Is boosting your Upwork proposal a waste of Connect?

“Boosting” our proposal is a new feature Upwork added less than two years ago. When I first saw it, my first impression of it, even before I tried it out, was that it was just an Upwork gimmick to squeeze some extra cash out of freelancers. It’s been their way recently, with policies like now making us pay for profile boosts and a way higher cost for connects.

Then it dawned on me that it was a take-it or leave-it situation. I don’t own Upwork and can only lend my voice in surveys and public posts like this about how I feel about their changes. Regardless, I have two options: to keep using the platform or leave the platform altogether, as many top freelancers are doing now. Bad as Upwork updates may feel, it’s still the best freelance platform out there to get high-paying clients, despite the reported declining rate of quality clients since Upwork seems to have shifted focus from the marketing campaign that attracts new freelance clients to them over the years to save cost and increase profit.

While things like the Upwork Boost feature are launched under the guise of helping freelancers, it’s purely another way of Upwork profiting itself at the expense of freelancers.

Can I get real with you for a second? The feature has come to stay. So, the new question I asked myself was how I could make the best of…