How I Made My First $1,000 on Upwork

I meant to write down this text as soon as I hit $1,000. It took me a short time to urge there, but once I did, I hit $2,000 shortly after. Now I'm receiving numerous invitations I had to show off my availability. I expect to hit $3,000 any day now. My initial goal was to form $10,000 in one year. I don’t think I will be able to have any problem crushing that. How did I do it? Like this.

Find Your Specialization
I’ve worked in digital marketing for many of my adult life. During that point I’ve done SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media, web design and everything else under the digital marketing sun. this is often not uncommon for somebody during a marketing 9–5 role. But on Upwork, that
doesn’t fly.

I first began to market myself on Upwork as a jack-of-all-trades digital marketing professional. I landed a few low-paying gigs writing blog posts for a few content farms. I got one web design job. Then an SEO gig. All of those were low-paying and hard to return by. With these jobs, I made about $600. Not bad, but considering it took almost three months to form that much, it had been hardly well worth the hours I put in.

I decided to hone in on the skill that I most enjoyed, it also happened to by what I could charge the foremost for web design. I then narrowed done that farther into a selected CMS and decided to only apply for gigs with companies during a specific market — on behalf of me this was non-profit organizations and consulting businesses. Sure, there have been tons of fewer jobs that fit these parameters, but that allowed me to actually craft my cover letter. Now I land interviews at a really sustainable rate.

Raise Your Rates
I read this recommendation everywhere once I was first starting out. It seemed romantic, but I didn’t think it had been right on my behalf of me. I began posing for $25/hour. At $25/hour i might need to work 40 hours on UpWork to succeed in $1000, which seemed unattainable considering what percentage jobs I used to be applying for and the way little time those jobs were taking (1–2 hours).
Once I honed in on my specialty, I raised my rates $50/hour. an enormous increase. I also only applied to flat-rate jobs if they paid a minimum of $400. These rates are still very low within the world of web design so I decide to raise my rates more. Its important to think about what proportion time it takes to land clients once you are setting your rate as a freelancer. believe what percentage hours you spend trying to find gigs, apply for gigs, doing administrative work, tracking finances, etc.
I was amazed at how quickly a better hourly rate affected my interview rates. i used to be not only getting more interest in my work, i used to be recuperating clients with higher budgets. These clients were also far more professional and easier to figure with.
Looking back, I wish I never took those low paying jobs.

Communicate
Probably the foremost important part of receiving regeneration on Upwork (and anywhere in life) is to speak effectively. it's important that your clients have realistic expectations. Before I start any contract, I confirm the client’s expectations are clear, budgets are understood and timelines are set.
While performing on a contract I confirm that less than two days pass on faith in with the client. this is often helpful in order that they know that I haven’t forgotten about them which I'm actively working to satisfy their needs.

I also work a full-time job, so communication is often difficult. So I'm very open about this with all of my clients. I tell them my work schedule which communication is often delayed during those times. This hasn’t been a problem with any of my clients. I work around my 9–5 schedule by scheduling calls early within the morning, early within the evening or over my lunch break.
One other major advantage of quality communication is that you’ll get paid faster. As any freelancer knows, projects are often delayed because you’re expecting the client to deliver something or make a choice on something. Don’t pester your clients, but confirm they know what's missing. One great way to remind clients is to send them an inventory of incomplete items and note the items you're performing on and therefore the belongings you need them to figure on. The advantage of combining your list of deliverables with their list is that's doesn’t make the client feel guilty. It shares the burden and lets your client know you're organized and on top of things.
Go Above and Beyond

Once you and therefore the client has clear expectations, exceed those expectations (while staying within the budget of course). For me, this often means adding some custom CSS or Javascript to a site to form it a touch more dynamic. Once you’ve done this for one site, it makes it very easy to try to on others, so it typically only takes a touch little bit of overtime. If the client has also hired me to assist with writing copy, I’ll sometimes write meta descriptions and implement them.
Clients like to see something special that you simply didn’t originally discuss.
Side note: I might never do that if a client wants to stay the project as cheap as possible or if the deadline is ASAP. You’ll need to check out your clients a touch bit to ascertain if this is often even something they might want. And this also works better for fixed-rate contracts so there's no time-clock to stress about.