@creamy-dawn-73235 So I've used upwork to get clients and now I work for Upwork too as a data scientist and have seen enough inside, imagine it as an iceberg, where 80-90% (millions of $) are being spent on just the High value talent all the time from Enterprises and big companies, and the remaining 10-20% (small $) jobs is what you see on the public platform --- the best approach is to move up the value chain, get Enterprises as clients eventually, get invite-only jobs, tap the hidden economy and use unconventional approaches to get them etc But to do this, you have to eat some frogs and do the small jobs first and only then can you move up +100 on @loud-glass-33663’s idea of becoming the client Sorry @worried-librarian-12856 , but you are not fully right, I've seen multiple Agencies and multiple 100K$+ jobs in the backend (Atleast over months, years), I work for those teams, you don't see it because it's invite-only and it's not public jobs but big jobs are definitely happening up there I also shared a series of posts about the gig economy and my best approaches on linkedin recently - 3 part series here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pravin310_freelancing-gigeconomy-activity-6597390630534643712-Y2jX

Thanks for the information @swift-pilot-25722 Your upwork profile is worth noting. I have faced so many rejections so far.. But i felt like teacher correcting me 'improve my boy' haha.. I'm honestly enjoying and it forces me to make some changes. I realized that if I'm accepted at current condition, I would hardly receive any offers, so trying to be unique. Not in a hurry but hope upwork accept me when the time comes.

@swift-pilot-25722 Agree with your points. Looks like I was not able to phrase my point correctly. There are definitely high paying clients on the platform. When I said there are few business clients who has $100k+ projects, I was pointing at non-tech business clients for which traditional agencies in UK, USA work with. For example, a football foundation looking for a vendor for their new website and Oxford University giving a website tender for their intranet etc. Independent contractors on Upwork are earning higher rates than agencies on the platform. It is easy to find contractors earning $30-70 per hour and some even earn $100 per hour from India. But agency accounts on Upwork rarely reach these numbers. They are mostly earning in the $10-$30 range. So, there are good high paying clients on the platform. It is relatively easy for independent contractors to get these clients than agencies. And development projects are generally long term. One has to find only few good clients for long term partnership.

@worried-librarian-12856 Good point on why ICs probably make better hourly rate than agencies. It makes sense to me with what I have seen on Upwork

@worried-librarian-12856 makes sense, yeah got the point now