Journey to Profiting on Upwork - $1250/month

Job concluded last night. Perfect rating score. I have not yet bid on any more tasks, but this was a great start to win one of my first two tasks. I don't know whether to go for a bigger task (in the $300 range) or to get a few more very low dollar tasks for review purposes.

Still cautious about the account being banned.

I really like the connects system. It seems to help with filtering out crappy proposals.

My strategy (if you can call it that) is common sense: only bid on jobs where nobody is being interviewed, where there's "less than 5" or at most "5 to 10" applications, and where the job was posted within the last 20 minutes.

Statistics (January 1st)

Net Earnings: -$10.00
Spent on Connects: $0.00
Proposals sent: 2
Interviews: 1
Projects won: 1
Connects: 97

Dunga said:

The job is regarding "Web Applications"?

Looking forward to a successful journey.

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No, it was in the "Scripts & Utilities" category.

Massive failure for January 1st. (the above post was technically for December 31st)

Applied for 3, interviewed for 0, and therefore accepted for 0.

Didn't see much selection today. Being very specific about which projects I apply for. All still very low budget until I have a lot more projects complete.

All in all, 1 out of 5 is still not bad.

coldshowers said:

Massive failure for January 1st. (the above post was technically for December 31st)

Applied for 3, interviewed for 0, and therefore accepted for 0.

Didn't see much selection today. Being very specific about which projects I apply for. All still very low budget until I have a lot more projects complete.

All in all, 1 out of 5 is still not bad.

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You don't have to do small projects first before going for bigger ones. You can still bid on the higher-paying projects. If you can imply in your bid that you have massive experience in what you do, and are just new on Upwork but actively doing projects outside Upwork, you'll get clients.

I recently got a $1200 project in a very competitive niche, from a brand new profile that doesn't have any client feedback yet.

Applied for 2 or 3 more yesterday. Had one of the three that I applied for on January 1st contact me, but I don't intend to proceed with that task. Applied for none today. Other priorities.

Fairly confident that I'll be able to achieve a consistent $1250 after a while.

stepdub said:

You don't have to do small projects first before going for bigger ones. You can still bid on the higher-paying projects. If you can imply in your bid that you have massive experience in what you do, and are just new on Upwork but actively doing projects outside Upwork, you'll get clients.

I recently got a $1200 project in a very competitive niche, from a brand new profile that doesn't have any client feedback yet.

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Damn. Okay, nice. Roughly what hourly rate was that at?

coldshowers said:

Applied for 2 or 3 more yesterday. Had one of the three that I applied for on January 1st contact me, but I don't intend to proceed with that task. Applied for none today. Other priorities.

Fairly confident that I'll be able to achieve a consistent $1250 after a while.


Damn. Okay, nice. Roughly what hourly rate was that at?

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Fixed price. 50% down. 50% on delivery.

Good luck with your journey! Upwork is really a gold mine ad no doubt at all. You need to find a way to milk the $$$ easily and it may take some time. BTW, I'm in the same boat as you and building my second income stream through UpWork. I do have a journey thread too ..