Can You Pay Your Way to More Jobs on Upwork?
A statistical look at Upwork’s new boosted proposals feature
In 2022, Upwork launched boosted proposals, allowing freelancers bidding on projects to get a top spot on the proposals list by paying extra.
This payment is in the form of “Connects” (points used for bidding on jobs). For reference, 10 connects cost around $1.5 dollars, and most projects require between 2 and 8 connects to apply.
But, this new boosted feature means there’s isn’t a fixed amount of connects if you need one of the top positions.
Instead, it’s a battle between the freelancers. And, for better-paying jobs, it’s not uncommon to see freelancers spending 25 to 30 connects to get one of the top slots.
The community seems to be split on this new way of building. Some see it as Upwork acting greedily, forcing freelancers to spend more. Others say that they’re prepared to spend more to get ahead of the competition, particularly for high-paying jobs.
What does the data say?
As someone who uses Upwork regularly, this new boosted proposal feature got me wondering:
Does it matter if you’re in one of the top slots?
For answers, I looked at my own data for 2023 and compared my normal proposals to my boosted ones.
Here’s the complete journey of my proposals for the year, as of April 19, 2023.
Sent Proposals
I sent 157 proposals, including 21 boosted ones. So, 86% of my proposals were organic (didn’t use any extra connects on them).
But, what we want to see is that if those 14% of boosted proposals “performed” better than the organic proposals or not.
A boosted proposal’s performance means whether the boost lead to the proposal being seen by the employer.
For this, let’s look at the views data.
Viewed Proposals
Firstly, 45 views means less than one-third of the employers viewed the proposals I submitted.
This raises the question: did boosting my proposals help with getting employer views? Let’s see:
I sent 21 boosted proposals, leading to 6 views. So, roughly 29% of my boosted proposals were viewed.
In comparison, employers viewed 36 of my 139 organic proposals. This translates to a viewership of around 26%.
So, the Answer, in my case, is that boosting only made a small difference. (I do wish there was a more even match up between the no. of organic and boosted proposals. Also, this is one person’s data — it would be nice to see freelancer data from different work categories.)
If you’re wondering what happened with the 14 interviews and 4 hires, 13 interviews were from organic applications and led to 3 hires and the sole boosted interview also led to a hire. So, statistically, boosted out performed organic in the final, hiring, stage.
To conclude, I think a boosted proposal has more of a positive psychological effect. As for its use, I hate to admit that I’ll still use it, because I need that peace of mind that I did my best. But, I will limit the use to better-paying or long-term jobs, so I don’t spend a fortune on bidding.
