Upwork just not happening??

[Chris Newman]

Your's is an Upwork profile with just 1 or 2 projects completed. The buyers go for profiles with a high number of completed projects (with good ratings), for some reason.
That is why for Fiverr, Upwork, people buy reviews to kickstart their "status" on those platforms.
Many of us in BHW including me, do know that number of completed projects does not reflect on the quality of the seller or provider, but the rest of the world unfortunately think that way.

 

[lepman]

web dev for $4.50? an hour Wooooooo

I didn’t say it was a web dev job lol. I consulted the guy on how to set up his SMTP server. Not a biggy in exchange for a nice Upwork review in my opinion.

 

[MisterF]

Correct and no typos. I was getting pissed and sending out proposals for $3/hr to close any kind of deal. It was my very first job on Upwork and the client gave me a 5-star review lol. Next client paid $100 for 5 mins of work.

I've spent $40k + on Upwork and close to double that before on Odesk.

I steer clear of freelancers who have profiles where things don't make sense, such as why a person offering out at $100 an hour has 10 reviews which are all $5 jobs. That was the reason I asked mate.

We have just been hiring more writers and found a bunch of applicants there who had all done the same $5 writing jobs for the same 'clients' and there was a huge footprint to link all these people together.
Another common thing on there now is people hide earnings as private earnings.

 

[lepman]

Your's is an Upwork profile with just 1 or 2 projects completed. The buyers go for profiles with a high number of completed projects (with good ratings), for some reason.
That is why for Fiverr, Upwork, people buy reviews to kickstart their "status" on those platforms.
Many of us in BHW including me, do know that number of completed projects does not reflect on the quality of the seller or provider, but the rest of the world unfortunately think that way.

I totally agree. I actually thought about buying reviews, but a friend of mine told me that Upwork is not dumb - I'd risk my account being banned. To be honest now I understand it's just a matter of time and patience.

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

Do you have your own website where you offer your services?

You should.

Upwork and Fiverr are fine, but they own you and limit you. You can't tell your client: "Hire me ya cunt"

This phrase always works, I make millions. But you can't say it on Upwork and Fiverr because they'll ban you.

You should freelance on these platforms, but at the same time have your own website and promote it and get clients on/from it up until you reach a point where you don't even have time for Upwork and Fiverr, and then you're your own man.

Well, not entirely your own man, you still may have to worry and deal with payment processors. But if you sell legit and not high-risk stuff, then you're fine.

 

[Alternative_Universe_8]

Just keep sending proposals. It will get you somewhere.

 

[lepman]

I've spent $40k + on Upwork and close to double that before on Odesk.

I steer clear of freelancers who have profiles where things don't make sense, such as why a person offering out at $100 an hour has 10 reviews which are all $5 jobs. That was the reason I asked mate.

We have just been hiring more writers and found a bunch of applicants there who had all done the same $5 writing jobs for the same 'clients' and there was a huge footprint to link all these people together.
Another common thing on there now is people hide earnings as private earnings.

Got it. Thanks for your insight. I also thought about the consequences of working at such cheap rates, but then I looked at other freelancers' profiles. Their first few jobs also show the same story. I already have another client in the pipeline. He already agreed to $90/hr for 10 hours. So I'm hoping that first job earnings won't really affect me moving forward.

 

[lepman]

Do you have your own website where you offer your services?

You should.

Upwork and Fiverr are fine, but they own you and limit you. You can't tell your client: "Hire me ya cunt"

This phrase always works, I make millions. But you can't say it on Upwork and Fiverr because they'll ban you.

You should freelance on these platforms, but at the same time have your own website and promote it and get clients on/from it up until you reach a point where you don't even have time for Upwork and Fiverr, and then you're your own man.

Well, not entirely your own man, you still may have to worry and deal with payment processors. But if you sell legit and not high-risk stuff, then you're fine.

I do have my own website and it used rank high locally, but I neglected it for 2 years. Now, it's ranking for jack lol. Desperate times dude

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

I do have my own website and it used rank high locally, but I neglected it for 2 years. Now, it's ranking for jack lol. Desperate times dude

Bro this is the biggest mistake I see people thinking that SEO is the be all end all (be all end all <- is this correct? English is my third language, not sure)

Anyway you don't need ranking in order to get clients. I mean, sure, you rank high and you can make out like a bandit. Yeah.

But you can always go find your customers on social medias and leave comments on Q&A sites and on blog posts/articles relevant to the services you offer and Youtube videos and all sorts of places. Some may call this spam, but fuck those guys

Anyway my go-to is always hunt them down and spam them or position myself in a place where my target customers could find me (like a BHW BST), never SEO and ranking.

 

[yogib34r]

I've not had much luck with any of these sorts of platform, I am also a web dev so you'd have thought I would do really well. This is my experience:

Freelancer.com, I was earning reasonable money, still not as much as I would have charged off the platform but still it filled some gaps, it took loads of work to win each project. I did loads of work for a client that seemed great, he paid on time, everything was good but then he made a complaint, saying I deleted everything on github (I don't think this is even possible), it went to arbitration, I provided all the evidence, showing nothing had been deleted and even copies of the code I had produced and screenshots of it working, he won! Everything I had earned was returned to him, plus he did a charge back on his card, freelancer.com passed the charge on to me so my freelancer.com account remains in debt and has done for the past 10 years. Lesson learnt freelancer.com doesn't care about sellers.

PeoplePerHour, seemed like a good platform, I mainly used it for buying, I thought I would give it a go at selling on there, so thought I would do some research, I asked a friend to list a job so I could see what the proposals looked like and how much the competition would charge. They seemed really cheap, I was amazed some would do it for so little. He then suggested I bid on the job and he'd give me a good review to get things going, this was a mistake both accounts were banned.

Upwork, I use upwork a lot for hiring writers, so far the quality is hit and miss but I have now found a handful of quality writers that I go to. Again I thought maybe this platform would fill some of my quieter moments, I looked at some of the jobs on there and found nothing even close to what I charge, it seemed to be lots of $50 work so I moved on.

The only other platform I've used was Fiverr, I tried many different services on there as the buyer, found one good writer and everything else was a waste, never even bothered trying to sell on there, I knew it wasn't for me.

I've considered toptal but it seems like a lot of work to get on the platform but it would be quite a flex to be on there, if its really on top 3%. Personally I have found word of mouth to be the most effective method of getting clients, the best bit is the last two new clients have been surprised I don't charge more (time to increase my rates) which is the opposite experience compared with the platforms above.

 

[yogib34r]

be all end all

I think it's "be all and end all", Macbeth?

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

Do you have your own website where you offer your services?

You should.

Upwork and Fiverr are fine, but they own you and limit you. You can't tell your client: "Hire me ya cunt"

This phrase always works, I make millions. But you can't say it on Upwork and Fiverr because they'll ban you.

You should freelance on these platforms, but at the same time have your own website and promote it and get clients on/from it up until you reach a point where you don't even have time for Upwork and Fiverr, and then you're your own man.

Well, not entirely your own man, you still may have to worry and deal with payment processors. But if you sell legit and not high-risk stuff, then you're fine.

By the way, just to make it clear, I do not tell customers "Hire me ya cunt". That's just my bad sense of humor. Don't talk to customers, or anyone, like that

And I don't make millions... well, maybe I do in Zimbabwean dollars or something

Just to be clear haha

 

[MMOrg]

Upwork also takes 20% so I take them off upwork when I can to save 20%

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

Upwork also takes 20% so I take them off upwork when I can to save 20%

That's always preferable. Just don't get caught trying to do that. You gotta be slick with it.

 

[Roger Marquez]

Been working as an SEO Consultant for the past 3+ years mostly exclusively on Upwork. There, I´ve managed to build a small but loyal portfolio of clients and I am currently working part-time for a couple of Digital Marketing agencies.

In my experience, the number of proposals or jobs I´ve applied to in comparison to the number of times I got hired for a particular project is around 10%, and talking to other SEO freelancers also working on Upwork the number seems to be pretty much the same for all of us.

Surely when I started that number was way lower as I was new to the community and didn´t have too much to show for in regards to experience, ratings, feedback from clients, testimonials, etc.

I remember ALSO offering services for $5 p/hour and over-delivering just to get clients to leave a positive review and a couple of testimonials.

Over time, as I gained experience, I started to gradually adjust my hourly rate and started to gain much longer projects.

Now, I have a handful of regular/recurrent clients + I am working part-time for a couple of small marketing agencies. So, I am good for now.

GL!!

 

[DanDD]

Those proposals are rookie numbers for a beginning profile. Don't get discouraged

 

[todordonev]

Hahaha an Upwork client just told me that he wants to move forward. I had sent the proposal two weeks ago and he just got back to me. Thank you guys!

There is your answer.

After optimizing your profile there is nothing much you can do aside from sending tons of proposals.

Here are my search criteria:
-Payment verified
-Has some reviews
-Hourly $20+ or $100+ per project
-If you have a membership, bid mid or high, never more than budget
-gig is not older than 24h
-has less than ~25 proposals

Some tips:
-Never copy-paste proposals
-Don't introduce yourself - it just makes the proposal longer and annoying. You have a profile for that
-Never say that you are an expert in your field, it's just offputting
-Start your proposal with Hey {name} - you can easily find their name in their reviews
-Proposal text length doesn't matter, as long as you only add relevant information
-You can record quick loom videos as proposals. The conversation rate is higher, also you can track views. Sometimes it's an overkill tho
-Respond as quickly as possible

Sending dozens of proposals every day is exhausting, but try not to sound robotic, be more human, speak their language, sometimes you can joke and talk shit sometimes not.

And lastly don't stop sending proposals.
If you are interviewed - don't stop sending proposals.
If you are hired but not full time - don't stop sending proposals.
If you get excited that this is the magic long term client, chances are it's not, so send more proposals.
If you run out of credits, buy more and send more proposals.

You will be a successful freelancer when you are fully booked and well paid, not when some online platform says you have 5 starts and had 200 past clients.

Once you are full to the brim convert to agency, hire freelancers under you etc.

 

[lepman]

There is your answer.

After optimizing your profile there is nothing much you can do aside from sending tons of proposals.

Here are my search criteria:
-Payment verified
-Has some reviews
-Hourly $20+ or $100+ per project
-If you have a membership, bid mid or high, never more than budget
-gig is not older than 24h
-has less than ~25 proposals

Some tips:
-Never copy-paste proposals
-Don't introduce yourself - it just makes the proposal longer and annoying. You have a profile for that
-Never say that you are an expert in your field, it's just offputting
-Start your proposal with Hey {name} - you can easily find their name in their reviews
-Proposal text length doesn't matter, as long as you only add relevant information
-You can record quick loom videos as proposals. The conversation rate is higher, also you can track views. Sometimes it's an overkill tho
-Respond as quickly as possible

Sending dozens of proposals every day is exhausting, but try not to sound robotic, be more human, speak their language, sometimes you can joke and talk shit sometimes not.

And lastly don't stop sending proposals.
If you are interviewed - don't stop sending proposals.
If you are hired but not full time - don't stop sending proposals.
If you get excited that this is the magic long term client, chances are it's not, so send more proposals.
If you run out of credits, buy more and send more proposals.

You will be a successful freelancer when you are fully booked and well paid, not when some online platform says you have 5 starts and had 200 past clients.

Once you are full to the brim convert to agency, hire freelancers under you etc.

Wow!!! Dude you killed it. Gold! This should be pinned somewhere as a method. THANK YOU!

 

[lepman]

Been working as an SEO Consultant for the past 3+ years mostly exclusively on Upwork. There, I´ve managed to build a small but loyal portfolio of clients and I am currently working part-time for a couple of Digital Marketing agencies.

In my experience, the number of proposals or jobs I´ve applied to in comparison to the number of times I got hired for a particular project is around 10%, and talking to other SEO freelancers also working on Upwork the number seems to be pretty much the same for all of us.

Surely when I started that number was way lower as I was new to the community and didn´t have too much to show for in regards to experience, ratings, feedback from clients, testimonials, etc.

I remember ALSO offering services for $5 p/hour and over-delivering just to get clients to leave a positive review and a couple of testimonials.

Over time, as I gained experience, I started to gradually adjust my hourly rate and started to gain much longer projects.

Now, I have a handful of regular/recurrent clients + I am working part-time for a couple of small marketing agencies. So, I am good for now.

GL!!

Thank you! This is highly motivating. I hope this thread is also helping others who focus on Upwork right now.

 

[515hosting]

I used UpWork for awhile to seed my experience and reviews. It was valuable from that experience to build a portfolio, but it's a lot $10 budgets to build sites. The last proposal I sent out through UpWork, I used up all my credits to boost it on a "remove Malware from my WordPress site" with a $5 on a US customer. I set the requested price at $500 and then never used UpWork again.