A Beginner's Guide for Getting Started on Upwork
Land high-paying gigs, form long-term relationships and make a living by doing what you love as a freelancer on Upwork.
Over two decades ago, Upwork began its business with a mission to create economic opportunities that enable job seekers to connect to clients through an independent global job platform. The platform significantly helped job seekers and clients find their way by linking and accomplishing incredible things together.
Upwork makes work more rewarding. Upwork helps build the business by providing a pool of trusted freelancers while impacting their economic and personal lives.
Likewise, Upwork takes control in providing endless opportunities for job seekers and freelancers. They connect, engage, build projects, build solid connections, and ultimately hit their ambitious financial goals. And eventually, they find economic stability in Upwork.
With Upwork's advanced matching technology, it quickly identifies top talents to match the demand of a particular business and vice versa.
How To Set-up an Upwork Profile
When you want to benefit from the features offered by Upwork, the first thing to do is to create an Upwork account or build your Upwork profile. You have to make the appropriate profile to start either as a freelancer, client, or agency.
1. Go to www.upwork.com, and then you would see this on your screen.
2. Either you will choose to find work or find talent, you will be directed to this window.
3. Carefully follow all the instructions until you have created the account.
3. If you are a freelancer, complete your freelancer profile by supplying all the necessary pieces of information.
a. Build your Skills and Portfolio
b. List your employment history
c. Set the visibility and Experience level
d. Tests taken/take tests
How To Make Your Profile Attractive
1. Be creative in your Job Title - add some personalization and specialization to make your profile highly noticeable—for example, Professional Web Designer or Competent Animator or a rockstar Virtual Assistant.
2. Showcase your skills - you will find a standardized list of skills that will help you quickly identify them. These skills will also make you easily searchable by clients when they need freelancers of your skills. Better use the list to make it a searchable keyword for clients to notice.
3. Always Use the Right Photo - your best photo may not be the right photo for your profile, so always be mindful of the photo you put in your profile.
In a study conducted by Ladders, clients spend 19% of the time looking at your photo when scouting for a job candidate. Your photo helps make sure that people connect to the right person. You can use these tips on selecting the right picture:
- Always use a recent photo
- Use your photo and not of others' face
- Do not use cropped images that have inanimate objects or are part of a group shot
- Focus on your face and not on any other body parts
- Wear appropriate business attire, with proper makeup and jewelry
- Have a pleasant facial expression.
4. Highlight your skills and expertise - To make your profile attractive, one of the many important things to highlight is your skills and expertise. This includes the knowledge you possess, the practice, training, or study that you have had. Make sure that these are the skills that make you stand out the most and are good at.
5. Create an introduction video - An introduction video will help you connect and establish a personal connection to your prospective clients. According to a survey conducted by Wyzowl's State of Video Marketing Survey, 68% of people want to get information about the products or services by watching a video.
You have a greater chance of being noticed when you have an introduction video on your Upwork profile.
Go to:
- Profile Settings
- Click "My Profile"
- Edit my Profile
- Video Introduction
6. Feature your best work - If you already have work experiences or sample works to showcase, please add them to your portfolio. However, leave that part empty if you are a newbie and do not yet have sample works to showcase. Be candid and be honest with your profile.
7. Highlight your Employment History - Your employment history does not necessarily be online work, but it is a rundown of your past jobs; list all of them and describe them clearly but briefly.
Your job experiences may include your part-time jobs,service-learning, class projects, or volunteer work. It may also have your membership tasks, class projects, leadership experience, and internships.
8. Link your profile to your other accounts on socials - Your profile on socials will vouch for your personality. It will establish your credibility and speak a lot about you. It also describes your character. So you must use your social accounts modestly and professionally.
How To Write a Pitch for a Gig
Clients always look into a candid profile. So when you submit a proposal, make sure that it converts into a gig by following these helpful tips:
1. Customize your cover letter - using a template is acceptable, but clients appreciate a customized cover letter. Pitch intently to the job that you proposed, and do not use a generic pitch. The effort you put in making your tailored pitch indicates your serious dedication to your craft.
2. Address your proposal to the point person. "To Whom It May Concern" is becoming a boring salutation.
Often, you can not find the clients' names on the job post, but be resourceful, get their names and use it to address them personally on your proposal. It adds to catch attention to your prospective client, leaving the impression of putting an effort in finding their names.
Sometimes you can find their names on the reviews from previous freelancers, so better check on them.
3. Hook the client by making an attention-grabbing introduction.
Make your first sentence as attractive as possible—first impressions matter. Prospect clients will judge a person's qualification by the image you project in your introduction. It would take only seven seconds to make a first impression. Thus your first few sentences should make sure to grab and hook the attention of the reader.
4. Follow the instructions intently. Make sure that you read the entire job post so you won't miss any special instructions embedded in it. Often, this tests your ability to follow instructions.
5. Always proofread your cover letter, and never send a letter without proofreading it. Carefully check your spelling, grammar, names of persons, position, and everything in it. Aside from using online spelling and grammar checkers, you have to make manual checking as there will be some minimal errors that the tool can not pick.
You can never be reckless in your letter as this will surely make a wrong impression on you.
6. Show your personality but avoid being too personal, and most of all, do not be sentimental. There are some individual pieces of information that may be necessary for some jobs but not for others. Always be critical in putting appropriate information about you. It would help if you were businesslike in presenting yourself in your pitch.
7. Be friendly yet respectful. Clients want to work with partners harmoniously; it does not diminish your personality to be nice even if you are snobby. You should be able to demonstrate respect in your pitch because that demonstrates teamwork. But because you want to work with somebody, you have to learn how to work with a team. Teamwork is critical in achieving a common goal.
8. Be the solution to the client's problem. Remember: clients hire freelancers to be a partner in growing their business. It would be best to tell them what you can do to them and not what you wanted out of them. Let them know what you can offer, how you can help them, or contribute to making their business grow.
The Pros of Using Upwork
1. Huge Skills selection
In Upwork, freelancers can get into many job options because the platform caters to multi-skills. Like, if you are a virtual assistant, developer, financial expert, copywriter, or lawyer, you have a vast opportunity to get a job in Upwork.
You can also get a job in Upwork even if you are a newbie as long as you possess the skill that the client needs. But most importantly, you can choose to identify yourself if your skills belong to the categories of entry-level, intermediate, and experts.
2. Payment Protection
In Upwork, you are secured with the payment arrangement with your client. As long as you follow the Upwork policies, you need not worry about payment scams. Once clients and freelancers agree on the contract, clients will be charged the amount and make an advance payment held by Escrow; thus, the money is safe and secure.
Thus, as a freelancer, there is nothing to worry about the payment because you have the amount ready once you start working with the client. And you will get the amount once you fulfilled your contract or you accomplished a milestone.
Likewise, Upwork also protects the clients. If the freelancer can not deliver as expected, clients have the authority over the deposited amount and take back the money from Escrow.
3. Customer Support
Upwork has fantastic customer support. On their website, you will get answers to almost all of your questions in mind. You can choose any of the services and get a personalized reply to your question. Either you are a freelancer, a client, an enterprise client, or an agency; you can browse from the help categories they provide.
Likewise, you can also contact Upwork's customer support through this platform:
You send them a message, and they will call you back outright 24/7.
The Cons of Using Upwork
1. Very stiff competition
Since Upwork is a global platform, you would compete with at least 20-30 freelancers per job post. And this causes an insurmountable barrier to entry-level freelancers. But if you want to succeed in Upwork, you have to make your way up, starting with the minor contract you could get into.
The competition also develops an unhealthy workplace for skilled freelancers because of the bidding process. Experienced freelancers' bids are expectedly high because of their skills and experiences. Still, some opportunities may slip because of the low offers from the newbies that some clients opt to work with.
2. Account Scamming
Scammers are so prolific that they have become an international criminal enterprise. These scammers use accounts of people from other platforms and use them to scam Upwork clients. But Upwork is doing its best to protect both legitimate clients and freelancers alike.
One of the controls is discouraging communication outside Upwork. To maintain the legitimacy and integrity of the transaction, clients and freelancers should communicate only inside Upwork to avoid illegitimate transactions. However, some do not follow and get away until scammers successfully fulfill their evil intentions.
3. High Service fees
As freelancers, you are charged with a certain percentage based on your lifetime billings from a non-enterprise client. Your lifetime billings include all your earnings from all the contracts you have with a particular client. Service fee rates are:
- 20% - $0 - $500 ;
- 10% - $500.01 - $10,000 ;
- 5% - $10,001 and up
So if you are a newbie and just starting with a new client, you have to endure the 20% charge from your earnings if you do not yet earn $500.01.
To illustrate:
- Newbie writer earns $20 for a particular milestone
- Charged with 20% service fee = $4
- Will get a net earning of $16
Charges do not end with Upwork's service fee because your bank will charge a withdrawal fee per transaction. The amount of $0.99 will be deducted from your supposed net earnings every time you make a withdrawal. The amount may vary according to any payment platform the freelancer uses.
General Thought and Conclusion
Upwork is a platform with a clear intention to help job seekers, clients, and businesses alike. The platform is helpful to many but may not be for others.
Like any other online job platform, the features and policies may not be favorable to everyone, especially for newbies starting their career with Upwork. But like any other startup, there is always a stage wherein you have to sacrifice and motivate yourself to achieve your goal.
Thus, people who make big with Upwork mean that they start from being small once in their career. So regardless of the stages you go through, always know that if you do things well and do things honestly, Upwork will be the best online platform to grow, hit your goal, and make it big. Just be patient and do good.
About the Creator
Anangsha Alammyan
Author, Engineer, & Lover of fantasy fiction. I write about books, feminism & personal development. Find out more at https://authoranangsha.com | IG: anangsha_
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