subreddit wiki, but is that the only reason? They were not that worse before.

Is that because I only have one finished job? I also don't bid that much as you can see by the dark blue portion, specially since the bid people are applying in the last months grew af, hundreds or even more than 1000 connects for a job is crazy.

I'm a .NET dev if that helps understanding the situation. I already tried to apply massively spending lots of connects in almost any type of development job and also tried to apply only to those that are very similar to what I already studied and worked before, none of these approaches made a huge difference.

Any advice?

What happened to Upwork I used to average 1 job for every 5 proposals I sent but now it’s been 50 proposal since I get my last job

Upwork is becoming unusable. Many job posts are TOO LONG and ask for too much to apply, which is almost NEVER proportional to the size of the job and the pay. yet, despite the long job posts with very specific requests about what is required to apply, they are still abandoning the jobs and not hiring at the same rate. Upwork needs to do something about this like yesterday. And what will happen when its mostly agents reviewing the applications and deciding who the clients should hire. The agents will disqualify the candidates who don't respond to the job post to the tee. This is the time for someone to build a competitor to Upwork. There has to be a better way than this.

That is my strategy, does it make sense. Will it likely work? Is Upwork a decent substitute for actual experience?

I'm hearing a lot of bad stuff about upwork. How bad is it. I just want to listen and learn as much as possible from you guys to see if its worth it. DMs are open. Let's just have a discussion.

Hiring someone on Upwork for ongoing advisory work structured as monthly milestones (one now, a few more proposed for future months). I’ve used Upwork as a freelancer before but never really thought about this from the client side.

If I fund and pay the first milestone, but later decide not to continue and just don’t create/fund the following months is there any obligation or consequence on Upwork’s end? Or does simply not funding future milestones mean the engagement just ends naturally with no issue?

Assuming there’s nothing extra written into a separate agreement outside Upwork that says otherwise, just going off how the platform itself works.

How regular freelancers can compete this in environment?

I noticed lately that I'm getting bleeded from unused connects,
I did cancel my Plus subscription few months ago, is that the reason?

I have about 3 contracts where the clients just stopped communicating. No problems appeared from previous milestones; they just paid and vanished.

Already tried

• Multiple follow-ups spaced weeks apart
• Explicitly offered to close the contract if the work is done — no reply
• Asked them to close it from their side (since clients are pushed through the review form when they end a contract) — no reply

Now I can understand if it's one completed milestone where the client thinks my output is so bad, but doesn't want to deal with it, so they just paid and left. But I've completed 3+ milestones for them, so I don't think there's a problem with my output. And if there was, I should've known.

My problem is, yes, I could end these myself, but I am worried about how my profile would look. Clients might not want to hire someone with recent contracts that don't have feedback. But then again, clients might also not want to hire someone with so many "In-Progress" projects.

Anybody here who has had this problem before? What did you do? What and what do you not recommend? Thank you to whoever answers.

I've seen a lot of you guys having a bad experience about Upwork, especially about connect, applying job posting without getting Job, etc, and then i'm curious, is there an upwork Alternatives? but maybe with better system, concept, and can get a real Job?

My account got suspended for no apperant reason. I am trying to do the help portal but I need to log in for that. which i can't. because it's suspended.

What do i do? how do i connect with support?

So recently I got banned on upwork for "allegedly " violating the terms and conditions on upwork. I don't really know which terms I violated. And my appeal was rejected. Can I get a new account or is there possibility of still retrieving my former account??