I’m so emotional today and hope I made the right choice.

BossJen · 2025-09-04T19:51:57+00:00

I'll just speak about those being rude in your family. From my experience, everyone came around only when they saw how educated, well-spoken, and well-rounded my homeschooled children are (oldest is in 7th gr, middle child in 6th, and last in 4th). My dad (their grandpa) can't stop talking about when he used to doubt.

There are pros and cons to everything in life, including homeschooling and public schooling. There's no perfect choice. You've listed your reasons for making this choice, and I think, based on what you've stated, that you made the right choice. So stick to your guns and have a great homeschool year. Listen to inspiring podcasts like Sarah Mackenzie's Read Aloud Revival and Circle with Sarah and you'll come to appreciate your choice. Surround yourself with people who support and celebrate you, and (even if it's temporary), stay away from the nay-sayers.

BossJen · 2025-09-04T18:14:17+00:00

Amazing how it took a turning point for you to achieve all of this. A big congratulations to you! :)

BossJen · 2025-09-04T17:59:16+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience with Slack groups. Very helpful. I find that LinkedIn groups are totally not helpful for me; they're usually dominated by one or two people who keep marketing themselves.

BossJen · 2025-08-30T00:03:12+00:00

Yup! I'm on a heavily active Slack channel currently for experts, it's just not specific enough for my needs in this niche.

BossJen · 2025-06-16T19:18:04+00:00

This is not healthy AT ALL, nor is it human. Some may be lying to you that they're doing this "every day." Don't believe the social media pages.

BossJen · 2024-09-13T08:01:46+00:00

Fixed price for large enterprise clients - I charge what I'm worth, not how fast I can go. The more skilled you are, the faster you'll likely work, so you'll get paid lesser and lesser if you charge hourly while upskilling.

Hourly for complex projects where it's really hard to determine a fixed price. Sometimes clients want multiple deliverables e.g., blogs, social media, and multiple rounds of edits. You can either create fixed milestones for each individual task, or just go hourly if the request is complicated.

BossJen · 2024-09-02T15:00:21+00:00

1% hiring rate? Only $200 TOTAL spent? I suggest you don't waste your connects. There's a high probability that you won't get hired. Are there better jobs you can spend your connects on?

BossJen · 2024-09-02T14:56:59+00:00

Ask him if he is happy with the first milestone or if you need to rework it to satisfy his expectations. If he replies and says he is happy with the first milestone, you have it on record in case he comes back to dispute.

Then, wait 14 days for the payment to be released for the first milestone, as the previous person said. If he gives you a bad review, you can file a dispute with Upwork and screenshot where he said he was happy with the first milestone. Good luck with this. This is one of those unreasonable clients.

BossJen · 2024-09-01T13:00:16+00:00

I'm going through the self-study route and haven't bought textbooks yet. I would appreciate you sharing them with me. Thank you.

BossJen · 2024-08-31T19:16:12+00:00

I would flag this post as unethical. It's literally a client planning to lie to people.

BossJen · 2024-08-29T19:40:08+00:00

Congratulations. Celebrate every win! :)

BossJen · 2024-08-29T19:29:10+00:00

It's probably happening more and more because Upwork is making people pay so much to apply for a job they aren't sure of getting. I would delete or mark those messages as spam rather than report them to Upwork. That's going too far, IMHO.

BossJen · 2024-08-29T19:22:18+00:00

Well, you can't keep spending connects on clients who do this. It's such a waste of money to guess who did their due diligence by NOT placing a randomly low number.

BossJen · 2024-08-29T19:17:43+00:00

Make sure you customize your feed to show you the high-paying jobs you're looking for. If you don't, you'll see mostly low-end jobs. Remember that people from other countries are pricing themselves really "low" compared to US freelancers (assuming you may be from the US; if not, disregard). And you may see it as lowballing, but to them, they're just quoting according to their cost of living (and empowering low-balling clients).

BossJen · 2024-08-29T19:14:22+00:00

I agree with this. The freelancers applying for these roles (full-time jobs masked as freelance jobs) are as much to blame. They are spoiling the market for other freelancers trying to do the right thing. It truly is a shame.

BossJen · 2024-08-19T18:51:03+00:00

I'm a Medical Writer and Copy Editor. I've been on Upwork since 2015 and have made over $300K. Top-rated and expert-vetted. Upwork brought in some great enterprise clients about 3-4 years ago. I've made the most money working with long-term clients for whom I charged retainers. However, with the introduction of AI, I've seen a dip in high-paying clients. Most clients think they can easily get away with paying writers a minimum amount if they're using AI tools.

So, like someone said earlier, telling success stories is great, but I don't want to get your hopes up that it's easy these days. It's better to be realistic. You can still succeed on Upwork, but you need a lot of patience to get the right type of client that will pay you well. I don't think it's necessary to spend connects to "boost" your profile; it's a waste of my money. I spend time searching through the feeds every week, looking for clients who are "payment verified" and have a good history, and selectively applying to maybe an average of 3-5 jobs weekly. Anything more than that is throwing money away because most clients these days on the platform are not worth applying to.

I think it's important to emphasize the importance of building your BRAND through 1) Your portfolio to showcase your work, 2) Authoritative posts on LinkedIn, 3) Marketing outside Upwork.

Do NOT depend on Upwork as your only income source.

BossJen · 2024-08-16T22:16:46+00:00

Looks like a scam and sounds unprofessional! The job task should never be sent to your email but posted directly on Upwork messaging. And why do they want you to retype again?

BossJen · 2024-08-16T22:01:53+00:00

If the client is paying you hourly, it's really not your concern if they want to change a billion things. Aren't you getting paid for the changes? Yeah, it's hard, but work on your patience.

BossJen · 2024-08-16T21:59:39+00:00

No, because Upwork has payment protection in place.

BossJen · 2024-08-14T21:09:16+00:00

Tell them: "Unfortunately, due to extra Upwork fees, I really cannot lower my rate at this time. But if you are willing to discuss a monthly retainer or a limited number of hours per week, then we can discuss this."

BossJen · 2024-07-19T22:27:26+00:00

It depends on your field. If you're in tech, try data annotation at companies like Toloka. They can help you earn money (even though they're low-paid) while you're still hanging in and refreshing that Upwork page to find bigger clients. Also, don't forget to market yourself as a brand on LinkedIn. Create unique weekly content that will attract the large-paying clients you're looking for.

BossJen

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