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Over the years of working on Upwork as a freelancer and hiring other freelancers, I have accumulated
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some interesting tips and tricks that I used for myself to be successful on Upwork.
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And I want to share these tips with you, so you don't have to waste years of trial and error and trying
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to find out how to make things work on Upwork.
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So, I've put all these tips in different videos and sort of compiled them in different themes.
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But before we get to those tips, let me give you a quick tour of Upwork.
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This is how Upwork works.
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A client posts a job that they want to get done, like a website design and build for a startup.
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They give details. Sometimes a predefined budget and sometimes without a defined budget as an hourly
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rate. The freelancers bid on the job sending proposals with prices.
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Then client responds to proposals and starts a conversation with freelancers that they like.
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Often they might do interviews over the call.
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Finally they make their choice and award the job to one person.
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The contract and billing is all managed through the platform.
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If you are working on an hourly rate, then you are going to track time through their application.
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All time is automatically logged and the client is automatically billed for it. And the client's payment
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method is automatically charged.
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This is great because you don't have to worry about billing, money transfers and all that.
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Upwork is free to use, but it takes commissions from what you make.
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They have different commission rates based on certain brackets.
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This is their current commission structure. But it might change any time. On the first $500
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that you bill a specific client,
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they will take 20%. After that 10% until 10k and then 5%. 20% sounds big, but
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that's just on the first 500$ that you billed to the client.
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For example, let's say you bill a client total of $5000.
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The time frame doesn't matter. Upwork will keep 20% off the first $500 and 10%
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of the remaining $4500.
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So the total of $550 in commissions.
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That's 11% of the total amount.
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This bracketing is pretty good for web designers, because our projects go well over 500 mark.
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And often client relationships are very long term.
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I don't think I've ever had a one time project on Upwork.
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All the jobs turned into long term work relationships.
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For those freelancers who do smaller one time jobs for many clients, maybe like logo designers. Then this
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system sucks. Because they end up paying 20% on most of the money they make.
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Web designers have it better in this case.
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Searching for jobs is pretty straightforward.
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You can search jobs by keywords, skills or some other filters. Searching correctly is going to be important
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to find the right jobs.
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Keywords for you are going to be website, design, web design, Webflow, landing page, web page, responsive
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website and so on.
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Don't forget landing pages.
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Those are in high demand and they are simpler than websites.
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In terms of design and development, landing pages are all the same web pages we've been doing so far.
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It's just a single page instead of an entire website.
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Keywords aren't the only way to search.
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Often they're not the best way, because it returns everything that mentions your keyword anywhere in
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the job posting. Skill search can be a bit more targeted in such cases.
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You can do that from Advanced Search
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Select a skill from the dropdown and search. But one skill at a time, otherwise it's going to look for
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jobs that match all the skills that you have selected.
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These are skills that clients selected when they were creating the job, so it can be a bit more precise
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than just keywords in the description.
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This is how the usual job posting looks like. This one is an hourly rate project,
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it shows right here. Job descriptions on Upwork are most of the time quite bad. Often not a lot of detailed
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information is provided about the project.
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Employers could use some training on how to post proper job descriptions to attract the right crowd.
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To apply for the job,
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you have to submit a proposal.
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This is how proposal submission form looks like.
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You select your rates that you propose for this job.
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The billing type is set by the client itself, so if it's hourly billing, then you can only propose hourly
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rates. For flat rates,
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then you have to only propose flat rate. Cover letter is the message that you write to the client.
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This is where you try to make that pitch and convince them to hire you
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basically. The rest, like your portfolio, your reviews and all that they can check directly on your profile.
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I have an experience of posting job ads on Upwork and that gave me an advantage that other freelancers
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didn't have.
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I knew something they didn't and so you will.
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This is what a client sees after they post a job.
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A list of proposals from freelancers.
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This is most important page where the decision making by the client happens.
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This is where they filter out freelancers that they don't want to work with and choose the ones they
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do.
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I have several great tips on how to be successful on this page and stand out from the crowd. But later
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on that. The client can see your proposed rate here.
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In this case hourly, since that's what I've set as the project billing. They can see your lifetime earnings
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on Upwork. Your job title, some badges, which we will discuss in more detail and a few lines from the cover
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letter.
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When client clicks on one of these, they get to a proposal view. Which is basically the same as the freelancers
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profile.
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Plus the cover letter. Now all other details of your profile and the cover letter will matter.
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Client can check reviews and ratings from the past job, how much you made on those jobs, they can see your
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portfolio.
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These are screenshots you can upload under your portfolio section. They can see your skills.
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Keep these skills genuine and focused on your domain.
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Don't put things like Microsoft Word.
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It doesn't make you look like a better web designer. And they can see your employment history outside
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of Upwork.
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If you add any. If you do have employment history, it's a good idea to add them here.
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Prior experience counts too. And it can help build your credibility.
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Although whatever you put it has to look good.
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Your summer job at KFC isn't going to add anything. And that's it.
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That's general overview of Upwork.