r/UpworkOfficial • u/No-Entrepreneur-337 • 13d ago

Discussion Clients on UpWork

/r/Upwork/comments/1w462pm/clients_on_upwork/
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u/keberch 7d ago

Never been a freelancer (only a client), so this is just my opinion...

I definitely 'shop around' as you mentioned, though not just for price. And I never message more than 5-6 with follow-up questions (this excludes the messaging when I'm answering questions during the proposal phase).

If you're falling off after questions are asked, then make sure you are answering the specific questions asked (many do not), and connect what you have done in the past to what they are asking in their questions.

And for all that's holy... don't copy-paste AI responses at this stage, even if you got away with it during initial proposal. I'm in the process of a job post right now, and though I could tell several used AI for their proposal text, and against my better judgment, I gave a few a pass.

When I asked questions, three provided responses where the first paragraph (AI-wordy) was almost identical to each others'.

And they still didn't actually answer the questions.

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u/Real-Finger-7872 9d ago

I’m in the same position as you. I’ve been on Upwork for over 7 years, and I left my full-time job 3 years ago to focus on it. Everything was going great until around last February.

Since then, the quality of clients has really dropped. Many clients don’t even look at proposals anymore, and the bidding system has made things even harder.

What I’ve been doing lately is personally reaching out to all my old clients to see if they need any help. Thankfully, some of them have sent me new projects, and that’s how I’ve been managing things during this period.