Upwork is one of the largest global
freelancing platforms where businesses and independent professionals come
together for online work services. It has 12 million registered freelancers and
5 million registered clients.
Each year, more than 3 million jobs
are created through Upwork and they are worth over $1 billion USD in total.
This has no doubt made Upwork the place that every service provider, whether it
is a freelancer looking to earn a part-time income or a company looking to
expand their business, to connect remotely via Upwork.
If you are a new to the industry and
you would like to get some work from Upwork, but you zero experience, no worry,
you can still make it. Every master was once a beginner. So as long as you are
willing to learn, to keep trying and never give up, Upwork can be a great place
for you to earn your first pot of gold.
Here
are 7 tips how you can get work using Upwork even when you have no experience
at all.
1. Get a Good Profile Picture
One of the very first things that
your clients will see from your profile is your picture. When you want to
request work from someone, people will want to know your face and who you are.
So upload and use a more professional picture of yourself. Unsmiling, grainy
and poor quality picture will only show that you are unprofessional and nobody
likes to work with people who are not professional.
Get a high-resolution head shot
picture with a pleasant smile. And please, no naked shoulders, and try to wear
professionally. Never be too shy to show your face when you are out there
looking for jobs.
In the online world, you will
contact your clients through the power of words most of the time. And it has no
exception when it comes to Upwork. Even if you have no experience, you should
mind your language skills because they can win you the contract or worst, fail
you.
Small things such as misspellings,
texting lingo, and poor grammar are red flags to clients, and this is
especially true when you are bidding for professional writing work. You should
always check your spelling and read through what you have typed before you send
out to your client. Use tools such as Grammarly to help you in this.
When you are totally new, you have
no experience, no credibility, and no testimonials, but there is one very
powerful tool you can create for yourself, and that is the sample of your work.
For example, if you want to be a
writer, create a blog and publish some of your own articles there. When you
request for jobs, you can use the articles on your blog as your samples. Better
yet, you can contribute guest posts on other blogs and then use them as your
samples. This will immediately increase your credibility, especially if the
guest blogs are popular.
Well, this can apply to many
services and not only to writing-related works. If you are into logo design,
just design a few and publish them on your websites. You can showcase them to
your clients to get them interested in your work.
This is one of the mistakes that
most beginners will do. They thought that low-paying jobs are not worthy
because they have to spend a lot of time to get the work done, yet, the payment
cannot justify their effort.
Never underestimate the low-paying
jobs. In fact, most big businesses and long-term clients come from low-paying
jobs. No one will award a $10,000 job to someone that they do not know or have
no past experience with. This means that low-paying jobs are your best bet to
connect with clients with a bigger budget. Start small and grow, so never mind
the low-paying jobs, just do them.
It is absolutely fine if nobody
wants to hire you. The beginning is the toughest. And sometimes, you just do
not want to show that you are desperate to get the job. Your desperation will
scare your clients away.
Your clients will want to see you as
in hot demand and successful. People will want to hire someone good and someone
who can deliver a great work, not someone who is desperate.
If you are serious to make some
money from Upwork, you need to take action and submit your proposals. Do not
think that once you have created a nice and great profile, clients will come to
you automatically. It does not work that way. You need to go and put your name
out there to win the contracts.
Winning a contract in Upwork is a
numbers game. The more prospective clients you contact and propose, the more
likely you are going to get the work. Somehow, somewhere and someone will want
what you have to offer. By the way, never forget to improve as you progress.
Learn to create a better proposal and customize it to fit your client’s
requirements.
One of the most important keys to
success in the world of freelancing is to create your own portfolio. For
example, if you want to get jobs on optimizing the search engine for a website,
and if you have the Google search engine optimization certification, people
will want to give you work.
Credibility and a strong portfolio
count. Yes, it may be difficult when you have zero experience, but that does
not mean that you cannot build your portfolio from scratch. When you
successfully completed a job, request a testimonial from your client. Many
freelancers start by picking smaller jobs so that once completed successfully,
they can add a testimonial to their victory list. And you should do the same.
Now that you know what you should do
to get work from Upwork even when you have no experience. The best advice is to
just take action and do it. It is absolutely fine if you fail to win any
contract, but never give up and keep learning until you landed your first job.
And things will just get better from there.
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