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

Hello guys, in this video I will show 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 two 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 text tag 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 on which part. I'm not a 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 text tag and just try to become a developer or that developer for whatever text tag 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 Nex.js. JS basics for Laravel developers. So if you haven't tried Nex.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 Nex.js. I probably will make more experiments with different text 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 priced as well for example only 5k and above then yeah this is what we can work with. You can save that search. And then there are 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 hours. So as probably you would expect from Upwork. There are not that many highpaying 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 experience developing, we would love, we want to hear from you. Two jobs posted but 0% higher 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 pay 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 two 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 a client, which was kind of a proof of one of my theories that the hiring process on 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 handpicked jobs from Upwork to help 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 been opened because this client was very active in opening 32 proposals. I didn't win that project and this wasn't even my 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 is 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 is 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 doubledigits 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 cancelled 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 bidder spent $200 connects which is $30 for that one job on top of required 21 connect. 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 one 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 text tech 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 raised to the bottom on price. Also, there are other types of platforms like Toptile. I'm not sure how are they doing today, but like 5 years ago, they were really popular hiring top 3% of talents. 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 is not about Laravel but in general there are social media post 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 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 Upwork. Let's discuss that in the comments below. Share your secrets. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I misinterpret 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 you guys in other videos.