Become Top Rated on Upwork: My Experience

After trying to do it for a few months I recently got that Top Rated badge on Upwork and I'd like to share my experience, maybe give a few tips on the subject. Hopefully this will help others avoid the few mistakes I've made.

The minimum requirements to become Top Rated as a freelancer are:

1. A current Job Success Score of 90% or higher
2. First hire on Upwork was more than 90 days ago
3. Maintained Rising Talent status or a Job Success Score of at least 90% for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks - to get a job success score you will need at least 5 completed jobs - takes a little time
4. A 100% complete profile  (this will help you become Rising Talent very early on)
5.  12-month earnings of at least $1,000
6. Up-to-date availability (if unavailable now, set a date estimate)
7. An account in good standing with no recent account holds - this one is pretty easy 
8. Activity on the platform - submit proposals regularly, reply to invites, etc.

Requirements for Agencies are pretty similar, with a few minor differences, see details here.

I'm not yet sure how useful will this be, but here are the official perks:

1. A Top Rated badge on your Upwork freelancer profile (also shows up in search preview)
2. Personalized tips to strengthen your profile
3. 0% fees for all jobs with new clients you bring to Upwork - this one sounds promising
4. Premium customer support, including phone and chat - and access to top rated forum 
5. Exclusive invitations to submit proposals
6. An exclusive Job Digest email to make it easier for you to find attractive opportunities
7. The ability to exercise more control over your Job Success Score - this one is probably the most useful of all, you can remove negative feedback and improve your average JSS
8. The opportunity to chat with Upwork during online office hours exclusively for Top Rated
9. The opportunity to host Top Rated Events in your city - I guess you can organize meetups 

Although the minimum for becoming top rated is about  roughly 4 months, it took me about 6 months, since I got two feed-backs with less then 5 (3.5 and 4.5) stars pretty early on. When you have less jobs (at the time I had less then 10, now I got around 20) negative feedback scores have bigger impact on your average job success score, which makes sense, even though it can be a pain in the rear-end... Another thing about negative feedback is that is something called hidden feedback, so even if a client gives you a public feedback that's not too terrible, they can still give you 1/10 hidden feedback - you don't see this one but it can screw up your job success score.

When you're just starting out, bad feedback can harm your jobs success score more then it would when you have a ton of completed jobs with 5 stars, it's important (and I can't stress this enough) when you're just getting started to only bid and accept jobs when you're sure that you can deliver flawlessly.  Later on, when you complete more jobs with good feedback, you will be able to take more risks, it's just a statistical numbers game, I reckon.  So when I had two feedbacks with less then 5 stars and less then 10 jobs my job success score was 84% and it took me about 10 more jobs with 5 stars to get it to 100%. 

Anywho, there will always be those clients that no matter how good your work is will always find you a flaw, over time you will learn how to recognize and avoid these types of clients. As with other things in life, being methodical and persistent will get you the results you want, as long as you don't wimp out along the way.

Thanks for reading the post.