I just started on Upwork and I already got 2 clients. It does't pay very well, specially because I live in Copenhagen, but I know that it's a slow process and I am building my portfolio.
Some good advice here. Nicely done. It did take me time to figure out on my own, but it is exactly the long-term gigs that make it worthwhile. When you are not looking 4 hours every day and working those 4 instead...HUGE difference. That extra 10% when you go over the first hurdle is glorious. When you pitch past the $10,000 and go to 5%...you don't even notice a fee is being taken because you have steady work. Another oversight is the protection. I had a gig where I went out of my way to please a client by easily doing 4 times the work voluntarily to help him out. He had paid for the first half and refused to pay the second. I put in for a dispute and was told how much it would cost. I dropped the dispute. Upwork paid me in full. I just saw it show up in my account and I called tech support. They covered the bad debt and I didn't waste my effort. In the beginning, I was getting more and more desperate to get work and lowered my prices and got smaller jobs for less money and then clients who were looking for a deal and to cheat me out of my time rather than be professional. I was about to quit. Instead, with nothing to lose, I raised my prices 5X, and suddenly I started getting offers from reputable companies for better pay and long term work. I was Chevas Regal selling my whiskey at Boones Farm prices. This was a much more sensible presentation than I have seen elsewhere.
curious enough to subscribe. You are exactly in the target market I am working with. CONTACT: thebookdoc at aps8 dot com I want to triangulate promotion.
As a all around freelancer I wasn’t a fan of Upwork, because I work within people’s budgets and my prices aren’t always the same for every client. The way that they handle the payment side of it as well as forcing you to have a set price, I also found the whole hourly thing confusing, so personally Upwork wasn’t for me. If you have a set price and your prices don’t go all over the place like mine do then nice. I have found quick jobs with already set prices from clients are easy! Really enjoyed that part of it.
Thanks Latasha for sharing this, for some reason my experience with Upwork has been less than ideal as compared to other freelancing platforms. It felt like wayyyy too much effort to put together proposals for low paying gigs, but maybe I'm missing something and there's a better strategy. Would love to learn more.
One thing I’ve been a little stressed over with Upwork is how it makes it difficult to outsource work. You need to have an agency profile set up, otherwise you’re technically breaking TOS and it’s overall just weird to log time when you’re giving the work to somebody else
oh and also (just finished watching the video now) while I do get inbound leads from IG and other sources, I get them from Upwork too - goes back again to having a good & keyword-rich profile 😉
This video is super helpful! Thanks :) I want to go freelance but problem for me is knowing the perfect time to begin. Registering as a freelancer in Spain can be very expensive so hard to know when you have enough potential to register for it!
Hey another thing, could you make a video about how is the market for social media manager at the moment? is it saturated? and how can we stand out from the crowd? I checked Fiverr and there are thousands of social media managers all of a sudden.. that worries me a bit
The last time I used upwork was about 8 or 9 years ago when it was Elance. I hired several people to do my website and other graphic design work and one by one, almost all of them ghosted me. It was a terrible time when I was trying to become an author for the first time. Fast forward to now, I did go to the site to see if I could offer my services there but was turned off by the fee policy. It seems like if you are doing one off jobs and you will always be paying them a lot of commission.
Oh wow, I've found amazing candidates on Upwork! Definitely takes some vetting to find the right people, but that's a bummer you had that experience. Yes, I can see how one-off projects could be costly, that's a good point.
Hey Latasha, I've been following your videos for a bit, just wanted to say thanks for helping newbie freelancers with your amazing pointers. Also I checked your social media management toolbox and wanted to buy it but sadly cant do. If I was in US that may not have seemed much but I'm in India and still getting started with my freelance, and also my current status "Unemployed" so I simply cannot afford it at this point. I have saved the link and will def buy it in the near future. Cheers Hope you have a great weekend and once again thanks for all you do. God bless
You got a 20 dollars per blog post? Well, I got my first client on Upwork and they're paying me 10 per blog post and I have to spend 4-5 hours for one post as it is related to books on a specific niche. And I got this client in July of 2022. So, consider yourself lucky, Latasha.
haha I love Upwork but I can beat your "ridiculous" $20 blog post gig - I think I used to do them for a client for $6 each 😅 but then again I'm in Portugal and was still in college at the time
Annalise, can you share your profile? You may be surprised at things you can do to be more 'relevant'. That was a really terrible word. If you can do good work, have a direction and play your cards, you will start to see results. The beginning is not so easy.
@@richardlynch8009 Sorry to barge in. If I may ask - are you a pro seller on Upwork. I started a few months back and so far I have only one client who seems to have ghosted on me after paying for the first few blogs. In the process of writing bid proposals to clients for 4 months, I have also exhausted my connects. So, right now, I cannot place bid proposals as well because of having zero connects in my cart.
Funny this video came up today. Yesterday, 5/6 of my Fiverr gigs got taken down for review and it essentially means my business on Fiverr is at a pause. It was a surprise and made me panic and i'm worried I lost potential business as I also reached out to buyer's requests on Fiverr yesterday too. I love Fiverr, and I'm slowly growing, but this was disappointing. Just logged into my Upwork account which i set up logn ago but never used.
