The jobs on offer on Upwork vary a lot in pay. Many of them are ridiculous, like $3 per hour or $5 for 1500 words. Then there is the other end, where they are offering to pay like $50 for 300 words or something. At the moment, I'm aiming for about $20 per 500 words, although after Upwork takes their cut, that ends up only being about $15. So, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's okay.

But it does baffle me at what some people expect. They want someone to write 1500 words for $5, and they specify that you must be a Native English speaker with excellent grammar, and that there's lots of long-term work available. For that low price, they're not going to get that. They're going to get someone in India with poor grammar who isn't going to stick around.

So, now I have a couple of clients giving me work, whenever I am looking for other work on Upwork, I try to not go below $20 per 500 words. I'm not going to work 100 hours a week to earn the equivalent of what somebody would earn stacking shelves in a supermarket for 30 hours a week. I would rather just quit writing and go and get a "normal" job than do that.