What is Upwork? Jobs, Contract, Proposal, Reviews, Pricing

What Is Upwork all About?

If we consider Upwork company profile, it can be said that it is the world’s largest online workplace where 3.5 million jobs are posted annually, worth $1 billion USD in total. Upwork has almost 10 million registered freelancers and 4.5 million registered clients. Clients can interview, hire and work with freelancers through the Upwork platform. The company has a real-time chat platform. This facility helps the clients to find and hire freelancers in a very short time. There remain no time zones and geographical barriers and clients can access the world’s talents very easily.

Employers or the client don’t have to pay anything. The freelancers also do not have to pay any charge to Upwork from their offered jobs by the clients. But 10 percent of the payment of the independent professional is collected by the company. So it can be said that the freelancers do not have to lose anything other than this nominal charge. Funds are transferred to freelancers after a 6-day period through Upwork’s escrow system. In making the payments PayPal, credit cards or bank accounts can be used. Upwork platform offers a timesheet application.

Its work is to track time and take screenshots while the freelancer is billing so that no unfair billing for jobs billed hourly can happen. Upwork has a time-tracking app for Windows, OSX, and Linux. Upwork also has a mobile app for both Android and IOS. Besides all of these joining Upwork is free and very easy. For all of these excellent facilities given by Upwork, many freelancers and clients prefer this platform.

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Screening Question & Answer

Upwork Find Work/ How to Apply in Upwork

Joining Upwork is a very easy task. A beginner has to create a profile in Upwork. After going through all the guided steps given by Upwork the beginner will get his/her profile 100% complete. A beginner may have to spend 4-5 hours in this process and then has to take a series of tests in the areas of his/her expertise. Adding a profile picture, filling up previous work histories, skills, passing the Odesk/Upwork readiness tests, adding portfolio-all these works are very important to get a profile 100% complete. To find a new job the beginner has to write a cover letter on his own.

Win Jobs on Upwork eBook Download

Just copying and pasting the same cover letter to job openings is very common in Upwork. A real cover letter will do wonders to help a new freelancer to land the first few clients. So copying must be avoided. The cover letter should be precise. If a beginner has, then previous work links (if available) should be added. As a newcomer, a beginner should bid on small projects at a low rate. It does mean that just after bidding a beginner will get the job. He/she may have to wait for getting a job but both hope and patience should be kept.

Upwork Account Suspended

Sometimes accounts become suspended in Odesk/Upwork. There are some causes of this action.

• Most of the time-poor performance works as the main cause of suspension of an account to maintain a high standard of work quality. If any freelancer does not deliver any work or clients find his/her delivered work unacceptable for a long period of time, the freelancer may be called then a poor performer. Poor communication is also considered poor performance.
• Spamming applications, claiming another person’s work as someone’s own work, and the use of false identity, are considered as common policy violations.
• This is another cause of suspending a freelancer’s account. Spamming applications also violation of policies. Unless the user fixes the violation and assures that the violation won’t happen again, his/her account remains restricted. In case of serious violation the account may not be reinstated again. Fraudulent activity is one of the serious violations.
• Fraudulent activities, such as, account collusion, account take overs, coercion are considered as serious acts and to protect the users account and financial transaction become halted.

So the rules and regulations of Upwork should be gone through properly to avoid suspension of the account which may cause financial loss.

All About Upwork Pricing

Upwork payment is done on two ways-hourly basis payment and through a fixed rate. In case of doing hourly work, a freelancer should install Odesk/Upwork team application which works both as a time tracker and also as a reviewer in the worker’s work diary. The worker has to launch the time Team application’s time tracker just at the time of starting to work. According to the rules of Upwork, the client automatically pays all billable hours. And the minimum hourly rate is now $3.00 USD

Fixed-price contracts totally depend on the client’s discretion. In this contract process, a set of payments is agreed upon. The problem with this type of payment process is that the amount of payment and the time of payment both depend on the client and Odesk/Upwork does not give any guarantee in this payment method. So a freelancer should be very careful while working with a client under this payment method.

Upwork Payment Methods

1. Paypal
2. Payoneer Master Card
3. Local Bank Transfer
4. Wire Transfer

Money can be withdrawn in different ways. At least two withdrawal methods for distribution funds should be added so that the second method can be a backup if the first funding procedure has any issues. Before beginning the first contract the withdrawal setup must be done because activation of the withdrawal set requires several days. Paying directly is a violation of regulation in Upwork. The availability of a withdrawal method depends on which country the freelancer belongs to. ACH and Local Funds Transfer are two reliable and recommended methods if these are available in the country of the freelancer. Besides withdrawal through a PayPal account is also an option. All the options of withdrawing money are listed in Setting >> Get Paid >> Payment Methods

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Why do People Choose Upwork Freelancing?

Most of the time people choose a career out of need. But flexibility is the main cause of choosing freelancing as a career as one can easily set his/her own schedule. He/she need not work for a definite time in every day as it is done in full-time salaried jobs. According to statistics, 78 percent of freelancers say that a regular working freelancer earns more than traditional employment within a year or less. So earning more money is an important cause of freelancing.

As most of the freelancing works can be found easily on online platforms, the workers become more and attracted by this profession. Online platforms like Upwork have made freelancing easier than before. People can only create accounts and search for jobs. No one has to search for any job personally, Upwork’s platform works as a very important tool in this regard. The Upwork working system of freelancers is different from the working system of the clients.

Upwork for freelancers

Working in Upwork as a freelancer is a lengthy process. Work starts with setting up an account for free. Then a freelancer has to create a profile, set an hourly rate, and after that beginning to search for jobs that his/her expertise. If he/she finds a job interesting, he/she has to apply for the job. After this, if he/she becomes selected for an interview and eventually gets hired he/she has to launch the Upwork Team Management Application to track the time of his/her work. This offers guaranteed payment. The freelancers are paid around 10 days after the end of each workweek. In the case of fixed-wage, a freelancer is paid after 6 days of Desk’s getting paid.

Upwork for Clients

The work of Upwork Clients is very simple. A client has to create a profile and a job listing which includes an estimated hourly payment and timeline. After this, a client may only wait for offers to come in. In this case, clients do not have to wait for a longer period. Clients can do other work. They can do some searches and can offer the jobs to specific freelancers they select. Then the work is to interview the freelancers, selecting the one who seems perfect and then giving him/her the job. Upwork’s Team Management App works as a time tracker and takes a screenshot every 10 minutes which means the client does not have to worry if the freelancer is working or not. Occasionally check up on the worker’s progress will work.

Alternative Sites of Upwork

Upwork is popular among freelancers because of its excellent services in the vast range of job categories like graphics designing, software development, data entry, article writing, and SEO, and so on. It is one of the largest marketplace sites in the world but it isn’t the only site in this category. There can be found some other sites also which provides the services Upwork does. Some of the best alternatives/competitors/similar sites of Upwork are given below.

• Freelancer: Freelancer is one of the largest freelancing, outsourcing, and crowdsourcing marketplaces in the whole world. By using this site a client can hire talented and efficient freelancers to do work in the fields of software designing, development, data entry, writing, etc. The employers simply have to post their projects and receive competitive bids from freelancers.
• Fiverr: Fiverr comes with tasks and services for freelancers and companies. This portal’s work is in the field of buying and selling Gigs or micro-jobs online.
• Peopleperhour: Peopleperhour is a site similar to Odesk/Upwork. It provides freelancers to businessmen across the world. It costs much lesser than the staffing agencies, hiring in-house management overhead while working with the freelancers even in case of working remotely.
• iFreelance: iFreelance offers opportunities to the clients and the bidders on the basis of three levels. The levels are- basic, silver, and gold. This system is different from other similar sites. It is the premier platform for professionals who wants to search for freelance works independently. This is the site where persons experienced in data entry, writing, and web development can meet the entrepreneurs and their freelancing skills.
• Elance: Elance has 1 million businesses and up to 3 million registered freelancers. Here freelancers like developers, designers, and writers can be found easily.
• Scriptlane: Here programmers, designers, writers, and marketers bid to fulfill their work professionally. This portal is a very easy and probably most reasonably cost portal for programming jobs. Scriplane provides the facility for small businessmen to post their projects and receive quotes from freelancers.
• Guru– Guru helps companies to find freelance workers in commissioned work. It offers a safe and secure place to meet new clients. It has over 3 million freelancers including web, software & IT, writing & translation, management & finance, engineering & architecture, design, art and multimedia, admin support, and so on.

Upwork Review

Many aspects are found from the reviews of the workers of Upwork. By doing legitimate work one can earn money through Upwork. If a worker/employer checks the employer’s/worker’s profile properly and then assigns for a job, Odesk/Upwork will give him/her a positive experience, not only for some days but for long. A problem is that 10% of the payment of the freelancer is kept on this site. In general user review, it is found that users face some legitimate problems. Some employers only look for cheap labor.

There is a chance of freelancers not receiving payment. Some employers only cheat and after getting the work done do not pay the assigned money. Some freelancers seriously undercut a fair wage so that they can get a gig. There is always a problem that remains of your account getting suspended for some abrupt cause. It only happens in fixed-price work. A worker can overcome this problem by taking time to complete his/her profile 100%. Both the employer and employee should screen the opposite. If this happens, then Upwork can be a good option for hiring remote employees or for remote employment.

Upwork Test Importance

The importance of Upwork readiness tests is that it helps to get good assignments. This is most important for beginners who do not have a strong portfolio and do not have much feedback at the site. Feedback score, testimonials from previous clients, a cover letter for the job, work history and work portals, and test scores-all these things are very much important to attract a client. When a client sees a freelancer’s profile, he/she checks these things before taking an interview with the worker. So test scores are more important for new freelancers in Upwork. To make the test scores visible in the profile the freelancer can mention the scores on his/her cover letter. This may create a good effect on the client.

Upwork Customer Support/Help

Odesk/Upwork offers excellent support to its customers. It keeps a safe and secure platform so that the workers can totally depend and work freely. It’s Team Management App gives the workers assurance of payment and also helps the clients to feel assured that the freelancer is doing his/her duty. Upwork provides working guides to new freelancers.

Upwork tests help the freelancer to get jobs in accordance with their expertise and helps the clients in finding the fit freelancers whom they search for their works. After all of these, if any customer faces any problem regarding any issue, he/she can contact the support team of Odesk/Upwork via phone call, live chat, and email. So, the customers don’t have to worry about anything.

Upwork is the largest and most popular freelancing site in the whole world. Though it has some cons, its pros make it the chosen one. The working system, payment method, tests, excellent customer support uphold it above all the freelancing sites and attract both employers and employees.