The video was originally posted on Quora. Checkout My Quora Page where I answer more questions about freelancing and Upwork.
The reason you can’t get any work on Upwork is that you’re not selling yourself to these clients that they should hire you. That’s the bottom line.
This is all the decision of these clients. It’s not Upwork’s fault. Upwork is just a marketing platform. Sure they push people to the top for doing certain things or having certain scores, but everyone starts somewhere on there.
I would concentrate on making sure that your profile is set up correctly, that you’re utilizing everything Upwork offers in terms of how to get noticed.
Make your profile as long as humanly possible and put as much information on there as possible so if a client does check it out, they have all that information handy. This also includes portfolio stuff and anything else that you think is going to sell yourself.
One of the biggest things I did was make a video. Make sure you have a video. Make sure that it can be seen by these potential clients. I think that that’s a great way of getting yourself familiar with the client so they get on the phone with you or maybe they don’t even get on the phone with you because they feel like they don’t need to.
They get a feel for who you are and what you do. They know you’re a real human being and you are who you say you are and you’re not some dude’s uncle that’s actually working on the projects.
We all know that it’s probably happened before. You’re hiring people and their name may be Jesse on Upwork but it could be Jesse’s little sister or cousin working there. No one wants that. I’m sure there was a time where companies feared that.
Make sure you are who you say you are and the best way to do that is to make a video.
I would make sure my profile is perfect, my video is perfect — it doesn’t have to be, it can be pretty basic.
Make sure when you are applying for jobs that you are doing it in a way that you know what you’re talking about and you’re not just copying and pasting bullshit. I hate when someone applies for a job that I post and it’s a sentence of “Hey Adam, I can do this” and then it goes into a long drawn out copy and pasted soliloquy about how awesome they are with testimonials baked into it. It’s garbage, don’t do it. You look like a douche bag when you do it. It’s not meant for that.
When I apply to jobs, I make one or two sentences and include what they want and making sure they know that I definitely know how to do that and that I definitely understand what they want. Then it’s a matter of them going to my profile and then having them run through the whole thing, know all the software platforms I work with, who I worked with, specific projects in my portfolio…
It’s more of a push vs pull marketing strategy because just like anything else you want to keep your powder dry. You don’t want to give everything you got in a proposal. That’s not how relationships are built.
You just want something that’s going to pique their interest and click to your profile. That’s the first step of your funnel. It’s not reading the proposal and saying “Oh I like this Adam guy but I’m not going to check out their profile.” It never happens.
You see one sentence then you go to view profile. That can be really quick. Never make your proposal more than a paragraph long. If you want them to include specific things to make sure you actually read the job proposal, do that just to appease them.
Don’t go too long. Either they want to check out their profile or they don’t. Your only sale is to get them to click and view your profile. That’s the only thing you need to worry about.
As far as actively applying for stuff, spend as much time as possible applying if you need work. When I first got on the system, I was day and night seeing if I could be a good fit and I hit them up.
I kept applying until I got stuff. I would do that everyday if you need the money.
If you have any other questions you would like me to answer, please email me or comment below!
