Are you a freelancer looking for a client’s name on Upwork? Or maybe you’re a Client who noticed freelancers calling you by name in applications? I belonged to the second group, but this article will answer the question for both.
How Freelancers Find out a Client’s Name
Upwork does not show the names of its Clients. You can still often find out, however, by checking out a Client’s recent history. You can find this section by scrolling down from the Job Posting you’re viewing.
In this section, which you should check out anyway to make sure the Client is a good one to work with, you can see feedback of freelancers who worked with the client. In this feedback, freelancers will often mention the name of the Client. Freelancers then use this information in their application to the Client.
Should You Use a Client’s First Name in Applications?
This is highly debated. I personally don’t like it when freelancers do it (although it’s not severe enough to instantly reject applications). If I wanted them to know my name, I would list it in the job description.
Quite a few prolific freelancers disagree with me, however. Take, for example, Evan H Fisher, also known as Freelance MVP on YouTube. In his tips video I am displaying above, he specifically recommends using a Client’s Name. His logic is that it makes your application more personal. It’s hard to dismiss his tip, although I am personally not a fan of it as a Client. It makes sense, the guy has over 2 million in earnings on Upwork and the rest of his content generally gives helpful tips I do agree with.
In other words, your results may vary, depending on the Client you’re applying to. If you want to make your proposal more personal without using the Client’s real name, there are alternatives. Refer to specific elements of the job, job posting or job questions. Use something like “Hi there!” or “Greetings!” instead of “Sir/Madam”, etc. But if you want to use the name, you now can.
How To Prevent Freelancers From Seeing Your Name
Your options are quite limited, here. If there are no freelancer reviews containing your name yet, you could ask each freelancer not to use it at the end of the contract. If it is too late for that, you can try and contact Upwork support to redact it. The odds of them actually complying with this request are historically pretty low, however.
As an alternative to dealing with this, you could consider a client-centric platform like Fiverr (affiliate link) instead. While you do need to search a bit to find your ideal freelancer instead of having them come to you with a job posting, freelancers there are a lot more vetted. Thanks to the feedback left by other Clients, you have a much better idea of what you’re getting into with a certain freelancer than on Upwork. Bigger clients can also consider Fiverr Pro (affiliate link), where Fiverr vets freelancers itself.