The Upwork Insider

Good Vibes

Snaps and claps for your fellow advocates doing big things! 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼

• 💻 Melissa Hong swapped med school web development, then scaled that passion into OMG Code agency. Her story is so inspiring, we featured it at Upwork’s internal companywide All Hands in Q1.
• 🎶 Madelyn Harris went from recent grad to full-time freelancer thanks to one 18-second TikTok. It landed her the top spot in our UpNext: Fresh Grad, First Client Contest—and a contract with fintech company Keeper. 
• 💰 Courtney Allen’s freelance journey has been spotlighted in major media including Essence, CNBC, and Business Insider. In Fortune, she shows how freelancers are building their own economy.
• ⚙️ Bruce Meek’s career path may seem unconventional—Army service, oil rigs, publishing a local magazine. But now, he’s applying all of it as a successful prompt engineer with a unique edge.

Inside Scoop

Redesigned Transaction Page: Goodbye Confusion, Hello Clarity

‍

You told us that the old transaction page was a frustrating jumble of info and confusing displays.

We heard you.

The new design makes it easier to understand how much you earned and where your money is.

Watch the highlights in this short video.

Now for the fun stuff …

Here are a couple of ways to make the most out of the new transaction page features that you won’t find in the support page.

🔍 Identify the most profitable projects

See how much you’re really making and which clients or types of projects may be worth prioritizing, dropping, or renegotiating rates.

How to do it:

• Filter by the date range, client name and/or a specific contract with the client
• If you want, categorize data by the different transaction types:
  
  • Hourly
  • Fixed-price
  • Refunds 
  • Bonus 
  • Adjustments
• For your filtered transactions, you can see totals for:
  
  • Earnings
  • Fees
  • Taxes
  • Net total (Earnings after subtracting fee and taxes)

📈 Get budget and pricing insights

Identify what types of projects may be scalable, which may be better charging as a flat rate vs. hourly, and which to charge more or less for.

How to do it:

• Set up an integration or manually upload your CSVs monthly into a financial tracking tool like Tiller Money, Goodbudget, or YNAB
  

Use tags or filters to distinguish between:

• One-time clients
• Client size (you may find certain sized businesses are less or more profitable)
• Retainers
• Different niches or services

By tagging transactions by client, project type, or niche, you can:

• See what services bring in the most revenue
• Forecast next month’s income based on current trends
• Set monthly or quarterly income goals (and track your progress in real time)

Bonus: You’ll know where to focus for business growth. For instance, if you want to increase income by $5k per month, you’ll know you need X projects from Y type of client to hit that.

Upwork Named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025  

We made the list—in the HR category!

Why it’s a big deal: Competition is intense. Fast Company reviewed thousands of smart, barrier-busting companies across dozens of sectors—from tech to media. Being named to this list is no small feat. It puts us alongside the world’s most forward-thinking companies and reinforces what we already know: Upwork is not just adapting to change—we’re leading it.

What it means for you: You’re working with a platform that’s building for the future—with the goal to increase your success. That’s why we built Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, right into your account. Think of Uma as your work companion—here to help you:

• Draft proposals  
• Analyze data  
• Write code  
• Brainstorm ideas  
• And do more, faster

Plus, Uma works behind the scenes to help clients discover talent with the right skills—like yours.

More Uma updates are coming, so stay tuned.

What’s your top Uma tip? How do you use Uma to spark creativity, smooth out the workday, and get tedious stuff done? We’d love to hear it.

Stuff To Know

Future Workforce Index

The Upwork Research Institute released its first annual Future Workforce Index. This report focuses on skilled knowledge workers—the professionals using specialized skills to solve complex business problems. Think: consulting, marketing, finance, IT, and the like.

Why focus on skilled workers? Because there’s a shortage, and over one in four are freelancers or consultants. Like you, they’re choosing autonomy, financial flexibility, and more meaningful work over traditional employment.

But here’s the challenge: Skilled freelancers lack access to the traditional organizational structures designed to keep employees informed, trained, and relevant. 

So, can they keep up?

To answer this question, The Upwork Research Institute developed the Future Workforce Index.

The report compares how skilled freelancers and their full-time equivalents are preparing for the future. We looked at how they learn new skills, use AI to boost their work, and stay motivated to keep evolving. 

A few highlights:

• Freelancers tend to fall into one of four work personas: Business Owner, Agency, Managed Services, AI-Enabled Freelancer 
• 54% of freelancers report advanced AI skills (vs. 38% of full-timers)
• Freelancers outperform employees on vital soft skills like adaptability and critical thinking
• 82% of freelancers say they have more work opportunities now than a year ago (vs. 63% of employees)
• But 59% of business leaders still feel uneasy about freelancers working with multiple clients at once

See the full report

Work Week Podcast

Work Week unpacks the big questions about the world of work. Each week(ish), the Upwork Research Institute team breaks down what emerging research is saying about how to make work, work better.

Plus there's a twist: The show sounds like it's hosted by humans, but they're all AI proxies. And they sound incredibly real. Listen now and see for yourself.

Worth Trying?

• 🤝 Trouble hitting goals? Make a pact instead
• 🎨 How to decide if your passion is a hobby or a side hustle
• 🐿️ Boost your brain by getting nutty

Freelance Beats 🎧🎶

• Ease into your mornings
• Deep focus zone

Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this email. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.