I had been working on a client's project through UpWork, but due to a health issue, I had to stop working on the project. The client got angry and left bad feedback.
To the present day, I have not been getting any projects recently, and I think that the bad review is the cause.
Would it be better to close the account and open a fresh account? What would be the best way to overcome this issue?
Your situation is not uncommon.
The fact of the matter is, you are both in a contractual situation. You as contractor and the other party as the client. By ceasing to perform your obligations under your contract, you are in breach - regardless of the reasons.
Failing force majeure clauses and the like, you don't have any legal standing in this situation. The client can in fact enforce damages upon you. But considering it's upwork and the contractual sum is not large (I assume), they chose to take their damages in terms of leaving you a bad review.
Best option for you is to contact the client and be transparent about your situation. If they choose to understand and retract their bad review, case solved. If not, you are left with a 'black mark' against your reputation.
Signing up for a new account does release you from their bad feedback - so no bad reputation. But the downside of a 'clean slate' is that you don't have a good reputation either.
I'm assuming that you may not have a strong reputation with a lot of work under your belt. If so, yes, start a new account.
A word of warning though, I'm pretty sure upwork will have a condition in their freelancer agreement that states no individual and/or company is allowed to hold more than one account AND that no individual and/or company is allowed to open more than one account within a certain period.
Easy solution, use your a spouse or a friend.
Good luck!
How many projects have you completed? How is your overall project history? If you've had 20 good projects and 1 bad project, it shouldn't be a big deal. Just keep trying until you nail some new projects and make sure you good job on them. If you've had 2 good projects and 1 bad project, you're off to a bad start and need to consider whether you really have the commitment to being a good freelancer.
I once interviewed a freelancer on Elance who had a half-dozen or so completed projects with good feedback and one project with terrible feedback and the client saying he was totally unresponsive and useless. I asked the freelancer about it and he said he had been experiencing medical problems that interfered with his work at the time and that it wouldn't happen again. He was convincing enough, so we ended up hiring him. He turned out to be unreliable and totally incompetent, and wasted three weeks of our time without accomplishing anything. That was someone who I think didn't have the drive that you need to be a good freelancer - some people get into freelancing because they want it to be a posh job where you do 3 hours of lazy work per day while lying down on the couch, but that's not how it goes in the real world.
