Just keep in mind that after all the hard work you’ve done over the years, having good reviews etc. if Upwork (or whatever else platform you’re on) terminates your account—and you have no other income/client acquisition stream—you‘re screwed.
Happened to me years ago. After struggling to get clients on Upwork I finally got gigs and good reviews. Put in a lot of hard work and earned some sort of „trusted freelancer“ badge (don’t know what it was called) that helped me to promote my profile.
I was very happy… only to find out a few days later that Upwork suddenly terminated my account for a (supposed) breach of their rules. They didn’t want to tell me the actual reason but said that I have mentioned „PayPal“ in a message to my clients (and accusing me of wanting to move my clients away from Upwork).
Never did I wanted to do that. I don’t know if I ever mentioned PayPal—and if so then only to talk about payment processor integrations on clients websites.
I messaged back and forth for days with them. In the end it wasn’t worth my energy.
Just be careful and get control of your income streams and diversify as much as possible.
Happened to me years ago. After struggling to get clients on Upwork I finally got gigs and good reviews. Put in a lot of hard work and earned some sort of „trusted freelancer“ badge (don’t know what it was called) that helped me to promote my profile.
I was very happy… only to find out a few days later that Upwork suddenly terminated my account for a (supposed) breach of their rules. They didn’t want to tell me the actual reason but said that I have mentioned „PayPal“ in a message to my clients (and accusing me of wanting to move my clients away from Upwork).
Never did I wanted to do that. I don’t know if I ever mentioned PayPal—and if so then only to talk about payment processor integrations on clients websites.
I messaged back and forth for days with them. In the end it wasn’t worth my energy.
Just be careful and get control of your income streams and diversify as much as possible.