I Spent $3,000 on Upwork Connects: Is It Pay-to-Win? (RESULTS)

I spent $3,000 on Upwork connects in a single week to find out whether Upwork is pay to win. I've got half a million dollars earned on the Upwork platform, but a lot's changed over the years, and I know that you're watching this thinking, hey, is Upwork only viable now for freelancers that can go and spend thousands in a week? You're gonna get the answer in this video. I sent 57 proposals and every single one of them had 200 connects or more. As a bid. This is a Connex experiment for me to showcase to you, no smoke, no mirrors, just the truth behind what a seasoned freelancer's profile can deliver off of spending $3,000. And I'm excited to share it with you for a multitude of reasons. And it went well in the sense that there's a proper mixed bag inside of here. Okay, so proposal cost was $2,100, just over $2,150. with nearly $900 of profile boost spend that week. So if we call it $3,000 of connects to get the results that you're about to see, I think that's around fair. I have all of the stats laid out in here with the real numbers, but that's a good yardstick for you to have in your mind. Out of that, I had 16 individual conversations on Upwork. This 16 is important because it means that my reply rate was nearly 30%. 11 clients invited me to projects during the week, which is obviously great, and I've got 11 more invitations sitting there now that have actually had a spurt over the last like 3 or 4 days. It's not related to that spend, but I put it in these numbers so I know what to do next. Boosting does not just push you into jobs, you know, it pulls the client to you, and those invitations are critical to adding on your Revenue for a calendar year, not just now. And there's more on that later, and that is the most important part about this video. The offers then. So what offers did I have? Well, I actually got 8 offers in total. I won 5 of them, and 2 of them I turned down. One, the client pulled to rewrite the brief. When you get 8 offers in a week, you get to choose, right? And I didn't like the vibe that was happening, and I did refuse jobs here. I won 2 monthly retainers, and the 2 monthly retainers that I won were $1,500 and $1,600 each. And then I've got an hourly project which I don't normally take on, but this client only worked hourly. I looked through all of his reviews and it was exceptional, and he pays me $1,242 a month. I had an audit and a consultation that were both paid, so I've basically ended up with $3,100 a month contracted Plus around $1,200 a month of hourly income, which sits me at, you know, $1,350, $4,200, $4,000. $4,342. Easy for me to say, apparently. I also generated one-off revenue of $724, which helps chip away at the $3K I spent. Turning 25% of direct revenue inside of that week is welcome when you're investing that sort of money. You have to take your wins as you, as you get them. And one of them looks like they're going to become a long-term client, but he's not in here because he hasn't agreed to proceed yet. I'll hear more tomorrow. Now, with that $724 banked and one of the 5 clients that actually came to me in terms of direct messaging me. It puts us in good stead because we've won from applications, we've won from invitations, and we've also won one-off projects that are— one was a rebuild, one was a paid audit. And that gives us, uh, a real sense of, of, uh, accomplishment because we're winning projects of all sizes in different areas. Let's look at the responses for a moment, okay? Because this is key. 16 invitations off of 57 applications is actually higher than what my average run rate is. My average run rate is around 26% from a reply rate, and I achieved 28.1% even though I was sending more applications, recording Looms. It gets tiring, right? And I was wondering whether I was in a position of, uh, exhaustion, like I was gonna exhaust my intent and ability and was doing it laboriously. Didn't feel like that at all. 10 to 12 applications a day is not a lot. Like to sit down and record a 3-minute, a 2-minute, a 1-minute to 5-minute video depending on the size, but you want to keep 'em short, you know, to do that with the MCP now, which I'll get to in a moment. I didn't apply using the MCP for these. I did them manually, but it'll be the last time I do it. More on that to come. But I can't ask for any more than a 28.1% reply rate. Okay, and I had 9 calls out of the 16 conversations. So I got on 9 calls. That means that out of the entire applications that I made of 57, I won 8.8% of them. That means if I apply for 100 projects, I will win 8— 9, because you can't have 8.8% of a client. So 9, I will win 9 projects. The simple maths to me is if I apply for 100 projects, I will get an output that delivers me 9 clients factually. So with that, it's just about me going after them. I didn't care about quality during this. I normally apply for a lot less. I spread out my wings. And you know what? I was surprised because one of those clients that I applied for, I didn't think was a high-quality lead. So I learned a lesson there. What does all this mean? It cost me $430, just under— let's call it $430. Per one project. The ROI closed in the first month. I got a direct ROI of 1.78. When I set out, my secret goal was that if I achieved a direct return on investment of 1x, I'd be more than happy because my clients are on a retainer. Again, more about that to come in the retentions graph here. Now this is where things get a bit sexy, right? Because the ROI at 12 months, if I retain all of these clients, is nearly 25x. Every pound I spent that week delivers me £25 back— dollars— $25 back. That is an insane return on investment for something that there is no cap on and I can just continue to apply. That factor is the most important factor and why I try and drive it home to you guys consistently, that long-term retention is key on Upwork. If it's a one-off project, I'm not happy with a 1.78 return because I've worked for free. If you take my time out of it, that's a problem. But effectively, I just broke even for that week, and then everything else is profit. And that's a really strong position to be in, right? These are the projects, uh, a 30-minute consultation that paid $250. When it comes down to the expert Google Ads for e-commerce, that's an hourly contract which gives me 6 hours a week, so that's strong. I have the $1,600 for ChatGPT ads media buyer, the Google Ads app campaign management at $1,500 a month, and then this was a one-off rebuild for $474. And that doesn't include any requirement for us to look at the reviews that are inside of here. Let me show you this, because not everything is a price value, right? I got 2 5-star reviews out of this on my profile. This is the best one. This was for the rebuild. You know, happy to work with me again. Professional, thorough, and easy to work with. So I've leveled up my Upwork profile with fresh reviews that showcase to potential new clients that I'm active and that I'm performing. I also have a really big output in terms of visibility, which I'll show you, which is probably the most important thing. Okay, because you can see I'm always visible on a weekly basis. This is why I get invitations and I get them organically. However, Since closing all those jobs in a quick spurt and getting 5-star reviews, these 2 weeks were boosting because I had overflow. But this week, on the 31st of August, right, I had no connects in my account and I still had 180 profile views, plenty of invitations, and I've closed projects since. So the afterburn of winning projects is actually also still there. Which gives a real— so I've spent $3K and I've delivered a 1.78 return on ad spend. But what I've also done is achieved good favor from Upwork, if you like. A guy who's closing projects on Upwork, who's delivering a good job, getting good reviews, is going to be pushed because clients will hire him. And that's ultimately, that's what counts, right? You know, you have to be an active freelancer who's making money on the profile to chuck your hat in the ring. So everything has been positive. In that regard. Now hit the subscribe button because you don't want to miss this. I'm releasing a, uh, a C-suite model for you that uses the MCP in order for you to be able to understand exactly how this works. It's coming out probably tomorrow. I'm going to push an extra video out this week, I think, because I want you to have it. But I pulled this because I needed to understand for this model. It's been a good, uh, beneficial event and trial for me because I wanted to see what my retention was like. And what did I find when I did this? Well, my client survival by day drops off a cliff at 90 days, and then what happens is 25% of my clients go on to stay with me for 2 years. When looking deeper— and you'll have access to this tool— When looking deeper, I found that what it was is the smaller clients which don't get the emphasis and, you know, the weekly call or whatever it is— the clients who don't get that, they don't stay. And it doesn't matter about the results because I haven't had a client that didn't generate results in the last 9 months, 12 months. Because when they do, with my experience, when they do, it tends to be an offer I haven't vetted it properly— pricing, service. You can tell a lot by looking at businesses' reviews and stuff. But the point is to take ownership of these issues, a lot of the time it comes down to communication. It doesn't matter how many weekly updates I send them, if they don't think I'm being proactive and bringing more to the table, they will leave, and they will leave you. And 99% of the time it's your fault, and you have to take it. So this is the substance of that next video that's coming tomorrow. Like, keep your eye out and you'll, and you'll have it. Hit the subscribe button, like I say. But let's understand what this lesson is, because this is a business lesson. I own multiple 7-figure companies, okay? So I know enough about retention, about what businesses actually need to do to stay afloat, and where their, you know, P&L needs to be in order for it to be a saleable asset. Now, when it comes down to this and looking at the actual approach, I think the key thing that I found here was A client signs up on a monthly retainer, and if you're not selling them, you're making a huge mistake for this reason. A client signs up on a monthly retainer, and then what happens? Well, a certain amount of them churn. But looking at my graph here, which tells me that I lose a lot of my clients at 90 days and then the rest of them stay consistently, tells me I need to work on this cliff. Because this cliff here, where it drops from the 60 to 90-day marker and it just tanks, and I go from retaining like 80, 88, 89% of my clients all the way down to retaining 50%. And then after 120 days, that's where the burn stops. That's where clients are with me because the results are scaling. I'm implementing more and they now trust me. But this window here, this is where my problem is as a business, and it has nothing to do with the results. It has everything to do with the service. And this is where you have to look in the mirror. If you're, if you're not brave enough to look in the mirror and see what you're offering and if it's causing issues inside of your business, you won't have a business for very long. This isn't the first time I've done this. My retention rate has peaked and troughed based off of the quality of client that I've been onboarding, all of this. But this is factual from my Upwork client data, and I can't ignore it. I can't afford to lose 50% of my clients because every client that you win is a client that is just going into a leaky bucket. So to emphasize this more, guys, I've lost clients at 32 days, 71, 84, 90, 98, and not one single client has ever left between day 98 and day 415. Half of my clients are gone by day 90, and the ones that pass it, they stay for 487 days on average. Let that sink in because it sunk in with me. Hence what I'm telling you here. Why is this important for you? Well, look at these two graphs. I'm going to make this bigger. One second. Well, look at this graph of two the two lines. Okay, we've got cumulative earnings, so all the way up to approaching eighty k, and then we have the actual months that the client is with me. The green line is if every client stays with me forever. That would mean the work that I've just done in one week, which isn't a mind-blowing number of $3,100— $4,342— that would equate to— so $68,000— here we are— $74,400 in 2 years from now. That's the 25x that we're talking about. Now, if we look at my actual current retention curve, I'm gonna make $31,775 off of those clients on Upwork. That is an exceptional ROI, right? It's, it's, well, it's not exceptional. It's a good ROI when you look at it at the surface. You think, well, you know, you make free, you make $4,300 plus whatever. And you end up with $31,000 off the back of it. This experiment was a huge success even at my current retention curve. However, the best case in here is more than double. Are you going to keep every client? No. Is every client going to stay for 2 years? No, they're not. So the truth is taking my graph here, which isn't acceptable when you're losing clients like this. You shouldn't see a— you should not see a cliff like that. A good business, This is the truth. A good business that retains clients has a graph which just gradually declines over time with natural churn. My churn is absolutely disgusting right now to lose that many at 90 days, and it's because I'm not looking after as well as I do the big ones, the smaller to mid-sized clients, and I need to change it. And I am. The line in the middle of this is where the reality sets in. I should take this 31 K, and I should turn it into 45, 50K, maybe even slightly higher. And that, my friend, is why or how you end up in a situation where you've got a growing scaling business that doesn't have to continue chasing clients. Winning clients is half the job. Keeping is the multiplier. If you, you know, send a proper welcome pack on day one, reviews at day 30 and day 90, a board that watches every client's weekly, which is in the MCP, that video that's coming out tomorrow. If you do all of that, your retention skyrockets. Boosting is turning the tap up. This is what the outcome of this video is. Boosting is turning the tap up. Retention is the hole in the bottom. And the problem with that Is that you can pour faster forever. I could spend $30,000 US next month, and I would tend— if there was enough jobs, which there's a lot more than what I did— if I did that, I could, you know, 10x my income. But you know what's going to happen? Half of them are going to leave after 90 days, and I'm going to be left with like 37.5% after 120. The hole is still there. Think about it like a gym membership, right? The gym membership is important. This is a good analogy. People don't cancel the gym on day 1. What happens is they come in, you know, they come to the gym for 6 weeks, then they stop coming in after 6 weeks and they cancel in month 3, after the, the third month. Your clients are exactly the same as that. And when you look at it like that, They don't leave on the day that they tell you that they're gonna leave. They leave the day that they stop turning up. The Slack messages become quieter. It's weeks earlier. It doesn't happen there and then. The Boardroom MCP video, which is next tomorrow— again, subscribe so you don't miss that because this is the best thing I've ever released— but that spots the person who stopped coming to the gym. It spots them and tells you like exactly what you need to do next. The compound interest effect of this is that, you know, a client continues to— you know, a client kept his interest that you've earned on a consistent basis. Each month they stay costs you zero money. There is no more connects, there is no more boosting, there is nothing that's gonna affect you cost-wise. It's just delivery. And keeping your clients happy is the most valuable cost per acquisition you can get because it sits at zero. They're already your client, they've already paid you, and they already trust you. And right now, me at least, I'm letting them walk away. So my retention issues don't take away from the fact that we've just made $31,000+ in revenue in a week. That's going to pay me for years. That's the business lesson from this. Is Upwork pay-to-win? You decide. But my retention graph is not a slope, it's a cliff right now for smaller projects that I'm taking on. Day 90 is the edge. They all walk off it, or a high percentage do. Your job is not to catch them on the way down, it's to put the fence up around day 45, 60 and stop them ever getting there. I'll take you on that journey. The MCP is the first start. I will continue with this sort of value. This is how you run a business, and it's the unique element that I have. Running 6 different businesses and multiple 7-figure businesses allows me to understand a lot more about this, and I can dig deeper in the way that I articulate this and the way that I share it with you if you enjoy it. Listen, the actual project was a success. I'm happy with the return on investment. It wasn't $15K, $25K a month that it could have been. I've got a 7-figure client on the, on the horizon, which is $6K a month, which is obviously taking longer to close. The thing is, is that these are the facts of what was actually earned, and the afterburn will continue paying me for a while. I've still got people accepting invitations from back then. If you want to learn how to structure your freelance business and your Upwork career into the C-suite and the, the business elements that help you catch these things before you do, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, drop a comment. Guys, thank you for watching. Check out the MCP video that's coming tomorrow.