---
title: 'I Spent a Month on Upwork. My Conclusions and Advice for Freelancers'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=GXnGZsucKGI'
video_id: 'GXnGZsucKGI'
date: 2026-08-12
duration_sec: 1100
---

# I Spent a Month on Upwork. My Conclusions and Advice for Freelancers

> Source: [I Spent a Month on Upwork. My Conclusions and Advice for Freelancers](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GXnGZsucKGI)

## Summary

The video documents a month-long experiment on Upwork in 2026, focusing on opportunities for Laravel developers. The author shares data on job availability, the cost of bidding with Connects, and the challenges of getting proposals viewed, concluding that the platform's economics are unfavorable for most freelancers.

### Key Points

- **Experiment Setup** [00:01] — The author spent about a month on Upwork, actively and passively, targeting Laravel developers, to assess the platform's viability in 2026.
- **Historical Success** [00:26] — The author was active on Upwork 10 years ago and earned a lot of money, but wanted to see how the platform has changed.
- **Laravel Job Availability** [00:51] — There are about 15 Laravel-specific jobs per day on Upwork, which is surprisingly low compared to the past.
- **Hidden Laravel Jobs** [01:37] — Many Laravel jobs are hidden under PHP or web development categories, where clients don't specify the tech stack.
- **Web Development Job Volume** [02:23] — Web development jobs appear every hour in dozens; one Saturday had 226 jobs, but only 5-10% specify Laravel.
- **Diversification Advice** [03:04] — The author advises Laravel developers to diversify their tech stack, as limiting to Laravel underserves opportunities. This led to a course on Next.js for Laravel developers.
- **Filtering for Quality Jobs** [04:15] — Using filters for expert level and budget (e.g., $30/hour or $5K fixed) reveals a few high-paying jobs per hour, but they are drowned in cheap offers.
- **Fake Job Red Flags** [05:45] — Some jobs have repetitive, template-like descriptions and 0% hiring rate, suggesting they may be fake, possibly to waste competitors' Connects.
- **Proposal Strategy** [07:26] — Pitching to 2-3 jobs per day is better than pitching to everything, as each proposal takes time.
- **Proposal View Rates** [07:40] — Out of 5 proposals, only 1 was viewed by the client, indicating that hiring happens within the first hour or two after posting.
- **Speed is Key** [08:07] — Pitching half a day later or the next day gives almost zero chance. The author stopped a daily newsletter because jobs were taken by the time it was sent.
- **Clients Not Viewing Proposals** [09:08] — Many clients don't view proposals at all, possibly picking from the list based on profile details or existing relationships.
- **Game of Speed** [10:22] — Clients are bombarded with proposals (e.g., 87) and only have time to pick a few from the list, making speed crucial.
- **Upwork Connects System** [10:49] — Bidding for a job costs Connects (e.g., 11 Connects), and you can bid more to be placed at the top of the list, creating an auction.
- **Connects Costs** [11:48] — Free freelancers get 10-30 Connects per month, which is often not enough for even one job bid, forcing upgrades or purchases.
- **Experiment with Freelancer Plus** [12:18] — The author subscribed to Freelancer Plus for $20/month, getting 100 Connects, which would cost $15 to buy separately.
- **Connects Economics** [12:49] — With 100 Connects, you can pitch for about 9 jobs (at 11 Connects each) for $15, but bidding for top placement can cost 200 Connects ($30) per job.
- **Brutal Math** [13:44] — The author was blown away by the math: spending $30 on Connects for one job, plus the required 21 Connects, makes the economics unfavorable.
- **Conclusion on Upwork** [14:11] — The author ended the experiment after 1 month, concluding that Upwork is not recommended for earning real money unless you are top-rated and targeting top clients.
- **Alternative Use for Upwork** [14:44] — Upwork is useful for market research: understanding what's trending and building demos or packages for a portfolio.
- **Other Platforms** [15:15] — Other platforms like People Per Hour and Fiverr are worse, and Toptal is hard to get into. Social media posts and word of mouth are better alternatives.
- **Word of Mouth** [16:44] — The biggest chance for freelance work comes from clients who know you personally, so building a social media presence or blogging is key.
- **Final Verdict** [17:27] — The economy of Upwork in 2026 is brutal; you may spend more time and money on Connects than you earn. The author invites discussion in comments.

### Conclusion

Upwork's current economics are unfavorable for most freelancers, with high Connects costs and low proposal visibility. The author recommends using Upwork for market research and building a portfolio, while relying on word of mouth and personal connections for actual work.

## Transcript

you my experience with freelance work on Upwork. In 2026, I made an experiment. I spent roughly a month on that platform actively and passively aimed at Laravel
developers, but not necessarily. In this a bit longer video, I will show you my experience and I will share the numbers and show the screenshots of jobs I applied for as an experiment. So, basically, is it worth diving into
Upwork in search for freelance opportunities in 2026? Because Upwork was the platform that I was very active on like 10 years ago. So, found my profile with this number, which is pretty impressive, I would say. I earned
a lot of money from there, but that was 10 years ago. So, how does the platform look now for Laravel developers especially? Let's take a look. So, let's start with the obvious question. Are there any jobs, any projects for Laravel
developers on Upwork? And the answer is obviously yes, but let's try to see the pulse how many are there. So, we go to find work and then I have one of the saved searches, Laravel, and let's browse through the results. So, we sort
by most recent and we will roughly calculate how many jobs per day are there for Laravel developers. So, you can see 1 hour ago, 3 hours ago, then another 3 hours ago, then yesterday. And let's calculate how many were there
yesterday. So, 1 2 3 4. So, this is the limit between yesterday and 2 days ago, 15 jobs for Laravel developers per day. Not that many, I would say. This kind of surprised me, to be honest, because it was many more back in the day. But then
I realized that a lot of Laravel jobs are actually hidden under PHP jobs or web development jobs where clients don't really know the tech stack and they would be happy with anything workable. It could be Laravel. So, for example, I
have another saved search by category web, mobile, and software development and then filtered out intermediate and expert level only. And you can see the amount of jobs which says thousands. It's not really a realistic number
because a lot of them are really old and already obsolete. But if we just sort by most recent, you can see seconds ago, seconds ago, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, and so on. So, in general, on Upwork for web development for various
tech stack and mobile development, there are jobs pretty much every hour in dozens. And over one of the weekends, I calculated that one Saturday had 226
jobs in this category in one day. And that was Saturday, the slowest day of the week. But only like 5 to 10% of them specify Laravel as a requirement. But for example, I noticed a lot of jobs about Shopify that don't specify
Laravel, but I know for sure that some people work with Shopify with Laravel. I'm not sure in which part. I'm not Shopify developer, but probably Shopify apps or some back end can be totally built with Laravel. And this difference
in number of jobs for web developers in general versus Laravel developers just proved and intensified my point that I posted recently on Twitter and on LinkedIn. So, this is the message that Laravel developers need to diversify
their tech stack and just try to become a developer or the developer for whatever tech stack is needed. So, by trying to be just Laravel developer or PHP developer, you massively underserve yourself in opportunities. And that's
why I decided this was actually one of the reasons for the idea of the recent course that I published on Laravel Daily, which is Next.js Basics for Laravel developers. So, if you haven't tried Next.js, the React framework, this
is very popular not only on Upwork, but in general. So, I've shot a video introduction, 1 hour quick aimed at Laravel developers. So, we start with Laravel API and then build front end with Next.js. I probably will make more
experiments with different tech stack options. If you want some topics to be covered, then put in the description below your ideas. So, yeah, answering the first question, is there Laravel work on Upwork? Yes, but not too much
for Laravel specifically. But if we get back to the web development list, then we have the opposite problem, too much work. So, how do you filter those and how do you skip the projects with like budget of $10 or something like that? Of
course, there are filters. And if we filter down, for example, just expert level and hourly minimum, for example, $30, and then we can filter by fixed $30, and then we can filter by fixed price as well, for example, only 5K and
above, then yeah, this is what we can work with. You can save that search and then the jobs with hourly like this with budgets four digits. And then, as you can see, there are a few jobs like that per hour. So, this is like 2 hours, 3
per hour. So, this is like 2 hours, 3 hours. So, as probably you would expect from Upwork, there are not that many high-paying jobs on Upwork, but they do exist. I totally see good clients with good budgets. They are just drowning in
the sea of very cheap offers. And don't forget those numbers are before the fees of Upwork, before various taxes, currency conversions, and stuff like that. And also before the expenses like Upwork connects you will spend some
money on and we'll get to that later in this video. But again, if you filter out, there are good jobs. You just need to spend time filtering. And also, you need to filter not just for the pricing or for better clients. I saw this
pattern in some of the jobs on Upwork. So, see those screenshots. Let me zoom that in. So, some of the jobs just repeat the same styled sentences or even
paragraphs. So, if you have a passion or if you have ability something something, we would love to hear from you. And this is the first job by that client. Another example, if you have a passion for design, we would love to hear from you.
Again, first job, 0% hiring rate. And third example, very similar, if you have experienced development, we would love we want to hear from you. Two jobs we want to hear from you. Two jobs posted, but 0% hire rate. So, this is
kind of my theory. You could call it conspiracy theory that maybe some of the jobs on Upwork are fake. So, if you pitch for such a job, you're basically wasting your time. Who and why would post such jobs? I have a few theories.
The first theory is other developers create fake companies and post fake jobs for other developers to spend their Upwork connects so that the competition for other jobs would be lower. Also, it may be Upwork platform themselves. I'm
not sure. I may be making too big claims here. But I wouldn't be too surprised by that. But also, this may have a pretty natural explanation that these texts are just templates, AI-generated templates for clients, and they are just too lazy
to change something in the description. Maybe it's that. But in any case, you need to filter out the clients also by description and by some red flags like 0% hiring rate, which makes the list of jobs to pitch for even smaller. But that
is not necessarily a bad thing. To pitch for one job takes time. So, it's probably better to pick two or three per day to pitch for instead of spending all day pitching to everything. And now let's talk about pitching to jobs. This
is my experience. I tried to submit proposals, five of them, but only one of them was even viewed by client, which was kind of a proof of one of my theories that the hiring process on Upwork happens basically in the first
Upwork happens basically in the first hour or two after the job is posted. So, you basically have a few hours to pitch, then the client is active viewing the proposals, if they are active, and we'll get to that in a minute. But if you
pitch like half a day later or the next day, you probably have almost zero chance. And that's why I stopped one part of the experiment, which was daily newsletter for Upwork jobs on Laravel Daily. So, I was sending this list of
hand-picked jobs from Upwork to help people find better jobs and filter them people find better jobs and filter them out until I realized that until I send that email the next day, probably majority of those jobs are either taken
or in the process of negotiation, or just basically, it's too late. So, for example, let's see one of my submitted proposals. And as you can see, 20 unopened proposals and mine is one of them because all of the open,
shortlisted, and messaged happened in the first hours, basically. But also, many clients are surprisingly not watching, even not viewing the proposals at all. So, quite often I saw this chart. So, a lot of proposals, but only
one of them opened, which doesn't make much sense because the client should be choosing, right? Looking at profiles. But some clients just pick one from the list, one that is maybe on top or more trusted, or maybe they know that
developer, and then your proposal, your pitch land in this, where no one actually sees that proposal. Or similar example, my proposal hasn't been opened yet as 28 others, but one messaged. Not
sure about the reasons, but probably some clients go to the platform already knowing some developers or expecting something. I'm not sure. And only in one case of my proposal, there was a great notification of proposal has has opened
because this client was very active in opening 32 proposals. I didn't win that intention. This was more like an experiment, but this client, I guess, is
more of an exception than the rule on Upwork. But overall, one of my conclusions here that it's a game of speed. You have an hour or two to pitch and then the client is bombarded with like 87 proposals, for example. And
totally majority of the clients do not have that much time to look at each of them. They probably will choose a few from the list. The list will show the hourly rate, your rating, your like main qualification details and just from the
list, they will just pick a few candidates to talk to. But you can actually make yourself more visible to the client, kind of skip the line. And this is where Upwork Connects come into play. So, let's try to pick any work and
I will show you how the pitch works. So, for example, some job, I click apply now. By the way, I zoomed in all that page. In reality, it's much smaller. And for example, you pitch some milestone, you provide the number that you want to
offer, your additional details and then this is what you see at the end. So, by default, bidding for any job costs some Connects. So, this is required for proposal, 11 Connects. I'm not sure how it is calculated. It's different for
every job. But then also, you can bid on top to have your profile in the first place and it shows actually what is the biggest bid number at the moment. So, it's good old principle of auction and who's in the first place and who is the
best bidder and stuff like that. But the thing is that Connects cost money. Depending on your Upwork plan, by default, free freelancers, here it is, found it in their help documentation. So, depending on your status, like
rising talent, top rated, you may earn 30 Connects or you may receive 10 free Connects. And also, there's one-time bonus, 50 Connects after you purchase something. Also, you can earn by doing something else. But basically, it's
double-digits number every month. And if for example, you receive 10 free Connects each month and even one job you saw just a few minutes ago cost 11 Connects to bid, well, you are kind of forced to upgrade your plan or buy
Connects directly. And this is exactly what I did. Again, as an experiment, I subscribed to Freelancer Plus plan, already canceled that for $20 per month. And for that, I got 100 Connects, which would generally cost, as you can see,
$15 to buy. But then also, let's do the math. So, $15, 100 Connects. And if we divide those 11 Connects just to bid for the job without any placing yourself on top, it will give you nine jobs to pitch for for $15. And here I am on the page
of Connects in general and there's a button, buy Connects, and these are the general prices. And the thing is that the formula is the same. So, the more you buy, it doesn't get cheaper, by the way. So, generally, you may expect to
pay a few dollars in Connects just to pitch for a job. But it gets even crazier. So, let's pick a job with 50 proposals already. And if we go apply now, let's see what is the highest bid
for the top place on that list. So, scroll to the bottom and the highest scroll to the bottom and the highest bidder spent 200 Connects, bidder spent 200 Connects, which is $30 for that one job on top of
required 21 Connects. So, this is more expensive. Again, I don't know how that is calculated. So, these are hundreds. Can you imagine? And if we put that together with the older thought that not every client would even view your
proposal for whatever reason, imagine how much money you would spend to get one job on Upwork. So, this is where the math kind of blew me away. I knew about the system of Connects and I knew you could pay to get up front, but I didn't
know how crazy is the math and economics here in 2026 on Upwork. So, this was my kind of ultimate conclusion and that's why I ended my experiment with 1 month,
because I cannot really recommend Upwork as a platform if you want to earn real money, big money, unless you are really like top rated and you go for really top clients, which do exist. But the numbers game in general is really not in your
favor. But what I would recommend Upwork for, and this is how I use it currently, is for ideas, for getting the understanding of what is sexy on the market currently, what types of projects are demanded by clients, what tech stack
is trending, because a lot of my demos on this channel and on Filament channel and even with AI are based on Upwork real projects. So, with that in mind, you could try to build your own like demos or packages for Laravel, put it on
GitHub and then build your portfolio to be able to pitch with that portfolio of realistic projects to better clients inside or outside of Upwork. And then of course, the obvious question is, where outside of Upwork? If it's that bad here
on the system with Connects and everything, so where do I find freelance work then? Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for now. Other platforms like People Per Hour and Fiverr are actually even worse from what I know.
And Upwork is still by far the most popular in terms of amount of jobs. So, other platforms have just smaller supply of work. But you can try those as well. However, majority of them are also race to the bottom on price. Also, there are
other types of platforms like Toptal. I'm not sure how are they doing today, but like 5 years ago, they were really popular, hiring top 3% of talent. So, you can try to apply and they would connect you potentially to best clients
in the market. You see the logos and the titles here. But from what I know from the past, it's very hard to get to those top 3% according to their standards. And of course, another typical way is to try
to apply to social media posts like this one I randomly found, hiring front-end intern. It's not about Laravel, but in general, there are social media posts like, "We're looking for We're hiring. Does anyone know anyone?" and stuff like
that. You need to again add filters to your social media feeds, constantly monitor and apply. But what is important here is again, in your pitch, if you show the portfolio, which may be again based on Upwork jobs, the bigger your
chances. But ultimately, the biggest chance you have to get hired for freelancing positions or contracting or full-time jobs is if the client knows you personally. So, a lot of jobs and freelance opportunities come to the
freelance opportunities come to the market only after the employer asks around like, "Do you know someone? Can you recommend someone? Do you know someone you trust?" something like that. So, if you have some kind of social
media presence already or YouTube channel or something, or you have been blogging or you participated at Laracons or whatever industry events, the good old word of mouth is still the best way to get hired, whether for freelancer or
full-time job opportunities. But yeah, if I go back to the original topic of this video, which is Upwork, the economy of Upwork and how much money can you earn there is pretty brutal in 2026, unfortunately. You may end up spending
more time and more money on Upwork Connects than you would earn from the platform. But maybe you have a different story. Maybe you have a success story on comments below. Share your secrets. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I
misinterpreted something. So, let's discuss in the comments below. And if not Upwork, then where? Do you have any advice or again, secrets? Of course, you will not share secrets, right? Because you will want to keep it for yourself.
But just if you can give any hope for freelancers, let's put it this way. Let's always discuss in the comments below. That's it for this time and see below. That's it for this time and see you guys in other videos.