Requesting free work in order to be considered for a job without hiring a freelancer is a violation of Upwork Policy. A freelancer CAN provide a sample as part of their marketing of themselves on their own accord when applying to a job. In these cases, CE will most likely send the freelancer a message just to remind them they are under no obligation to do so.
Free Work/Samples/Mock Ups should never be requested by a client or offered by a freelancer.
Allowed per CE:
- Samples unrelated to the requested job or samples of work which have already completed previously, similar to a portfolio
- If a client wants to gauge the skill level of a freelancer through samples related to their specific project, they must set up a Fixed Price contract (even for nominal amounts)
Not Allowed per CE:
- CE does not allow samples of work related to the requested job wherein the sample may be used as part of the project or for job completion
If agent receives a report or comes across such job posts, they should escalate to Content_Engagement_Tier_1_TS425 (if it's a ticket) or email mq-internal-escalations@upwork.com (if there's no ticket) for the CE team to review and action.
Occasionally, Clients post fixed-price assignment but the real job requirement is hourly and the fixed price offer ends up to be lower than the minimum hourly rate supported on Upwork of $3 per hour when we carefully review the job.
Example: A client posted a job rated as fixed for $100. This initially may seem fine. However, reviewing the Job post reveals that the requirement is hourly and that the client is requiring the freelancers to work eight hours per day for one month. Note that the actual hourly rate is not mentioned but one can compute and make a judgment based on the requirements presented in the job post.
At eight hours per day (let us assume five working days in a week), the hourly rate is very low and is not even within the supported $3/hour. Please see below computation:
- Fixed-Rate: $100
- Job Description Requirement:
- 8 hours per day X 5 days in a week X 4.3 weeks in a month = 172 hours of work required by the job.
- Hourly Rate: $100 / 172 hours = $0.58/hour which is very low compared to our supported hourly rate.
This violation will now be placed as a subcategory of the Misclassified Content job policy violation. It will be termed as Misclassified Content (Fixed IPO Low Hourly Payout).
Clients may not necessarily realize that their fixed price rates are within our hourly price rate requirement upon posting jobs. The job description should be carefully reviewed to prevent jobs that are considered as ‘low-ball’ payments that are lower than the minimum supported rate of $3/hour.
OBO Notes: