Announcing New Perks and Requirements for our Top Rated Community

It’s been just over one year since we introduced the Top Rated program on Upwork to highlight and reward the highest performing talent. We’re excited to announce improvements based on your feedback.

You’ve told us that you want more work and more opportunities to grow your freelancing businesses and we’ve designed these updates to help you make that happen.

Over the last year, we’ve seen the Top Rated program help drive invitations and contracts to the best freelancers and agencies. Although it’s already helping the community find more work, we are improving the perks to make it even more beneficial.

Through consistent excellent delivery for their clients, Top Rated freelancers and agencies have earned:

• An exclusive Job Digest email to make it easier for you to find attractive opportunities. If you’re a Top Rated member, check your email settings to make sure you receive it.
• Exclusive Top Rated Office Hours, including webinars, small group discussions, and one-on-one sessions with Upwork team members. The details, dates, and times are posted on the Top Rated forum.
• The ability to exercise more control over your Job Success Score. In rare cases, you can request to remove one job from your profile and Job Success score.
• The opportunity to host Top Rated Events in your city. We’re piloting this in June, and hope to expand to community members everywhere later this year to give you the opportunity to meet other great freelancers in your area.

To recognize new exclusive members of Top Rated agencies, we extended the Rising Talent badge to those freelancers who have at least 60% of their profile completed. This applies to new agency members or members who haven’t yet completed enough projects to have their agency’s score reflected.

New Requirements to Achieve Top Rated Status

Many members of the Top Rated community have expressed concern with inconsistencies they’ve noticed in the performance of other professionals in the program. We’ve also heard clients share the same concerns. With this in mind, we’ve added an additional requirement to ensure that Top Rated talent consistently meets the highest standards of professionalism and work quality for their clients, making the badge even more prestigious.

In addition to the original requirements, freelancers and agencies must now maintain a Job Success score of 90%+ (or Rising Talent status) for 13 of the last 16 weeks. Freelancers and agencies who have maintained high scores over time are far more likely to deliver great quality work for their clients on an ongoing basis.

You can track your progress toward the Top Rated program on your My Stats page. Existing Top Rated freelancers and agencies will have 90 days to meet the new requirement standard.

We aim to make the Top Rated community even stronger so its members can grow their freelancing businesses through Upwork, and clients can continue to expect outstanding work when they see the Top Rated badge.

We hope you enjoy these new perks and we look forward to even more of your input as we continuously grow the program. Share your thoughts and feedback with us in the community forums. Until then, happy anniversary!

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