Top 8 Reasons You're Not Getting Jobs on Upwork

Deciding to start freelancing on Upwork is an exciting first step toward becoming an independent professional. That excitement can quickly turn to frustration when you're submitting proposals but have yet to hear back from clients.

Building a career as a freelancer takes time–landing your first few clients is often the biggest hurdle that even the most successful freelancers have been through.  

Freelancing is a business. You have to put work on the back end (your profile and pitches) before you start getting interviews and landing Upwork jobs. Working to establish your reputation takes patience and resilience. Once you break through this initial challenge and get positive client feedback and a Job Success Score, winning jobs becomes easier.

If you're feeling discouraged, start with the basics. These are some of the top reasons why, as a new freelancer, you may not be getting any jobs on Upwork:

Why am I not getting jobs?

Many new freelancers feel discouraged when they don’t immediately start winning clients and contracts. Even experienced freelancers can have slower times when they wish they had more work. One solution is to craft high-quality profiles and proposals that will help you stand out to clients and land interviews. Another is to focus on jobs that closely match the skills and abilities your profile highlights. 

If you're feeling discouraged, start with the basics. Below we discuss many of the top reasons why, as a new freelancer, you may not be winning jobs on Upwork, and what you can do about it.

1. Having an incomplete or low-quality Upwork profile

If clients aren't looking at your proposals and asking to schedule interviews or sending job invites, you may need to work on your Upwork profile. Think of your freelancer profile like your resume and portfolio wrapped into one. It's how Upwork clients evaluate and compare freelancers, deciding whom they want to interview.

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When you find a project you're interested in, you'll need to submit a proposal. If the client is interested, they'll then head to your profile to learn more about your experience and qualifications. You can check on your My Stats page to see your job proposal analytics. If clients are viewing your proposals but not scheduling interviews, then you may need to spend more time on your profile.

Freelancer profiles are how clients figure out who is the best fit for their project. You want to make sure that yours clearly explains what you do best and helps you stand out against other freelancers.

Your title and overview should match the types of jobs you're applying to and include the top skills as keywords. Bring the best samples of your work, even from clients or jobs outside of Upwork, to showcase in your portfolio and impress clients, demonstrating your work quality and style.

Clients can search for freelancers with the skills they need on Upwork and send job invites directly. Upwork scans talent profiles and recommends the best matches first in the results.

You can help grab the client's attention by using the Available Now Badge to let them know you're looking for new projects and can start right away. Decide how many Connects you want to spend each week, and turn the badge off whenever you want.

Dive deeper with these tips:

• Add an engaging title and overview
• Create an intro video
• Pick a professional profile picture
• Make sure your profile is 100% complete
• Choose the right profile categories and skills
• Go beyond 100% complete and add extra information

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2. Failing to showcase relevant skills and experience

Compared to employees and independent contractors, who are often generalists, freelancers are highly specialized. Many freelancers find success by choosing a niche and working to position themselves as experts in their skill or industry.

Upwork clients often turn to freelancers when they need to fill skill gaps on their teams. Instead of hiring someone capable of doing many things well, they can find a freelancer with a specific niche who enjoys what they do. When people are passionate about their work, they tend to have higher quality and overall performance.

Your profile should be specific to your niche and the skills you want to offer clients. As an Upwork freelancer, you can add up to 15 skills to your profile–-make sure that these are up to date and complement each other. Choosing the right skills helps potential clients decide if you're qualified for a job, and helps Upwork match you with the right types of jobs and clients. These are the most in-demand skills on Upwork right now.

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3. Not utilizing a good portfolio

The work samples you showcase in your Upwork portfolio don't have to be from clients you had on the platform, which is useful for new freelancers. Highlight your most valuable skills and then pick portfolio items that demonstrate them best. You can use projects you worked on with past clients before Upwork or even your job as a full-time employee.

Make your portfolio engaging by telling the story of the project, from your involvement to the final result (ideally with analytics, if applicable). Keep your portfolio up to date, adding new and relevant projects as you complete them. Always make sure you have the client's permission first before including any items in your portfolio.

If you don't have many items to add to your portfolio, you can create mock-ups for your dream clients. Just make sure to add in the description that these are not real paying clients. This approach can be a great way to work on your skills while filling out your portfolio.

Clients use freelance portfolios to evaluate work quality and style. It also helps establish trust with freelancers who are new to the platform. Well-curated portfolios with high-quality samples (high-resolution images, no typos) impress clients and give them more confidence in hiring you, especially if you have no experience on Upwork yet.

Your portfolio items should align with the top skills and services you want to offer. By looking at your profile and portfolio, clients should quickly know exactly what you do best. Choose your top 3 to 5 samples for each of the main skills you want to offer.

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4. Submitting generic proposals

Some freelancers, to save time, copy and paste the same generic proposal for each job that they bid on. They think of pitching clients as a numbers game—the more jobs they apply to, the more chances they have to get interviews. Instead, a better strategy is to find jobs that closely align with your skills and spend time writing a great job proposal.

Generic proposals are often red flags for clients—which can lead to fewer interviews. Clients want to see that you put in the time to read their full project description before submitting your bid. They may even add a special phrase or word at the end of the posting and ask you to include that in your job proposal to check that you read it all so they can quickly filter out candidates who don’t pay attention to their needs.

You can use a template as a starting point for formatting and to share your general background, but your Upwork proposal should be tailored to the specific project. Pick out the main skills the project needs and explain your experience with each one.

When drafting your proposals, you can use Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, to give you personalized tips and recommendations to help stand out from the competition.

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Your proposal should be a quick overview, just a couple of paragraphs long. Adding bullet points can help break up text and make the proposal easier to read. The proposal needs to grab the client's interest, so they head to your profile to learn more.

You can learn more about writing proposals from Upwork coaches.

5. Lacking positive reviews

When creating a profile on Upwork, everyone begins at the same starting point. You won't have any reviews or earn a Job Success Score (JSS) until you start completing jobs. Clients look for positive reviews and a high JSS when evaluating freelancers, which can make finding work at first challenging.

If you've worked with other clients before joining Upwork, you can ask them to give you a testimonial. These show up on your Upwork profile and can help build trust and lower the risk with new clients when you have no experience yet on the platform.

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A helpful strategy to get those initial reviews is to bid on smaller projects you know you can complete successfully. Ideally, the first reviews you get are all 5-star with positive feedback. Many new freelancers apply to these smaller jobs and bid lower than their target rate to gain reviews and build up their reputation.

Be on the lookout for projects that closely match your skill set and don't have many proposals. On Talent Marketplace™, you can filter Upwork jobs by the number of proposals to help reduce the competition at first. You can also use these search features to help find jobs in your specific niche.

You could also list quick and lower-priced services on Project Catalog™ to help build feedback. These contracts are often quicker because they're prepackaged and fixed-price services you offer clients. You don't have to submit proposals or do interviews.

On Upwork, building a positive reputation is how you win proposals, attract clients, and succeed as a freelancer. When clients see a high JSS, positive reviews from past clients, and Talent Badges, they can feel confident in a freelancer's work quality and reliability.

At the end of every contract, freelancers and clients have the option to leave public and private reviews, which affect your JSS. Public reviews from clients appear on your profile. You want to try to end every contract by meeting and hopefully exceeding your client's expectations.

If you think the client was happy with your deliverables, you can gently ask them to leave you feedback. Explain why the feedback is important and that you appreciate their time. Avoid being pushy; feedback is optional. Always end contracts on a positive note so clients will want to work with you again in the future.

You can also ask for mid-contract feedback on certain contracts. This is helpful if one of your first couple of projects is longer or ongoing. You don't have to wait until the contract closes to get public feedback.

Even if you do your best, negative feedback can happen. When you only have a few reviews, negative feedback is more impactful. Clients can revise their reviews if you enable feedback changes on the contract. Nicely communicate to the client why you feel the feedback is incorrect and explain the impact of negative feedback on a new freelancer like yourself.

You can also respond to feedback on your profile–give your side of the story without seeming overly defensive. When using Project Catalog, you can remove one Project-Catalog-specific review every month.  

Read more tips on how to land your first freelance job from an Expert-Vetted freelancer.

6. Setting unrealistic rate expectations

As a freelancer, you get to decide how much to charge clients when submitting Upwork proposals, adding your hourly rate to your profile, and adding projects to Project Catalog. Sometimes, you have to work up to your target over time, starting with a low rate to build your reputation. Setting your rate too low, however, can make new clients suspicious of your work quality.

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The Freelance Rate Calculator can help you figure out what you need to make hourly to cover your expenses. Once you have an idea of what you want to make hourly, you can use the Hourly Rate Guide to see the average range for your skill.

At first, you may want to start at the lower end of the range and slowly start to raise your rate as you gain experience and positive feedback. Your rate should be competitive but still fair to you and the clients. Once you start completing more projects successfully and the demand for your services rises, you can negotiate and charge more.

Freelance rates are based on the difficulty and demand for skills and experience--and the experience you have on Upwork matters. Some new freelancers who have experience outside of Upwork may initially set their rates too high in the beginning. Clients are less likely to pay premium rates to freelancers without positive reviews and feedback on their profiles to justify the pricing.

7. Bidding on the wrong projects

When a project gets a lot of proposals, the Upwork algorithm reorganizes them for clients based on whose profile and proposals are the most relevant to the skills and experience needed. Talent who have profiles and proposals that fit the job description are presented first. This helps the clients save time by beginning with the closest matches. Think of it as Upwork SEO (search engine optimization), with the most relevant results first.

As a freelancer, you want to either be one of the first to apply to a project or be one of the best fits to increase the chances of the client seeing it. Think of the skills in the job posting as keywords. The more you have in your profile and proposal, the better your chances are of making it toward the top.

The jobs you send proposals to should fit your niche. Instead of applying to anything you can do, try to be choosier and only send proposals to jobs that fall within your specialty and the skills you have listed on your profile. Clients work with freelance talent for their expertise-–they want to hire specialists. Pick what your niche is and try to become the best you can at it.

If you want to work in more than one niche, you can create specialized profiles for skills that you want to feature. When sending proposals, you can choose which profile to use. A specialized profile has a separate title, overview, and rate, and you can decide which portfolio items and work histories you want to display. Specialized profiles are helpful for making sure you're a close fit for the jobs you apply to so your proposal appears at the top of the list.

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Choosing a niche should never feel like a pigeonhole. You can always expand your services and upskill as you develop your freelance business. The skills should be different pieces of the same puzzle, fitting well with one another. Keep your eye open for trending topics and skills like AI and see how it can work into your current skill set and potentially earn more. Take an online course to learn a new skill; then start gaining experience.

8. Neglecting to empathize with job posters

Successful freelancers know how to immediately make a connection with the client–starting with the job posting. Clients want to read your proposal and think they get it. Your proposal should be a combination of showing that you understand what the client needs and explaining how you can deliver.

Think about why the client posted the project–the problem they're trying to solve. Once you've figured out the client's pain points, you can position yourself as the solution. The client already knows what they want. You don't have to convince them that they need your services–you have to convince them to choose you over other freelancers.

You can use this template as a starting point to help structure your proposals:

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Once you move to the interview phase, communication becomes even more important. You want to come across as confident, positive, and easy to work with. Clients are looking for someone talented who will deliver on the work they promised. Show that you're that person by being responsive and clearly answering any questions they have while maintaining the empathy and understanding from the job posting.

Build a career on Upwork

When you decide to become a freelancer, you're starting your own business. The day you create your account may not be the day you land your first client. You have to work on your profile, portfolio, and pitches so you can position yourself for the right types of jobs and stand out to clients.

In the beginning, progress can feel slow. You may need to take smaller jobs at a reduced low rate to get your first handful of reviews and build your portfolio. As you start to establish yourself and complete more projects for clients, it becomes easier. On Upwork, your hard work is rewarded with positive public feedback, a high JSS, and Talent Badges, which help attract clients. Building a successful freelancing career can all start with landing that first job.

If you're new to Upwork, review these resources to help you get started:

• 17 Tips To Make Your Freelancer Profile Stand Out
• Prepare for your first client meeting
• How To Get Jobs On Upwork: Top 11 Tips