Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
- Joined
- Nov 3, 1999
- Messages
- 84,998
Alright, everyone, as I said, here is the thread I would make. It will be lengthy, and I want you to understand right off the bat that this is not EASY. There is a quick and easIER way to do it because I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it so you can avoid the mistakes and thousands of hours I wasted because I didn't have a guide.
To perk your interest, in the space of 5 years, I have grown my freelancing business to the point where I earn over $10,000 per month, travel the world, set my own schedule and live life on my own terms. Sometimes I earn a little less, and sometimes I earn a little more. I literally do not care if you think I'm a scammer or trying to sell you anything because, believe me, I'm not and not trying to sound like a prick but it wouldn't be worth trying to sell anything to a lot of people on here. I'm doing this because this changed my life in SO many positive ways and it could change yours as well.
A quick back story, I graduated from university, got thrown straight into a pretty good job, and fucking hated it. I did coke and extremely high quantities of benzos every day for three years. Not to mention for 3 of those years, I was doing Ketamine pretty much every day. Why? Because I was depressed and fucking hated work. I know what you're all saying 'but you still get fucked up'. Yeah, I do, but in a much more controlled manner, and it's not coming from a dark place, it comes from having fun, not because I want to drown out the fact I hate my life. Plus, I love my work, so getting fucked up is the last thing on my priority list most of the time.
You've probably lost interest by now, so I'll start right off by showing my last bank statement the best way I can without revealing my identity on a public drug forum (for now, anyway):
And in case you're wondering where all my money has gone:
Ok, so with that out the way, let's get started. And just as a pre-warning again, this is not a get-quick-rich business model. YES, you can start earning an extra $1000 per month on the side with this within 3/6 months, but it depends on which freelance skill you choose and how dedicated to it you are. Because believe me, you'll have to go through shit to get there.
What is Online Freelancing?
Online freelancing, in a nutshell, is where you as a person sell a skill that you can do/learn online and from your laptop to another person (usually a business). Why do they hire you as a freelancer? These are two main reasons: they don't have the time to do it themselves because they are running their own business and because they don't have the expertise to do it well. There are also other minor reasons, such as if a business hires in-house (hires a full or part-time employee), there is a lot of headache in doing that (benefits, pension and all that shit). Plus, the business can write your service off as a tax expense, so it's win-win.
If you want to find out more about what online freelancing is here's a great resource: Google.com
Ok let's get into the steps that I would take if I were new to this and had very very minimal capital to start my online freelance business.
Step 1: Learn a Digital Skill
Ok so you might already have one of these, say for example you work in the marketing department for a large business, or you are a graphic designer for a media company or you're a programmer for a start-up. if you have this already you're WAY ahead as this is the hardest part in my opinion.
But if like most people, myself included when I started i didn't really have a digital skill I could perform fully online and sell. So I went digging for anything I could find, I tried web design, graphic design, and programming and finally landed the nail on the head with marketing. At this point I was very broad, pretty much doing every aspect of marketing (which to be fair has now helped me sell consulting services), I just loved marketing as a whole, but hadn't really dialled in exactly what part of marketing I could focus on I could sell,.. copywriting, media buying, email marketing, SEO, social media management, content creation etc.
So this is VERY VERY important because I wanted A LOT of time trying to find a digital skill I could do that I loved and brought me RECURRING REVENUE EACH MONTH (this statement is extremely important). There are sooo many freelancers grinding it out trying to fin their next 'gig' because they don't secure a client on a monthly retainer basis, so keep this in mind.
So... decide what you want to learn. Make sure you ACTUALLY enjoy it/love it. Otherwise, you'll just give up. Here is a list of digital skills you can learn (there is a fuck load) so take a brief look and see what you think you might be interested in and then start researching it to see if it is something you'll actually want to do long term. I'll put in brackets some in demand skills I know and at the end I'll put my recommended ones but don't just choose these because they are more profitable (which they are).
Step 2: LEARN
Ok you've picked your skill it's now time to grind the fuck out of learning it. You are going to have to invest a small amount of money to do this (OR if you have more capital you can invest in higher quality courses).
My recommended websites to learn from:
YouTube.com - You'll learn the basics here and it's a good starting point to get a feel for if you'll really like the skill you're learning.
https://www.udemy.com/ - Courses on basically every skill
https://www.skillshare.com/ - courses on basically every skill
Step 3: Personal brand & Website
Ok you have your skill nailed down (to some extent. You now need to make your presence known on social media because once you start outreaching to businesses for work they are going to look at these things. Create the following:
- Facebook Page
- Instagram Page
- Linkedin
- Website
- Pinterest (if you choose blogging)
Now you're going to have to spend a little money here on getting some visual branding done. But don't worry just hire a freelancer to do it for 20$ MAX. This will give you a logo, style guide (colours to use and typography aka fonts) and they will provide you with a brand book and a social media set you can use across your platform and website.
Go to https://www.fiverr.com/ and type logo design, or brand design and find someone who suits your budget. You can get it super cheap. OR if you chose graphic design do it yourself with your new skills.
NOW the hardest bit of this is creating your website. There a few ways to do this, you can use a service like Wix which is super easy but comes with a monthly fee, or you can use wordpress which is free but you have to learn how to design it yourself.
I recommend Wordpress as it's the gold standard pretty much (apart from custom coded website but thats fucking expensive).
Youtube: How to create a simple freelancing website and you'll find out exactly how to do it all from there. but it's essential you have this because clients don't trust people without websites.
Step 4: Building a Portfolio
This can be super tough for some industries but for most of them it's not. But you're going to have to do free work. Reach out to people you know, and businesses and offer them free work. Or if you learned graphic design or or web design it's easy you can just create designs and websites and that can be your portfolio.
This is super important as you will not get hired easily without any work to show. So ask family, friends, and neighbours to do free work for them with your skill, do it for free as well as you can (seriously put effort into this) and just ask in return for a video review of the work or at least a written review of your work you can put on your website.
Step 4: Getting Clients
Alright now time for the fun and hardest part of this business model. Finding businesses to pay you for your work. There are A LOT of ways to do this, but I'm going to go with the easiest and free way of doing it as some methods require a lot more skill and capital to pay for the software needed.
Head over to:
And create the best profile you can. I'm going to link a word document on a blog I wrote on how to create a GOOD UpWork profile. But I'm not sharing the link to my website for obvious reasons:
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"If you’ve read any of my digital skill articles then you might be thinking it’s time to start earning some income now. In this article, I’m going to outline the steps you’ll need to take to get clients on Upwork.
Now, this isn’t always the best way to get you clients but it’s perfect when you are just starting and are at the beginning of your journey. The reason for this is that when you have no case studies or testimonials, it can be extremely hard to sell to businesses that aren’t necessarily actively looking for your service or skill.
Upwork flips that around and puts you in front of hundreds if not thousands of businesses that ARE actively looking for your service or skill.
So let’s jump in and cover everything you need to know about getting clients on Upwork.
Just as a side note, I still use Upwork to this day to bring in high-quality clients.
Your Upwork profile is going to differ from other people, it’s just the way it will be. There are thousands of freelancers and agencies on there with fully decked-out profiles with hundreds of on-platform reviews and huge portfolios. But don’t let this put you off.
I started a new Upwork account a couple of months back and signed 2 big clients from it with 0 reviews and 0 jobs completed on the platform itself.
Here’s mine:
If you don’t have a relevant degree to the skill or service you are selling don’t worry put it on there anyway. If you don’t have a degree at all don’t worry either.
Your Title
Next, you need to have a ‘Title’. Mine is ‘Facebook Ad Specialist’, it’s straight to the point and shows exactly what I specialise in. You will see a lot of freelancers on there with about 6 different skills listed in just their title. This is stupid, you look like a jack of all trades and a master of none.
You have to be highly niche-specific. I will cover this in another article on how to choose the right digital skill for you.
You’ll also see people with titles like ‘Facebook Ads God’ or ‘Facebook Ads Guru’. Now many people argue that this makes you stand out a little. But that may have been true 5 years ago, but now I think it makes you look silly. Keep it clean, straight to the point and let the client see exactly what you specialise in.
As I mention in the video it’s really important to keep your bio simple and straight to the point. You have to look at it through the eyes of your potential client. They don’t want to see a list of different software you can use or a life story. They want to see what you can do that relates to them (solving their problem), your experience (whether that be hands-on or course/education based) and pretty much why you are on the platform and why they would want to hire you (the last line I put in there).
Over the years of using Upwork both for myself as a freelancer and hiring on Upwork, the client wants to find a reliable freelancer that they can continue to work with long term. The reason being is that it’s a headache trying to find new freelancers that can do what they say they can, have good communication and are willing to go the extra mile.
Portfolio
Your portfolio is also a very vital element of your profile. This is the same for beginners or veterans. You want to get as many case studies and portfolio pieces as possible into here so clients can look over them and you can reference them in your proposals.
The beauty of the portfolio on your website is that you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of hands of experience to fill this up. If you’re a graphic designer this is heaven for you. You can create multiple high-quality pieces of work that nobody paid you to do and put them in there.
This is, however, slightly harder if you run social media ads for example. But again I will cover how you can fill this up even with no previous work when we get to writing your proposal.
Testimonials
The testimonials part of the profile is pretty big. Potential clients want to see social proof that you have done work for others and they were happy to work with you. The great thing about Upwork is that you can request testimonials from people you have worked with outside of the platform.
So if you’ve worked with clients in the past kindly ask them for a recommendation and ask your current clients as well. You might even want to throw a little incentive in there as well like 5% off their next bill or something as it can sometimes be hard to get business owners to take the time to leave you a review (trust me).
If you don’t have any previous clients, then again, I recommend you do some free work for family, friends or other people in your business circles in return for a testimonial.
If you’re new to working online and learning a digital skill then you should have a bunch of courses you’ve taken so list them here.
So now we’ve covered your profile let’s jump into finding the right jobs. I’ll split this into two sections, one for complete beginners and one for freelancers with clients under their belt.
You must make all of these very relevant to what you can do. Upwork gives you a maximum of 15 to list, but that doesn’t mean you need to list 15 skills here. However, you do want to list as many as you can.
Here is where you can start listing things like the software you are proficient in, for example, a graphic designer can put in here ‘Adobe Photoshop’ or ‘Adobe illustrator’. If you have niched down correctly you can combine these with ‘ad design’, ‘ebook design’ or ‘social media posts’.
You mustn’t start listing things you are not proficient in or have 0 experience or knowledge in. Especially if you are a beginner because you might on the off chance get a job offer sent to you and you’ll get the excitement all freelancers do at the start of their career and take up a job you can’t do. (side note at the time of writing this article I got an invite to a job and an instant meeting) which demonstrates the power of having your profile in good standing.
I’ll write this as it happens but essentially this client runs their own online agency but they just want a two-hour coaching session on running ads. Now I’m going to do this job for way under what I’d charge per hour, to build a relationship with this agency owner which can then lead to me managing their client accounts for them. Again proving that free or cheap work can be very powerful when starting out or even when you’re experienced. It may lead to nothing but I’ll be able to get a testimonial and a review on my Upwork profile, get enough of these and it’s a game-changer for your freelancing career.
However, you may find it a little overwhelming searching through the hundreds of jobs.
Now before I carry on with this section I want to make it very clear that when working on Upwork as a new freelancer with no experience or very little you are going to need to do free or extremely underpaid work. With no solid background and social proof, it will be very hard to land well-paying jobs. It may seem like a hard pill to swallow but trust me in the long run it will pay off. But you need to select these carefully.
Ok so let’s find some clients on Upwork. First of all head over to ‘Find Work’ on the top bar and then hit the green search icon so you can filter out jobs.
You’ll now be brought to a page where you can search and filter out jobs. As a beginner I don’t recommend putting too many filters on, however, I do recommend the following:
Experience level:
Now you’ll want to search for the job you are looking for. So if you have your skill down and you have niched down correctly you can search for these exact terms, for example ‘Facebook Ad Specialist’, ‘Social Media Posts Graphic Designer Logo’ or ‘Javascript Website Development’.
Now it’s time to take a look through as many jobs as you can and use the star button to favourite the ones you like. Once you’ve gone through as many as you can you can start applying! Skip to the next section about how to write your proposals.
So firstly we want to set our filters to:
Experience level:
– Expert
Client Info:
– Payment Verified
Job Type:
– Fixed Price
You’ll notice here that we have added a fixed price as the job type. The reasoning behind this is that you’re more advanced. Meaning you have case studies, and testimonials and can demonstrate your skill set better when on a call. This gives you leverage, and with leverage, you can negotiate a fixed price that pleases both parties. In my opinion, as freelancers, we should not be working by the hour, no matter what skill we have. Clients are paying for our expertise, not our time.
You’ll now want to start searching through the jobs that match your skill. As you become more advanced you’ll want to be looking out for jobs and potential clients that have a history on Upwork. You’ll want to look at how much they have spent on the platform (the more the better in most cases), the client reviews (yes freelancers give clients reviews as well) and look into detail about the job/potential client is looking for.
We will dive into this in more detail in another article, but what we are looking for is clients that want to form long-term relationships with freelancers. The reason being is that when you build a relationship with a new business or agency they will give you a constant stream of work, and you will barely have to lift a finger to get it.
Things to look out for when looking through these jobs are clients that want to hire full-time or part-time ‘freelancers’. This means they want you on as a staff member without having to go through the cost and risk on their side of actually hiring correctly. Red flags to look out for within their job posting:
First of all, you need to ensure you have read the job posting correctly so you can personalise your proposal as much as possible.
Personalisation in your proposal will make you stick out above everyone else. It’s well known that the vast majority of freelancers on the site will just copy and paste their proposals to every available job.
It’s so well known that a lot of job postings will say something like ‘put FB ROCKSTAR at the top of your proposal to show you have read it.’ So make sure you look out for these otherwise the potential client won’t even read your proposal.
This is not to say we can duplicate elements of our proposal in other job postings. As we have niched down and all of the jobs we are applying for are going to be pretty similar so will our proposals.
Right, let’s break down the elements in our proposal that we need to ensure we get at least a reply from the potential client. I’ll start by posting an example proposal I have created.
So first of all we have the line the client asked anyone who read the job posting to write first.
Then we get into our opening line which HAS to be personalised. This is the first thing they will read and if it looks very generic it will not spark any interest to carry on reading. Take whatever you can from their job description and use it here. In this example you can see I used their name which they left in the job description (most people don’t do this) then I asked them a question about their agency.
Asking a question is always a good option, in my opinion, it shows you’re fully interested and understand the project and it comes across as you’re a professional.
You can use this in almost any instance, for example:
Graphic designer: ‘Hey Justin, I love the sound of your project do you know what style of logo you like?’
Web designer: ‘Hey Justin, I love the sound of your project do you have any website design styles in mind?’
Once we’ve caught their attention we can give a brief about ourselves that isn’t too long but shows we have what they need. Remembering at all times these all need to be written specifically for this job listing.
Finally, we ask them when they are free for a call. This shows them we are eager to work with them and our ultimate goal is to get this person on a call. If you are not willing to do video calls then you need to start getting used to it. I see so many freelancers and even clients that would rather just chat through text.
We HAVE to get on a video call with them so we can discuss everything properly and show them we are reliable, trustworthy and can do what they need.
So as a quick summary here is how your proposal should look:
You’ll also note I add in “you can also find some more information about me here: throwdown.com”. According to Upwork, this is fine, but be careful as I often get clients then direct message me through my website rather than Upwork which is against their terms of service. If this does happen be sure to redirect them back to Upwork.
Having a website will greatly improve your chances of getting a meeting in my opinion as it makes you look much more professional. I’ll write a separate article on how to get a quick and easy freelancer website made.
The key here is consistency, set yourself a reminder to go off every day to send out 2-3 proposals (this is what I do).
Eventually, you will get a lead and a meeting. But do not give up! If you’re struggling and are completely new to this with absolutely no previous experience or testimonials then considerably lower your price when applying for the job. For example, if the job says they have a $400 budget, propose a $50 payment. This will be the point when you will need to do free work or very underpaid work.
I did free/extremely underpaid work for months just to build up my old profile. But it greatly benefits you in the future, not only for the testimonial but also for your experience in working with clients.
So how do we set ourselves up for recurring revenue?
Well, it depends on your service offering. If you’re like me and you manage advertising accounts, it’s very easy as this is a daily/weekly task forever (or until the client decides to stop running ads for whatever reason).
But what if you’re a graphic designer or copywriter for example? You need to create an offer, which will be subscription-based. I will go into offer creation in a lot more detail in another article. But think of ways you can turn this job into a consistent revenue stream. Here is an example:
Copywriter:
A client wants an article written for their website blog. You manage to get a meeting with them by following the steps above, you get on a call with them to discuss what they want right now (one article written for their website), and once you’ve agreed on that you can then show them a new offer which can be something like ‘I will write 4 articles for your website a month for X amount per month’ – obviously making it a cheaper option in the long run.
If successful you now have a solid client you know you will be writing for, for the foreseeable future.
You can use this example in any field of online work, just think about it and focus on what value can you give the client in return for essentially a subscription-based service.
I reached out to a friend and freelancer recently as my Macbook decided to die on me and I didn’t have backups of the work he did for me. He designed my company branding many years ago and I love it still to this day. But we ended up talking and he said he has completely changed his business model, instead of constantly trying to find work and dealing with admin stuff he completely changed his business model into a subscription-based business. He’s an amazing graphic designer. Check out how he has crafted his offer on his website: https://BLANK.co/
This is the perfect example of securing recurring income, saving you stress and giving you more time to work on your business and your client’s work.
The key to getting clients using any method is persistence and patience. Just keep going and you will get there
Step 5: Ming Set & Learning
You might be reading this and be thinking FUCK this is pretty easy and quick. It's not, it takes time. You have to be prepared to do free work, grind out learning new skills and develop in every aspect of your life.
Step 6: The Way I Did It
I chose to go down the marketing route and these are the steps I would take now:
Learn the basics of your skill through Udemy or Skillshare.
Sign up to https://acadium.com/ and do a free internship. This boosted my journey super quick and got me, my first high-paying client.
Invest in a high-quality course. I invested around 3k in courses at the start. I now spend around 5k per year on courses. I won't name any here because people will think I'm trying to promote them plus a couple of the ones I took I actually work with now.
Alright, guys that is the VERY BASIC version of how to start your freelancing business. PLEASE feel free to DM me, or comment in the thread on anything you want to know or need help with. And AGAIN I'm not trying to sell you anything, I do not need or want your money. I think it's everyone's human right to have freedom and this business model has allowed me that so I want to help others do so as well. You will need to put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this but trust me it's fucking worth it. How does sitting at a beach bar with your laptop in South East Asia or Mexico working sound to you? Well, it's fucking good, so grind on.
I'll come back and edit parts of this later as it's poorly written but I was rushing it out as I have a lot of client work to do.
To perk your interest, in the space of 5 years, I have grown my freelancing business to the point where I earn over $10,000 per month, travel the world, set my own schedule and live life on my own terms. Sometimes I earn a little less, and sometimes I earn a little more. I literally do not care if you think I'm a scammer or trying to sell you anything because, believe me, I'm not and not trying to sound like a prick but it wouldn't be worth trying to sell anything to a lot of people on here. I'm doing this because this changed my life in SO many positive ways and it could change yours as well.
A quick back story, I graduated from university, got thrown straight into a pretty good job, and fucking hated it. I did coke and extremely high quantities of benzos every day for three years. Not to mention for 3 of those years, I was doing Ketamine pretty much every day. Why? Because I was depressed and fucking hated work. I know what you're all saying 'but you still get fucked up'. Yeah, I do, but in a much more controlled manner, and it's not coming from a dark place, it comes from having fun, not because I want to drown out the fact I hate my life. Plus, I love my work, so getting fucked up is the last thing on my priority list most of the time.
You've probably lost interest by now, so I'll start right off by showing my last bank statement the best way I can without revealing my identity on a public drug forum (for now, anyway):
And in case you're wondering where all my money has gone:
Ok, so with that out the way, let's get started. And just as a pre-warning again, this is not a get-quick-rich business model. YES, you can start earning an extra $1000 per month on the side with this within 3/6 months, but it depends on which freelance skill you choose and how dedicated to it you are. Because believe me, you'll have to go through shit to get there.
What is Online Freelancing?
Online freelancing, in a nutshell, is where you as a person sell a skill that you can do/learn online and from your laptop to another person (usually a business). Why do they hire you as a freelancer? These are two main reasons: they don't have the time to do it themselves because they are running their own business and because they don't have the expertise to do it well. There are also other minor reasons, such as if a business hires in-house (hires a full or part-time employee), there is a lot of headache in doing that (benefits, pension and all that shit). Plus, the business can write your service off as a tax expense, so it's win-win.
If you want to find out more about what online freelancing is here's a great resource: Google.com
Ok let's get into the steps that I would take if I were new to this and had very very minimal capital to start my online freelance business.
Step 1: Learn a Digital Skill
Ok so you might already have one of these, say for example you work in the marketing department for a large business, or you are a graphic designer for a media company or you're a programmer for a start-up. if you have this already you're WAY ahead as this is the hardest part in my opinion.
But if like most people, myself included when I started i didn't really have a digital skill I could perform fully online and sell. So I went digging for anything I could find, I tried web design, graphic design, and programming and finally landed the nail on the head with marketing. At this point I was very broad, pretty much doing every aspect of marketing (which to be fair has now helped me sell consulting services), I just loved marketing as a whole, but hadn't really dialled in exactly what part of marketing I could focus on I could sell,.. copywriting, media buying, email marketing, SEO, social media management, content creation etc.
So this is VERY VERY important because I wanted A LOT of time trying to find a digital skill I could do that I loved and brought me RECURRING REVENUE EACH MONTH (this statement is extremely important). There are sooo many freelancers grinding it out trying to fin their next 'gig' because they don't secure a client on a monthly retainer basis, so keep this in mind.
So... decide what you want to learn. Make sure you ACTUALLY enjoy it/love it. Otherwise, you'll just give up. Here is a list of digital skills you can learn (there is a fuck load) so take a brief look and see what you think you might be interested in and then start researching it to see if it is something you'll actually want to do long term. I'll put in brackets some in demand skills I know and at the end I'll put my recommended ones but don't just choose these because they are more profitable (which they are).
- Programming (in demand)
- SEO - search engine optimisation
- Podcasting (recommended if you already have a passion for something and are outgoing / funny / likable)
- YouTube (again need to find a niche you have a passion for and have the desire to learn how to edit videos properly)
- Graphic Design (always in demand but highly competitive)
- Project management (hard one to get into to without prior experience)
- Copywriting
- Email marketing
- Social media management
- Content production
- Digital media buying (in demand and high paying)
- Website design (highly competitive)
- Blogging
- Accounting and Book Keeping
- Consultancy (good if you already have a well-grounded skill in ANYTHING)
- Virtual assistant (lower pay but very easy to get work)
Step 2: LEARN
Ok you've picked your skill it's now time to grind the fuck out of learning it. You are going to have to invest a small amount of money to do this (OR if you have more capital you can invest in higher quality courses).
My recommended websites to learn from:
YouTube.com - You'll learn the basics here and it's a good starting point to get a feel for if you'll really like the skill you're learning.
https://www.udemy.com/ - Courses on basically every skill
https://www.skillshare.com/ - courses on basically every skill
Step 3: Personal brand & Website
Ok you have your skill nailed down (to some extent. You now need to make your presence known on social media because once you start outreaching to businesses for work they are going to look at these things. Create the following:
- Facebook Page
- Instagram Page
- Website
- Pinterest (if you choose blogging)
Now you're going to have to spend a little money here on getting some visual branding done. But don't worry just hire a freelancer to do it for 20$ MAX. This will give you a logo, style guide (colours to use and typography aka fonts) and they will provide you with a brand book and a social media set you can use across your platform and website.
Go to https://www.fiverr.com/ and type logo design, or brand design and find someone who suits your budget. You can get it super cheap. OR if you chose graphic design do it yourself with your new skills.
NOW the hardest bit of this is creating your website. There a few ways to do this, you can use a service like Wix which is super easy but comes with a monthly fee, or you can use wordpress which is free but you have to learn how to design it yourself.
I recommend Wordpress as it's the gold standard pretty much (apart from custom coded website but thats fucking expensive).
Youtube: How to create a simple freelancing website and you'll find out exactly how to do it all from there. but it's essential you have this because clients don't trust people without websites.
Step 4: Building a Portfolio
This can be super tough for some industries but for most of them it's not. But you're going to have to do free work. Reach out to people you know, and businesses and offer them free work. Or if you learned graphic design or or web design it's easy you can just create designs and websites and that can be your portfolio.
This is super important as you will not get hired easily without any work to show. So ask family, friends, and neighbours to do free work for them with your skill, do it for free as well as you can (seriously put effort into this) and just ask in return for a video review of the work or at least a written review of your work you can put on your website.
Step 4: Getting Clients
Alright now time for the fun and hardest part of this business model. Finding businesses to pay you for your work. There are A LOT of ways to do this, but I'm going to go with the easiest and free way of doing it as some methods require a lot more skill and capital to pay for the software needed.
Head over to:
And create the best profile you can. I'm going to link a word document on a blog I wrote on how to create a GOOD UpWork profile. But I'm not sharing the link to my website for obvious reasons:
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"If you’ve read any of my digital skill articles then you might be thinking it’s time to start earning some income now. In this article, I’m going to outline the steps you’ll need to take to get clients on Upwork.
Now, this isn’t always the best way to get you clients but it’s perfect when you are just starting and are at the beginning of your journey. The reason for this is that when you have no case studies or testimonials, it can be extremely hard to sell to businesses that aren’t necessarily actively looking for your service or skill.
Upwork flips that around and puts you in front of hundreds if not thousands of businesses that ARE actively looking for your service or skill.
So let’s jump in and cover everything you need to know about getting clients on Upwork.
Just as a side note, I still use Upwork to this day to bring in high-quality clients.
Your Profile
There are two key elements to getting clients on Upwork. The first is your profile and the second is your proposal, which we will cover later.Your Upwork profile is going to differ from other people, it’s just the way it will be. There are thousands of freelancers and agencies on there with fully decked-out profiles with hundreds of on-platform reviews and huge portfolios. But don’t let this put you off.
I started a new Upwork account a couple of months back and signed 2 big clients from it with 0 reviews and 0 jobs completed on the platform itself.
The Basics
So let’s start with the basics, make sure you have all of your location information, a verified phone number and the number of hours you can work. This is simple stuff, I don’t need to walk you through it… but make sure it’s there! In regards to your location, if you’re like me and travel and work or you plan to do that then just put your home location or wherever your business is registered to.Here’s mine:
If you don’t have a relevant degree to the skill or service you are selling don’t worry put it on there anyway. If you don’t have a degree at all don’t worry either.
Your Title
Next, you need to have a ‘Title’. Mine is ‘Facebook Ad Specialist’, it’s straight to the point and shows exactly what I specialise in. You will see a lot of freelancers on there with about 6 different skills listed in just their title. This is stupid, you look like a jack of all trades and a master of none.
You have to be highly niche-specific. I will cover this in another article on how to choose the right digital skill for you.
You’ll also see people with titles like ‘Facebook Ads God’ or ‘Facebook Ads Guru’. Now many people argue that this makes you stand out a little. But that may have been true 5 years ago, but now I think it makes you look silly. Keep it clean, straight to the point and let the client see exactly what you specialise in.
You Bio
Your bio is one of the most important parts of your profile and will be one of the deciding factors in getting clients on Upwork. It is really important to note here that everyone’s bio is going to be different. If you’re just starting your bio will be completely different from someone who has a lot of experience. But I’ll break down each element you should include whether you’re new or a veteran. I thought I’d do this in video format as it’s much easier to explain and I’ll give some examples of what you can replace if you do not have experience.As I mention in the video it’s really important to keep your bio simple and straight to the point. You have to look at it through the eyes of your potential client. They don’t want to see a list of different software you can use or a life story. They want to see what you can do that relates to them (solving their problem), your experience (whether that be hands-on or course/education based) and pretty much why you are on the platform and why they would want to hire you (the last line I put in there).
Over the years of using Upwork both for myself as a freelancer and hiring on Upwork, the client wants to find a reliable freelancer that they can continue to work with long term. The reason being is that it’s a headache trying to find new freelancers that can do what they say they can, have good communication and are willing to go the extra mile.
Portfolio
Your portfolio is also a very vital element of your profile. This is the same for beginners or veterans. You want to get as many case studies and portfolio pieces as possible into here so clients can look over them and you can reference them in your proposals.
The beauty of the portfolio on your website is that you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of hands of experience to fill this up. If you’re a graphic designer this is heaven for you. You can create multiple high-quality pieces of work that nobody paid you to do and put them in there.
This is, however, slightly harder if you run social media ads for example. But again I will cover how you can fill this up even with no previous work when we get to writing your proposal.
Testimonials
The testimonials part of the profile is pretty big. Potential clients want to see social proof that you have done work for others and they were happy to work with you. The great thing about Upwork is that you can request testimonials from people you have worked with outside of the platform.
So if you’ve worked with clients in the past kindly ask them for a recommendation and ask your current clients as well. You might even want to throw a little incentive in there as well like 5% off their next bill or something as it can sometimes be hard to get business owners to take the time to leave you a review (trust me).
If you don’t have any previous clients, then again, I recommend you do some free work for family, friends or other people in your business circles in return for a testimonial.
Certifications & Employment History
These categories are important for everyone to use but don’t start throwing out that you worked at Starbucks when you were 16. Keep everything super relevant.If you’re new to working online and learning a digital skill then you should have a bunch of courses you’ve taken so list them here.
So now we’ve covered your profile let’s jump into finding the right jobs. I’ll split this into two sections, one for complete beginners and one for freelancers with clients under their belt.
Skills
Here is your chance to list your relevant skills. This is important to do because potential clients can find your profile just by searching by skill and you’ll also be recommended to potential clients when they post a job just based on what skills you have listed.You must make all of these very relevant to what you can do. Upwork gives you a maximum of 15 to list, but that doesn’t mean you need to list 15 skills here. However, you do want to list as many as you can.
Here is where you can start listing things like the software you are proficient in, for example, a graphic designer can put in here ‘Adobe Photoshop’ or ‘Adobe illustrator’. If you have niched down correctly you can combine these with ‘ad design’, ‘ebook design’ or ‘social media posts’.
You mustn’t start listing things you are not proficient in or have 0 experience or knowledge in. Especially if you are a beginner because you might on the off chance get a job offer sent to you and you’ll get the excitement all freelancers do at the start of their career and take up a job you can’t do. (side note at the time of writing this article I got an invite to a job and an instant meeting) which demonstrates the power of having your profile in good standing.
I’ll write this as it happens but essentially this client runs their own online agency but they just want a two-hour coaching session on running ads. Now I’m going to do this job for way under what I’d charge per hour, to build a relationship with this agency owner which can then lead to me managing their client accounts for them. Again proving that free or cheap work can be very powerful when starting out or even when you’re experienced. It may lead to nothing but I’ll be able to get a testimonial and a review on my Upwork profile, get enough of these and it’s a game-changer for your freelancing career.
Finding The Right Jobs: For Beginners
Now that you have your profile ready it’s time to start finding work. As I mentioned previously you should have your skill and niche down at this point so finding jobs that are suited to exactly what you are looking for shouldn’t be too hard.However, you may find it a little overwhelming searching through the hundreds of jobs.
Now before I carry on with this section I want to make it very clear that when working on Upwork as a new freelancer with no experience or very little you are going to need to do free or extremely underpaid work. With no solid background and social proof, it will be very hard to land well-paying jobs. It may seem like a hard pill to swallow but trust me in the long run it will pay off. But you need to select these carefully.
Ok so let’s find some clients on Upwork. First of all head over to ‘Find Work’ on the top bar and then hit the green search icon so you can filter out jobs.
You’ll now be brought to a page where you can search and filter out jobs. As a beginner I don’t recommend putting too many filters on, however, I do recommend the following:
Experience level:
- – Entry-level
- – Intermediate
- – Payment Verified
Now you’ll want to search for the job you are looking for. So if you have your skill down and you have niched down correctly you can search for these exact terms, for example ‘Facebook Ad Specialist’, ‘Social Media Posts Graphic Designer Logo’ or ‘Javascript Website Development’.
Now it’s time to take a look through as many jobs as you can and use the star button to favourite the ones you like. Once you’ve gone through as many as you can you can start applying! Skip to the next section about how to write your proposals.
Finding The Right Jobs: Advanced
If you are further along in your freelance career I still recommend reading the section above, the only real differences are we are going to change the filters and we are going to be more specific on what jobs to find.So firstly we want to set our filters to:
Experience level:
– Expert
Client Info:
– Payment Verified
Job Type:
– Fixed Price
You’ll notice here that we have added a fixed price as the job type. The reasoning behind this is that you’re more advanced. Meaning you have case studies, and testimonials and can demonstrate your skill set better when on a call. This gives you leverage, and with leverage, you can negotiate a fixed price that pleases both parties. In my opinion, as freelancers, we should not be working by the hour, no matter what skill we have. Clients are paying for our expertise, not our time.
You’ll now want to start searching through the jobs that match your skill. As you become more advanced you’ll want to be looking out for jobs and potential clients that have a history on Upwork. You’ll want to look at how much they have spent on the platform (the more the better in most cases), the client reviews (yes freelancers give clients reviews as well) and look into detail about the job/potential client is looking for.
We will dive into this in more detail in another article, but what we are looking for is clients that want to form long-term relationships with freelancers. The reason being is that when you build a relationship with a new business or agency they will give you a constant stream of work, and you will barely have to lift a finger to get it.
Things to look out for when looking through these jobs are clients that want to hire full-time or part-time ‘freelancers’. This means they want you on as a staff member without having to go through the cost and risk on their side of actually hiring correctly. Red flags to look out for within their job posting:
- – Daily team meetings (a big no-no for me)
- – Constant communication through Slack or Whatsapp during their country’s working hours (remember we’re freelancers working in our time zones and on our schedule).
- – Working with their business or most of the time their agency exclusively.
Writing Your Proposal
Your proposal is the key to getting clients on Upwork, it’s your chance to get directly in front of clients that need your service. We must stand out at this point otherwise we will have no chance of even getting a meeting.First of all, you need to ensure you have read the job posting correctly so you can personalise your proposal as much as possible.
Personalisation in your proposal will make you stick out above everyone else. It’s well known that the vast majority of freelancers on the site will just copy and paste their proposals to every available job.
It’s so well known that a lot of job postings will say something like ‘put FB ROCKSTAR at the top of your proposal to show you have read it.’ So make sure you look out for these otherwise the potential client won’t even read your proposal.
This is not to say we can duplicate elements of our proposal in other job postings. As we have niched down and all of the jobs we are applying for are going to be pretty similar so will our proposals.
Right, let’s break down the elements in our proposal that we need to ensure we get at least a reply from the potential client. I’ll start by posting an example proposal I have created.
So first of all we have the line the client asked anyone who read the job posting to write first.
Then we get into our opening line which HAS to be personalised. This is the first thing they will read and if it looks very generic it will not spark any interest to carry on reading. Take whatever you can from their job description and use it here. In this example you can see I used their name which they left in the job description (most people don’t do this) then I asked them a question about their agency.
Asking a question is always a good option, in my opinion, it shows you’re fully interested and understand the project and it comes across as you’re a professional.
You can use this in almost any instance, for example:
Graphic designer: ‘Hey Justin, I love the sound of your project do you know what style of logo you like?’
Web designer: ‘Hey Justin, I love the sound of your project do you have any website design styles in mind?’
Once we’ve caught their attention we can give a brief about ourselves that isn’t too long but shows we have what they need. Remembering at all times these all need to be written specifically for this job listing.
Finally, we ask them when they are free for a call. This shows them we are eager to work with them and our ultimate goal is to get this person on a call. If you are not willing to do video calls then you need to start getting used to it. I see so many freelancers and even clients that would rather just chat through text.
We HAVE to get on a video call with them so we can discuss everything properly and show them we are reliable, trustworthy and can do what they need.
So as a quick summary here is how your proposal should look:
- Personalised introduction
- A small brief about yourself that 100% relates to their job posting
- A call to action to get them on a call
- A reminder where they can find your portfolio
You’ll also note I add in “you can also find some more information about me here: throwdown.com”. According to Upwork, this is fine, but be careful as I often get clients then direct message me through my website rather than Upwork which is against their terms of service. If this does happen be sure to redirect them back to Upwork.
Having a website will greatly improve your chances of getting a meeting in my opinion as it makes you look much more professional. I’ll write a separate article on how to get a quick and easy freelancer website made.
Closing The Client
Now you’ve started sending out proposals you should eventually start getting some replies. Do not be discouraged if you do not hear back from any of the jobs you’ve applied to. It’s very common for this to happen as a large majority of potential clients will automatically only invite and interview freelancers that have a tonne of reviews and completed works ON the Upwork platform.The key here is consistency, set yourself a reminder to go off every day to send out 2-3 proposals (this is what I do).
Eventually, you will get a lead and a meeting. But do not give up! If you’re struggling and are completely new to this with absolutely no previous experience or testimonials then considerably lower your price when applying for the job. For example, if the job says they have a $400 budget, propose a $50 payment. This will be the point when you will need to do free work or very underpaid work.
I did free/extremely underpaid work for months just to build up my old profile. But it greatly benefits you in the future, not only for the testimonial but also for your experience in working with clients.
Setting Yourself Up To Get Recurring Revenue
As I’ve mentioned before all freelancers should be setting themselves up for recurring income from each client they sign, no matter what service you offer. It is extremely stressful, constantly applying for jobs and hoping you get them just so you have some money coming in. This will lead you to take jobs that aren’t suited for you or will force you to constantly take underpaid jobs.So how do we set ourselves up for recurring revenue?
Well, it depends on your service offering. If you’re like me and you manage advertising accounts, it’s very easy as this is a daily/weekly task forever (or until the client decides to stop running ads for whatever reason).
But what if you’re a graphic designer or copywriter for example? You need to create an offer, which will be subscription-based. I will go into offer creation in a lot more detail in another article. But think of ways you can turn this job into a consistent revenue stream. Here is an example:
Copywriter:
A client wants an article written for their website blog. You manage to get a meeting with them by following the steps above, you get on a call with them to discuss what they want right now (one article written for their website), and once you’ve agreed on that you can then show them a new offer which can be something like ‘I will write 4 articles for your website a month for X amount per month’ – obviously making it a cheaper option in the long run.
If successful you now have a solid client you know you will be writing for, for the foreseeable future.
You can use this example in any field of online work, just think about it and focus on what value can you give the client in return for essentially a subscription-based service.
I reached out to a friend and freelancer recently as my Macbook decided to die on me and I didn’t have backups of the work he did for me. He designed my company branding many years ago and I love it still to this day. But we ended up talking and he said he has completely changed his business model, instead of constantly trying to find work and dealing with admin stuff he completely changed his business model into a subscription-based business. He’s an amazing graphic designer. Check out how he has crafted his offer on his website: https://BLANK.co/
This is the perfect example of securing recurring income, saving you stress and giving you more time to work on your business and your client’s work.
Conclusion
I hope this article will help you on your way to getting clients on Upwork. Remember though, there are many ways to sign clients and this is just one of them. In further articles, I will detail these different methods.The key to getting clients using any method is persistence and patience. Just keep going and you will get there
Step 5: Ming Set & Learning
You might be reading this and be thinking FUCK this is pretty easy and quick. It's not, it takes time. You have to be prepared to do free work, grind out learning new skills and develop in every aspect of your life.
Step 6: The Way I Did It
I chose to go down the marketing route and these are the steps I would take now:
Learn the basics of your skill through Udemy or Skillshare.
Sign up to https://acadium.com/ and do a free internship. This boosted my journey super quick and got me, my first high-paying client.
Invest in a high-quality course. I invested around 3k in courses at the start. I now spend around 5k per year on courses. I won't name any here because people will think I'm trying to promote them plus a couple of the ones I took I actually work with now.
Alright, guys that is the VERY BASIC version of how to start your freelancing business. PLEASE feel free to DM me, or comment in the thread on anything you want to know or need help with. And AGAIN I'm not trying to sell you anything, I do not need or want your money. I think it's everyone's human right to have freedom and this business model has allowed me that so I want to help others do so as well. You will need to put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this but trust me it's fucking worth it. How does sitting at a beach bar with your laptop in South East Asia or Mexico working sound to you? Well, it's fucking good, so grind on.
I'll come back and edit parts of this later as it's poorly written but I was rushing it out as I have a lot of client work to do.
