I used this once when I was laid off. Worked for about 1/2 my salary to start, but was employed in like a day or two. (And still had 4 weeks of severance coming in). Once i had a bunch of 5* reviews I was able to command more than I was previously earning. (I was pretty Junior at the time).
One caveat is that Contracting time is kinda a career blackhole in that if you go back to employment you're both kinda weird because you're used to contracting, and a lot of managers/interviewers don't really know how to see you're experience when you're doing 3 month contracts, sometimes layered, over the span of years. They don't really get it. (Nor realize that contracting is usually really dense experience, so actually more valuable)
It's best to group all the contract work under a self-employed listing on your resume. Highlight the technical work but also the project managements skills used, the client facing tie and the delivery of work on a given timeline.
I did a few years of contracting/freelance and since i re-wrote my resume it looks better, and seems to be valued the same as fte.
Can you be more specific as to what was the nature of the work you were doing? Was it software dev, analytics, etc and can share a rough range of what your initial $ rate was? Also did you ever represent yourself as an agency?
A couple of friends and I have been doing a casual consulting agency for just under a year and I was thinking of ways to expand our client base and I am looking at Upwork as a possibility.
This might work for some people, but it's not really a substitute for salaried work for me, nor would I hope to stick around long enough for my rates to rise to something approaching the low end of the U.S. FTE market.
One caveat is that Contracting time is kinda a career blackhole in that if you go back to employment you're both kinda weird because you're used to contracting, and a lot of managers/interviewers don't really know how to see you're experience when you're doing 3 month contracts, sometimes layered, over the span of years. They don't really get it. (Nor realize that contracting is usually really dense experience, so actually more valuable)