Journey to Profiting on Upwork - $1250/month

coldshowers

coldshowers

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Joined
Jan 24, 2018
Messages
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I had reservations about Upwork for years, because it requires a real profile picture and due to the bad reputation that these kind of sites have. I decided to go ahead and create an account today.

I'll be taking jobs in the scraping, automation, and web application categories. I have quite a lot of experience with freelancing.

I am setting a goal of $1250 per month, with not a huge amount of effort. I have set a starter rate of $50 per hour, but I intend to drop this to closer to $15 per hour to land my first few short term clients and bring it up to $40 once I'm established. Long term, I would ideally be able to pull it up to $80 or $100 per hour. I have the advantage that I don't need Upwork, but also have a bit of time to invest into building a profile for lower rates.

I am currently waiting for my account to be approved. Best case scenario is to land a project on the first day, within my first batch of free connects. I am optimistic about this happening.

This could be a very short journey, if my account gets denied. Profile is as filled out as I can make it. I have passed the Upwork Readiness Test and have flagged some illegal jobs. I don't know what more I could do to influence approval.

--------------

Statistics (December 29th)

Earnings: $0.00
Spent on Connects: $0.00
Proposals sent: 0
Interviews: 0
Projects won: 0
Connects: 40
 
Last edited:
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It doesn't have to be short.. there was a fellow member here offering Upwork approvals, so make sure you get in touch with him if you can't manage to get it approved
 
good luck, I still haven't got a single client on Upwork, not aggressively sending proposal though
 
Upwork is pretty competitive now. Initial projects are hard to come by. Good luck with your journey.
 
lislaw said:
good luck, I still haven't got a single client on Upwork, not aggressively sending proposal though
Click to expand...

What category are you in? Have you had to pay for more connects?
 
I pick up clients from upwork 1 every week or 2 what I'm struggling with is taking them off upwork and will be focused on that next year. Good luck to your journey!
 
Application denied. Great.

Frustrating when there's threads here proving you can get an account approved literally instantly from a third world country (no disrespect) by faking your skills with a terrible user bio, yet I waited 12 hours to get denied in a first world country with actual experience and a well written bio. I have changed some things and applied again, but not particularly hopeful. I will consider one of the marketplace service threads to get approved if I can't get it done myself.

Took the focus of my profile away from web scraping and to enterprise web applications, since scraping tends to have a low quality reputation. The kind of scraping work that I do is more complicated than the typical Selenium screen-scraping. I've also added web and mobile design as one of my skills, which technically does apply, but I didn't intend to offer them on Upwork. I only want to offer services that I actively enjoy. However this post about how to get approved on Upwork suggests the web and mobile design category, so I went ahead with that.
 
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coldshowers said:
I had reservations about Upwork for years, because it requires a real profile picture and due to the bad reputation that these kind of sites have. I decided to go ahead and create an account today.

I'll be taking jobs in the scraping, automation, and web application categories. I have quite a lot of experience with freelancing.

I am setting a goal of $1250 per month, with not a huge amount of effort. I have set a starter rate of $50 per hour, but I intend to drop this to closer to $15 per hour to land my first few short term clients and bring it up to $40 once I'm established. Long term, I would ideally be able to pull it up to $80 or $100 per hour. I have the advantage that I don't need Upwork, but also have a bit of time to invest into building a profile for lower rates.

I am currently waiting for my account to be approved. Best case scenario is to land a project on the first day, within my first batch of free connects. I am optimistic about this happening.

This could be a very short journey, if my account gets denied. Profile is as filled out as I can make it. I have passed the Upwork Readiness Test and have flagged some illegal jobs. I don't know what more I could do to influence approval.

--------------

Statistics (December 29th)

Earnings: $0.00
Spent on Connects: $0.00
Proposals sent: 0
Interviews: 0
Projects won: 0
Connects: 40
Click to expand...

Interesting journey. This target is easily achievable. All the best bud.
 
stepdub said:
You can pay someone on BHW marketplace for this. It's pretty cheap.
Click to expand...
I will consider that if I get denied again. I'm skeptical, I don't want to pay if all they're going to do is tell me "hey, register yourself under this category and re-apply". If they have insiders in Upwork then I'm happy to pay.
 
coldshowers said:
I will consider that if I get denied again. I'm skeptical, I don't want to pay if all they're going to do is tell me "hey, register yourself under this category and re-apply". If they have insiders in Upwork then I'm happy to pay.
Click to expand...
They will create, and get your account approved and hand it over to you. There's no need to have insider connections in Upwork for this.
 
Denied again after exactly 12 hours, so I'm guessing it was automatic - I may change this to an Upwork & Freelancer.com journey. Changed the profile quite a bit to remove some skills, add others (all truthful), re-applied. I will likely start with Freelancer later today.

The denials are a good thing, in theory. Less competition.

stepdub said:
They will create, and get your account approved and hand it over to you. There's no need to have insider connections in Upwork for this.
Click to expand...

Okay, interesting.
 
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Update on this journey -

1) I applied for two jobs on Freelancer.com while waiting to get an Upwork account. I discussed one of the tasks, but ultimately did not proceed. I don't intend to pursue Freelancer as long as Upwork is an option.

2) Got rejected a few more times on Upwork. Paid for one of the services here to get it approved, account was initially rejected again, but I have a new account which was instantly approved. I am cautious, because it's using all of the same information as before (because the information is true), and it's against the terms to have multiple accounts. I don't want to end up getting banned a month down the line when I've started building up the profile.

I will begin to bid on some tasks later today, most likely. Finally the journey can begin.

Statistics (December 31st)

Earnings: -$25.00
Spent on Connects: $0.00
Proposals sent: 0
Interviews: 0
Projects won: 0
Connects: 90
 
I've applied for two jobs and I've successfully got one of them! A very small task, but that is no problem since the goal right now is to build the profile to eventually hopefully get higher end clients.
 
coldshowers said:
I've applied for two jobs and I've successfully got one of them! A very small task, but that is no problem since the goal right now is to build the profile to eventually hopefully get higher end clients.
Click to expand...

The job is regarding "Web Applications"?

Looking forward to a successful journey.
 
Hello,

I am trying for 3 months with my new account in Upwork.

The account was approved within minutes.

Actually, I had multiple accounts from 2015. But now only 1 account

Believe me, Upwork has changed a lot. I got 3 jobs within October. but from November I didn't get any work in Upwork. I bought memberships for 2 months and I tried all types of techniques, proposals to get jobs. but main problem I think I didn't get JSS that's the reason for this fate. But I need works to get JSS. It is just a vicious cycle.

Now I think need some mates like you to EXCHANGE reviews in Upwork account among us. It will be a mutual relationship for us where both of us will be benefited. I tried this method in 2019 and get a result with 90%++ JSS within a month. Even I am able to provide reviews on fiverr.

Just let me know if you are interested to help ourselves.
 
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