It’s been over a year since I wrote my article: “How to start earning $10k a month” . There I discussed how Upwork works, as well as issues related to freelancer finances. Since then, a lot of things have changed, and I get questions from you all the time. Therefore, I decided to do an update in the topic. I am not going to discuss the basics here. If you don’t know how to start, read my old post, where I discuss the basics: “How to become a freelancer“.
What has changed in how Upwork works?
First of all, for people who take Upwork seriously, it became necessary to have a paid plan. Until a while ago it was possible to work without paying, but now it’s not the case. The “Basic” plan still exists, but its usability is virtually none, because it gives us only 10 “connects” per month, which is enough rally to make one offer. Even worse, in case of inactivity, our profile disappears from the search results. However, for the “Plus” plan we have to pay 14.99 USD (plus tax) every month. Here we already have 80 connects, all the time visible profile, the ability to hide earnings, etc. It was undoubtedly a substantial change. Its main advantage and undoubted goal was to reduce spam offers. As you know, there were a lot of people who made offers for any posted job and for pennies. This seems to have been significantly improved.
What’s Upwork Project Catalog
The second major change how Upwork works that came quite recently was the introduction of what is called the “Project catalog”. What’s that? In general, it is a ready-made offer containing a certain range of services, as well as a fixed price. Nothing is negotiated or discussed here. The customer simply buys the finished project. Does it work? It’s hard to say… No one asked me about it yet, as well as I have not heard, because one of my friends sold something in this way. All in all, this is a brand-new product so you may have to wait and give it a chance. For example, I created the offer “Get secured Office 365 environment”. If you want, you can buy from me 
Top Rated and Top Rated Plus
Most of you are/were already Top Rated, as knows the details. In short, you need to have JSS above 90%, plus earnings for the last year above $1000. In return, we were given the opportunity to partially control JSS and a smaller commission on “Featured Jobs”. But now they’ve added something called Top Rated Plus, and I know that some people already have it . What do we get in return? In addition to what has Top Rated, the main difference is the ability to withdraw funds from our account faster. The main requirement is earnings of $10,000 per year. In both cases, we get an icon on our profile indicating that you belong to each of the programs. From what I read, for some customers this status is important to hire a freelancer.
How Upwork works to get paid?
Recently the most talked about how Upwork works in the context of withdrawals of earned money. Most of the discussions concerned changes in this area. Personally, for a very long time I preferred the path Upwork -> Payoneer -> Revolut ->Bank. Well, it’s not necessarily that at the time. For starters, I’ll introduce methods that don’t make sense when it comes to withdrawing earned money from Upwork:
Direct to Local Bank – apart from the commission, the rate at which Upwork converts into dollars is completely unprofitable for us
PayPal – the rate and commissions they impose are completely meaningless for me.
Wire Transfer (USD) – $30 per transfer? Are you kidding me?
What makes sense then?
In fact, there are two options that I come into play. Or send money to Payoneer – cost 2$ or transfer to an account in the United States (free). Personally, For some time I definitely prefer the latter method and strongly recommend it.
At the beginning, one very important note…
Use a Card! One of the biggest mistakes is sending money via some withdrawals/deposits or transfers. My dear ones, remember that all such operations should be done with cards. Otherwise, everyone will pay you a commission. Most card operations cost you nothing!
Payoneer
This will be a description of a very complicated relationship. For a very long time Payoneer was a very important tool for me. It worked without a problem and quickly. And even the $2 commission charged by Upwork was not a drama, because the account did not serve me to exchange dollars, only for USD transfers further. Everything was roaring when Brexit came to us. At this point, Payoneer asked me to re-verify my account. And everything went quickly and smoothly until the address verification took place. What happened here… Lord… And that it wasn’t me. From what I know many people have had this problem. Not to lie. I did this 15 times until just before the final date, after another verification rejection, made a complaint and wrote on their public Twitter account. It seems to me that then they assigned to my verification some more committed man and eventually succeeded. Well, but disgust remained. Now Payoneer works for me and I use it for some customers. Because it gives us, for example, sending a payment request to a customer with whom you work directly. And here’s the note at the end!
If you have a customer with whom you work directly and he is from the United States or Canada, then at the moment Revolut falls off!!! Customers from these countries are typing on some waiting lists and none of this will be. The payment request is still PayPal, but due to the amount of its commission I completely do not recommend it.
TransferWise aka Wise
When I fought with Payoneer someone threw somewhere that is a better option, namely:
Upwork -> Wise -> Revolut -> Bank
And I have to say that this is a sensational combination. To begin with, such a small note. Until a few weeks ago it was TransferWise, which was renamed to Wise. Why? I honestly do not know, but the scope of services itself remains unchanged. Why Wise? First of all, you get a bank account in the United States! This is not a prosthetic or sub-account but a normal bank account. This is very useful, because everyone can make a transfer to your account using the accepted payment standard in the USA.
If you get by Upwork, there are no fees. And if you plug their card under Revolut, you also have zero cost. As for me a wonderful thing. Whether to use their exchange or forward your money to Revolut is up to you. In general, these are not cosmic differences.
And finally, Revolut
As you know I’m a huge fan of Revolut. I recommend it anytime, anywhere. However, there are a few things to keep in mind here as well.
The capabilities of the basic account are now extremely limited now. Revolut pushes the transition to a paid Premium plan quite strongly and if you use it a lot, you don’t have a choice. For example, they introduced a limit on free currency exchange per month in the basic plan.
However, if you travel a lot, I think it’s worth it. Honestly, I cannot imagine foreign trips without it.
Another important thing is the fact that at the end of March Revolut loses Polish IBAN numbers and this is a very significant change! Instead, they will be Lithuanian. And thus, if you want to make a transfer then there is a chance that you will have to pay, because it will be a transfer abroad.
Finally, remember that Revolut can block your account if you sign up for a credit card. This is contrary to their rules. And one more point. Some bank cards in Poland are charged a commission! For sure, if you have a dollar card in mBank, when you try to fund USD Revolut will charge you some sick commission. I tried to do this because the course was more favourable, but after the commission was charged, the whole operation lost its meaning. I don’t know about other cards but pay attention to messages and fees when trying to exchange. Sometimes you can be surprised.
And that’s it how Upwork works and how to get paid by Upwork. If you have any question, please let me know.
PS. Link here are affiliate links. How get paid by Upwork.
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