The Ultimate Upwork Guide for A Beginner

Getting Started on Upwork as a Beginner

Hi guys,

We are here again. How was your weekend? Mine was amazing.

Last week, we talked about ‘understanding the sales funnel as a business owner, and I am happy many people reached out to say they got enormous value. If you miss it, you can read it here. 

Today’s newsletter is the ultimate guide to Upwork as a beginner. I am happy to write this as it provides direction to newbie freelancers who want to explore Upwork. 

If you are not a fan of reading epistles, this may not be for you, BUT for those who dream of making money in DOLLARS, it gets better from here. You should read it!

Don’t forget to share with your friends so they can start the journey of earning in dollars with you. It is good to walk together.

Introduction to Upwork

Many people have heard about Upwork over the last few years but don’t understand it. I heard about Upwork in 2018 when I was still a fresh freelancer on Fiverr.

Then, Upwork was a myth as only a few people had an approved account making money in dollars. Because of this gap, some people started charging to approve Upwork accounts, becoming a booming industry.

The Upwork approval template was decentralized as time passed, and many people could now approve accounts. But are they making sales?

In the last two years, there has been a significant increase in freelancers who have tried or want to try their luck on the professional freelancing platform.

This is because Upwork is more professional than any other conventional freelance marketplace and is tailored toward building a sustainable freelance business for yourself. 

 We have gotten the introduction to Upwork out of the way, now is the time to talk about what Upwork is.

What is Upwork?

Upwork is a freelance marketplace where people with skills like you merge with businesses or hire managers who need such skills to build their businesses.

In simple words, Upwork is like a market where different wares are displayed. Those who need these wares go to this market to shop and, in doing that, pay a certain percentage to shop there.

Those who sell goods in this market pay a specific rate to Upwork for using their platform to sell too. If you look at it well, it is a win-win for everyone.

How does Upwork work?

Upwork is simple to use for both the sellers and the buyer. As a seller, after signing up for an account and getting it approved, the next thing is to create your profile and start bidding for jobs.

Check these steps before Upwork can start working for you as a freelancer.

Approving your Upwork Account

One of the biggest challenges people face on Upwork is getting their Upwork account approved. I have been there before, and It was not easy at first. However, I got the hang of it with time, and the rest is history.

To approve an Upwork account, ensure you have your details readily available. 

 Steps to approve your Upwork account:

• Sign up on Upwork with your correct email

• Enter your skills as Machine Learning, Robotics Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, UI/UX, Blockchain development, or any other modern skill that is not common

• Fill your education

• Upload a professional picture of yourself.

What Next After the Upwork Approval?

I know it is a herculean task to approve your account on Upwork, and while most people get it quickly, some have to pay a fortune to get it approved and underway.

Anyhow you did yours; you are just starting your journey. It is still a long way before success.

I don’t mean to discourage it, but I love saying things how it’s supposed to.

It makes me remember one of the girlfriends I had then who asked me if I had ever dreamt of marrying two wives when I got married, I sincerely told her my mind thinking everyone wanted the truth, but I was mistaken.

Do you know why I was mistaken? Because that truth caused our breakup.

So back to our business, I enjoy telling the truth, and I hope you won’t be like that my girlfriend.

Yes, you are just starting your Upwork journey after the approval.

The next thing to do:

1.      Put your account in order: 

Some things were tweaked before you approved your Upwork account. It might be your location, image, skills, or education. It is time to change it to how it is supposed to be.

As for the skills, if you don’t want to go through the stress of deleting and adding the relevant ones to you, you can start bidding for jobs by searching for the kind of jobs you would love to do and then saving them for future reference.

Fill in all your personal profile until it gets to 100 percent.

2.      Set up personalized profiles

After setting your main profiles, you should set up customized profiles for different skills. You can have up to 2 personalized profiles for yourself.

Personalized profiles improve your chance of getting hired as it narrows down the best jobs in a niche.

For example, you can use two different profiles if you are a writer. One might be for social media content, another for website copy, editing, proofreading, or resume writing.

Whenever you want to bid for the job, you can select the best profile that meets the job criteria.

3.      Master the art of sending proposals

As a budding freelancer on Upwork, one of the best ways to get your first job is by sending convincing proposals. If you are good at writing suitable ads, this is where you will need it.

Ideally, you need to master the art of selling before you can send winning proposals. Simple as ABC! No matter how good you are, you won't get sales if your proposal doesn’t convert.

Proposal writing is an art. You have to introduce yourself, your expertise, and what the buyer stand to gain from hiring you.

Ideally, it is 30 percent of selling yourself and what you can do, while the remaining 70 percent is for what the buyers will enjoy from patronizing you.

You need to be at your witty best. Don’t go and be writing:

My name is Ibrahim Kazeem, a writer, and I have ten years of experience in writing. (what do you write)

I will help you do what you want to do and deliver well. (What do they want to do?)

I have done this before and am convinced I will do well. (Where is the link or sample of your previous work?

If you are an avid follower of what I have been doing since, you will know that this proposal is not convincing enough for you not to talk of the highly demanding foreign buyers that need your service.

A normal proposal goes thus:

Hello (First Name),

I understand the need to get the right freelancer for your job, especially as it pertains to building converting and effective marketing funnels through social media. (Hook)

Getting the right leads and keeping your audience informed takes a lot of time and creativity, and sometimes, one may find it difficult to tend to other equally important aspects of the business. I emphasize with you. (empathy)

So as a content writer and social media manager who has written tons of content calendars and copies for all the marketing steps and helped businesses get leads and increase engagement and sales, I am available to help you out. (sell yourself)

When are you available to talk so we can discuss more on some content strategies that may be a fit for your business? ( bait+CTA) 

Best,

Ibrahim Kazeem. 

Here is a quick sample of what a winning proposal should look like, and I can assure you that If you bid well, you will get jobs.

Note: don’t copy this proposal word for word; that is plagiarism. You only need to edit and tailor it toward what your client wants and then paraphrase it originally. And besides, this is simply guesswork and not addressed fully to any job. 

Once again, after your profile, your proposals will determine whether you will have jobs or not; take it seriously. Be creative and practice proposal sending daily.

Understanding Connects

Connects are used to bid for jobs on Upwork, and it is a relatively new policy for freelancers on the platform.

Before, Upwork didn’t charge for connects, but things have changed a bit in the last two years. If you want to be bidding for jobs consistently, you need to buy connects.

If you finish the free connects, Upwork will give you as a new seller on their platform; you need to buy connects to continue bidding for jobs, and each connects bundle costs $0.15. 

This is one of the sacrifices you must make for your account before it picks up.

How to communicate with your buyers as a new seller

I know it is not easy to start a new venture, especially one as complicated as working online to make money.

However, it is not something difficult as people make it to be. You only need to do the right things and learn how to close your sales. This starts with knowing how to communicate well with your intending buyers.

You need to learn the psychology of people and play with their emotions. As a seller, what will a buyer be interested in? Definitely, the benefits he will get from patronizing you.

Here are the things to take serious and master:

1.      Greet personally: 

When you want to bid for a job or reply to a job invitation, it is advisable to address the person by his name. It will bring out the intuitiveness in him. He would be thinking; do I know this person from Adam?

This is an excellent way to keep him waiting for long looking for answers he might never get except by buying from you. Cool, isn’t it?

I don’t know for you, but anytime a random person I don’t know hits me up for something by calling my name, I am always attentive because it shows the person knows me from somewhere, and I would want to treat them right.

Between Hello and Hello Kazeem, which one do you think I will reply faster and get nicer with? Lol, the second one because he may even give me a discount for probably knowing my name. Buyers are selfish, and you should let them feel that way, just that you are the person playing with their psychological state to improve your chances of selling. 

Now, how do you know your client’s name?

I know you don’t know one another before from Adam, but there is a way to get their first name. Be attentive when going through their profile; someone will address them with their name when leaving a review on their profile.

It works 90 percent of the time. 

For example, there was a time last year I had a client from Saudi Arabia. I checked his profile and saw his name. I greeted him with Salam Alaykum brother (name), and he was as happy as surprised. What do you think will happen afterward? I got the job, of course, and we even talked about Ramadan because it was during Ramadan.

Learn how to foster a good interaction with your client.

2.      Don’t go overboard with your compliments.

I know this is an online business, but you need to know it is strictly professional most time. Your client is not your dear, sweetheart, love, or anything. They might be coming from something terrible and don’t want to be reminded of anything. You don’t need it at all! Go home, meet your wife or girlfriend, and stop emotionally torturing your client.

In 2018, I had a client on Fiverr I helped proofread and edit her ebook on female menstruation and the pains attached to it.

Everything was going well. I got $300 for five thousand words that I finished in 72 hours, and she was convinced. 

We were discussing her new book when I addressed her as a sweetheart, and that was the end of the gig. 

She warned me off strictly, and even though I apologized well, she never came back for work till I lost that account. 

So maintain the professional relationship strictly.

3.      Give them what they want: 

Buyers are only concerned about how they will get value for their money. Give them more than they want. Even if you didn’t make as much as you would love to on the first job, you would make triple later if you are patient.

In early 2019, I worked for a Canadian; I think her name was Candace. She wrote an ebook and wanted someone to proofread, edit and format it for her.

During our conversation, I discovered that she had given the job to someone before, a Nigerian like me and you that didn’t do his job well. She paid $700 for a 15000 eBook on a relationship. 

I told her sorry and stated that thousands of Nigerian sellers do their job better. And I told her to send me a page of her book to edit and proofread so that she could know I was serious. I did it for free and sent it back to her in two hours. She was so happy and placed an order of $200 that day, which was the start of our productive relationship.

After helping her edit, she outsourced the ebook design to me and also a promotion on Kindle. Guess how much I totaled from working with her by offering a free service? Lol.

Yes, that is what you should do as a new seller. Provide value, value, and value. The money will come.

Build your account first and watch the wonders of the world.

I am not saying you should do free work every time tho because you invested in yourself too.

I am saying that for a job you are meant to take $100 for two articles, tell them to pay $80 for three, and so on.

4.      Buy reviews to your account till you get a JSS score or badge.

Reviews are positive feedback from clients you have worked with before. JSS score is referred to as the Job Success score on Upwork.

If you don’t want to go through the stress of sending proposals every day until you get your first job, an excellent way to fast-track the process is to buy reviews until you get a job success score. It will fast-track your Upwork growth, and before you know it, you will be earning in dollars almost on a daily basis.

If you don’t know how to buy reviews, some guys sell reviews. That is their own online business. Lol.

Best 7 ways to withdraw your money as a Nigerian Freelancer in 2022

It is one thing to start earning as a freelancer; it is another to be able to have access to your hard-earned money when you need it. When I started freelancing, I remember one of my challenges was getting my money out.

When I made my first dollar online, I found it challenging to withdraw from Fiverr, and at the end of the day, I had to use the money for another thing on the Fiverr platform apart from withdrawing.

Like me, thousands of freelancers in 2022 are looking for ways to get their money from clients in freelance marketplaces, social media pages, job listings, and other avenues. If you are among these freelancers, this is for you.  

Read more here to know the best ways to withdraw your money as a Nigerian Freelancer in 2022. 

https://medium.com/@ibrahimkazeem/best-7-ways-to-withdraw-your-money-as-a-nigerian-freelancer-in-2022-995af81a9f3

Conclusion

Upwork is one of the most competitive freelance platforms in the world and arguably the most productive.

It is a herculean task to create an account and get it approved, not to talk of making it productive.

But it is doable; many people make thousands of dollars on Upwork every week.

Ensure you create your profile the right way, optimize proposals to make them convert, look for a mentor who can always guide you, and be prepared to make some sacrifices. If you do this, you will marvel at how much you would have accumulated in a short time.

I know it’s been a long read, but I have had to cut down on some things to make it even shorter. I hope you enjoyed every part. Thanks for staying with me till the end. 

If you have any questions, observations, or addition, you can always shoot me an email at talk2freelancerpeng@gmail.com or tweet me at www.twitter.com/peng_writer. I respond faster to my emails tho. 

Bonus:

Thanks for every time, my friends. I hope you are getting value from the letters. I am happy to inform you we have crossed the 100 subscribers limit. Remember I told you we are rooting for 200 before the end of the month? Hopefully, we will get there. Kindly help me share with your network so more people can get value.

BONUS: 

 I am happy to inform you that I am now a Top-Rated Writing Freelancer On Upwork. I have always looked forward to this and am delighted I attained it after a year's delay. I can’t wait for you to join the esteemed company of top-rated freelancers on Upwork. 

 Cheers. 

Till next week, 

Best, 

Peng.