Sorry to hear about your experience with upwork. Sounds like you might have still had PHP in your profile from years ago and when you said you don't do PHP development in the video chat that was enough to trigger a suspension.
Honestly you're probably better off you ended your upwork journey after only a couple gigs.
I did a few projects on elance years ago but it was always a hassle and tough to find good projects/clients.
It sounds like you are providing good value/quality work to clients. Look to your network to find Go projects instead. Become more active in the community. Keep blogging.
Connect with other Go developers, ask around if anyone knows anyone needing a Go developer. Lots of times developers don't have time to handle all the projects/clients they run in to and will hand them off to someone else they respect in the community.
You're going to find better projects/clients and higher paying side work that way than using upwork. And not have to deal with their hassle, fees and issues like this.
This might be a little bit of a gray area since it violates their ToS but since your account is suspended anyway if you have the emails of the two clients you worked with you could contact them and contract with them on new projects directly. (Don't mention here that you are doing this in case your usernames are the same on HN/upwork)
Especially the last one where you completed the gig, he paid you a higher amount than agreed on and then upwork refunded your fee for work completed. He should be open to moving forward contracting directly.
Oh, common on, every time freelancing topics comes up on HN there are at least few comments: "just do networking, it's so easy, and gigs just starts falling from the sky". No, this advice doesn't work well outside of tech hubs or good existing network (from university etc.) In some places developers are few and far between, especially if you are into more specialized, niche areas. Of course, you can try participate in online communities, but it's hard (i.e. good luck getting your first patch into Linux kernel mainline) and time consuming, especially if English is not your first language. Typical Upwork and similar services user is someone from rural Bangladesh, not well-connected MIT graduate working in sexy startup in Silicon Valley.
Honestly you're probably better off you ended your upwork journey after only a couple gigs.
I did a few projects on elance years ago but it was always a hassle and tough to find good projects/clients.
It sounds like you are providing good value/quality work to clients. Look to your network to find Go projects instead. Become more active in the community. Keep blogging.
Connect with other Go developers, ask around if anyone knows anyone needing a Go developer. Lots of times developers don't have time to handle all the projects/clients they run in to and will hand them off to someone else they respect in the community.
You're going to find better projects/clients and higher paying side work that way than using upwork. And not have to deal with their hassle, fees and issues like this.
This might be a little bit of a gray area since it violates their ToS but since your account is suspended anyway if you have the emails of the two clients you worked with you could contact them and contract with them on new projects directly. (Don't mention here that you are doing this in case your usernames are the same on HN/upwork)
Especially the last one where you completed the gig, he paid you a higher amount than agreed on and then upwork refunded your fee for work completed. He should be open to moving forward contracting directly.
Good luck finding side work.