By Tamara Levit in Upwork — May 14, 2026

Upwork ICP Isn’t “Some 30–40-Year-Old SaaS Founder”

List of points for your icp to collect

Yo! Today’s a super interesting day for me:

I started a practicum at Ukrainian TopRatedClub. The first training video dropped at 7 AM already (maybe people want to study while brushing their teeth?)
Today my first test mini-group (not individual consulting as usual) for Upwork mentoring starts. 6 people! It’s a slightly nerve-wracking experience for me because I really love showing results. Fun fact: I named the group Zamioculcasies 🌿. Today we’re starting. The “lesson” plan: clearly go through all the updates from the last 2 months and what to do with them for growth, then review all 6 profiles for problems and give homework.

I had just rewatched my own metrics video from the practicum and realized I never wrote an article about ICP on Upwork. And most teams still calculate ICP as “an entrepreneur aged 30–40 building a SaaS, from Europe or the US.”

But that’s not how Upwork works. So how DOES it work?

For this, let’s list the information we can extract at the very first step.

Starting from the left:

stars other freelancers gave them. Solid dude or nah?
country (maybe there are some you just don’t work with)
hire rate (this is where you guys keep posting your fake screenshots)
how much they’ve already spent on the platform (honestly, even more important is whether you’re willing to apply to newbies)
the average hourly rate this client has already paid (personally I dislike this metric because almost nobody pays attention to WHAT exactly they paid that rate for. Like okay, they paid a lawyer $250/hour once and now they’re automatically a great client? But if they paid a VA $10/hour, suddenly they’re not?)
industry/niche (some clients specify it) — Aviation or wellness brands, for example

Now let’s go lower.

If there’s work history, then boom — a million more things to analyze:

who they hire (countries, rates)
what stars they give freelancers. For me, 4 stars is a red flag. What is this cheap behavior? I once had a client who gave 4.9 because, quote: “only God deserves a perfect 5”
from the texts: who are they, what are they about, maybe they actually ARE that same 30–40-year-old entrepreneur?)
who they currently hired (jobs in progress)
name, obviously