I used to be a top rated developer on upwork even before they renamed upwork from Odesk. I stopped using them since 3 years ago and I would suggest you to keep away from it since the platform has become very predatory over the years.

You need to pay upwork continuously to be able to bid on jobs and you can pay even more to see other people's bids. It has become sort of pay to play scheme.

For example, they advertise and allow you to create a free agency account but you can't apply for jobs until you upgrade to agency plus.

There was also a recent case where upwork permanently suspended a freelancer's account without any recourse where the freelancer had $2000 in their account. I am sure that's not an isolated case knowing what Upwork has become.

I said no-thanks to Upwork the first time I realized that they monitored for computer activity to "prove" you're doing work.

I have not had a good experience with Upwork, as far as looking for work.

My experience was that I got 100% scam and dangerously unhinged contacts. Not one single valid proposal ever came my way.

I have heard great things about Upwork, but always from people who wanted to hire, as opposed to be hired.

My experience has been very short of "drowning in offers," however I am also reluctant to list certain things on my profile such as my current and previous employment, and I'm also reluctant to work for nothing. Any suggestions are welcome.

From my experience they may start drowning in $1/hr offers.

What's the purpose of those? There are countries where this pay is acceptable? Can't really think of a reason to attract attention this way.

They usually want to build up reviews / ratings on their account so that later on when they have a lot of 5 star reviews they can raise the prices.

You do a great job on crap jobs to get a good rating so people will look at your proposal for decent jobs. A friend did that for financial modeling jobs on Upwork after doing a CFI course and was making $50 an hour within two months.

And yes, there are many countries where a $1 an hour job would get a lot of applicants.

The way the parent phrased it, I assumed it's the other way around - $1/hr job offers are being sent out to potential job applicants.

Despite the confusion, though, I think I can see now that there is a place for $1/hr jobs, too, since people are actually looking for these offers.

There was a concerning post on HN about upwork's impersonation problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096656

I don't think I'd ever put my information on their platform, and I'm also considering getting off linkedin for similar concerns.

The spam profiles on UpWork tend to borrow identities from other parts of the internet and not other UpWork profiles. When I reverse image search my applicants’ profile photos, the fake ones are mostly taken from LinkedIn.

Is it possible to get paid in cryptocurrency in Upwork? If not does anybody know of a platform that would allow that? Register using stunt crypto wallet, do the job, get paid in your wallet.

I'd really like to avoid all the bureaucracy of banks, government etc for my side projects.

Ty