An insider look at how clients see you and tips to impress them.
Tips To Win Freelancing Jobs On Upwork
Easily win freelancing jobs on Upwork as a beginner and build your way to the top.
I started my career on Upwork. I got my first paid gig from there. That moment is heavenly for any freelancer that’s just starting out. It magically cooks up a ton of motivation inside you.
I know a lot of freelancers are desperate, eager, and over the cloud, waiting to somehow grab your first few gigs on Upwork. You might’ve won your first job but you may be struggling for the next one.
Or you could be one of the unluckiest freelancers without even a single contract beneath your name.
My Upwork profile does pretty well now, without a single warning, suspension, or dispute. My profile shines with 100% JSS. And I get around 10 invitations every day. This means I’m getting closer to my Top Rated badge every week.
I made my profile in the first week of February 2021. As evident from the screenshot below, I got my first gig by the last week of Feb. During this time, I tried tips from a lot of internet gurus out there. A few of them worked. Many of them didn’t. So I thought of this article to curate stuff that actually worked for me. I’m also an active client on Upwork so I know what usually tempts me to check out a proposal.
I’m not a hiring expert. Nor am I a freelancing divinity. But I have some experience. A lot, I believe. If you’re an Upworker and you’re struggling to land on your first, second, third, or tenth job there, I might be able to hook you up with some meaningful, practical, and effective cues. Believe me, it works.
You might already know that feedback on your profile matters the most on Upwork. So you can use these techniques to win jobs and beef up your profile. Some tips in this article won’t matter much once you collect a ton of contracts and positive reviews. Because when your profile is sturdy with over 90% JSS and a lot of reviews, your invitation tab will be flooded with premium clients. And when you get there, you’ll never have to browse and apply for jobs anymore. Your life will be, for the most part, settled!
Pack yourself well
The screenshot below is an insider look at my client account. What you’re seeing is the list of freelancers that applied to one of my job posts. For privacy concerns, I’ve censored the personal info of the applied freelancers.
When you apply for a job, the first few things we see are your profile picture, your name, and your title. You add this info while creating your freelancer profile but you can always go back there and edit them. Except for your name. There’s a whole other process to changing your name.
As a freelancer in the market, this is your packaging. Clients see this stuff first. Use a professional profile picture with a slightly smiling or laughing face.
I’m not sure how other clients take this but seeing a happy freelancer makes me happy. It gives me better vibes than looking at a grumpy face.
Then comes your title. As a client, reading a title that’s too long or too short kinda turns my hiring mood off.
Come up with a professional title that’s short and simple but explains what exactly you do as a freelancer. If you’re a content writer, something like ‘Senior Content Writer’, ‘Content Writer’, or ‘Professional Content Writer’ will make the cut.
If you have a specific niche that you’re focusing on, you may create a niche-based title. For instance, if you’re a graphics designer working primarily on vector illustrations, you can choose a title like ‘Vector Designer’, or ‘Vector Artist’.
Just try to make it simple but elegant.
The Hook of Your Proposal
Next is your proposal. As a client, I will still skim through the two lines of proposals even if the profile picture and title look crappy. So this part is extremely important. Doing it right could land you on your next freelance gig.
As evident from the screenshot, Upwork shows the client two whole lines of a freelancer’s proposal. In this case, the line breaks in your proposal don’t matter as Upwork will bring all the beginning sentences together for the clients and make them fit in two entire lines.
And that explains how important the opening sentences of your proposal are. This is the hook. Make it sharp and fruitful. Make it so good that the fish will bite the worm!
Essentially, what you can do is introduce yourself in three words. For example:
“Hi, I’m SpongeBob.”
Then, write about what you’ve understood from the job post. This is basically an acknowledgment of the job post so the client will immediately know that you’ve read their stuff.
“I read through your job post and I understand that you’re looking for a writer to fix your website content.”
Moving on, we will still have a bunch of space left to fill the two lines. This is where you’ll tell the client you’re a good fit and your experience or knowledge about the job. Here, you can either be too specific or generic.
Let’s say the job is for a writer to fill content on a website. More specifically, the post has mentioned it’s an IT company that deals in web/app designing and development.
If you have a similar experience, you can be too specific.
“I believe I’ll be a good fit for this position as I’ve written landing pages for two other IT web/app design & development companies in the past.”
This way, you’re letting the client know you’ve written website content before. For IT companies. For IT companies that do design and development. That’s specific enough to convince a client to shortlist you.
When you go too specific, make sure you back up your claims with appropriate samples and proof. If the sample is an attachment, let your client know what’s attached by briefly mentioning that in the next line or sentence. If the sample is a URL, add that instead.
If you don’t have a really specific experience, you can just be generic and write a broadened claim.
“I believe I’ll be a good fit for this position as I’ve written content for multiple websites in the past.”
Remember to always add the most relevant samples you have. Even if you go generic, add samples. The best ones you have. Because the hook of your proposal can only convince clients to check out the entire application.
With strong samples to back up your claims, you level up the game and convince the client you’re the right fit.
Customize Each Proposal
You must’ve heard this a thousand times before. This has been and will be the supreme technique to increase your chances of winning a job. Not only beginners but freelancing ninjas as well can equally reap better winning chances doing this.
The idea is easy; customize each proposal to best relate to the job post you’re applying to.
But you don’t necessarily have to come up with brand new proposals every time there’s a job you need to apply for.
Instead, create multiple proposal templates. If you’re a designer and you know both designing and development, make 2 different proposal drafts for each job role. You can create further templates for each sub-skill you know, like CSS, JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, etc.
I’m a writer and I use different templates to apply for job posts. So if there’s a job post for a copywriter, I’ll use the template created for copywriting, which mostly talks about copywriting, my experience in copywriting, and my skills as a copywriter. This way, the info in my proposal will be very related and specific to the job post.
Likewise, if I’m applying for a job as an article writer, my proposal will be entirely different, which mostly focuses on my experience in usual articles, blogs, and stuff.
So create different proposal templates for each role. And when you’re applying for a job, mess with the default sentences or add more to better relate to the job post.
What works best will be to acknowledge the important points in the posting, and then mention how you’ve worked/attempted to work on similar projects.
Filter Out The Potential Job Posts You Can Win As a Beginner
The idea of becoming successful on Upwork is to keep completing contracts until you reach a point where you get many premium clients in your invitation tab. If you haven’t got to that level yet, keep winning and completing jobs. This tip is really powerful to help you win them.
What we’ll do here is filter out the untapped opportunities on Upwork. The trick is easy.
On your job feed, you’ll see a ‘Search for job’ bar at the top. Start typing your particular skill and choose one from the suggestions. These are essentially keywords that you can choose to find job posts that are tagged with the same skills.
So if you’re a content writer, start by typing ‘content’ and choose the most relevant keyword from the suggestions.
If you’re a web developer, you can start by typing ‘developer’ or ‘developing’ to see the list of skills in that area.
Please note that you can only search for one skill/keyword at a time. So it’s better if you open up multiple browser tabs and search for all the relevant keywords of your skills in each tab.
So one tab can be for ‘content writer’, the next one for ‘content writing’, another one for ‘article writer’, and so on. This way, you’ll be able to find all the jobs open within your niche.
Once you have the tabs set up and searched, you’ll see a bunch of filter options on the left side. This is where your opportunity lies.
1. Category
The first filter we have is Category. Click on it and choose a category related to your skills.
Each category will have an ‘All’ option at the top. You can either choose this if you do everything within that category or you can check one or more specific sub-categories that you do.
When a client is creating a job post, we have to choose a category to find relevant freelancers for the task(screenshot below). So this filter basically brings up only the jobs posts within the category you choose.
Using the Category filter is not necessary every time. In case your skill is not listed in the categories filter, simply searching for it will be the right thing to do.
I’m a writer and Upwork doesn’t have ‘Article Writing’ in this filter. So I just search for it and it brings up all the job posts with that keyword and tag.
2. Experience Level
This is the next filter we need to use to easily win jobs on Upwork. Our goal here is to win potential jobs to strengthen your profile so we won’t be aiming for gigs with lofty pay rates.
Plus, this is a really powerful technique for new freelancers on the platform. If you’re not willing to work at or below the average pay, please skip this filter.
Check the first two options- Entry Level and Intermediate.
While creating a job post, clients can choose any of the 3 three expertise levels as shown in the screenshot below. So if a client goes with Entry level, they’re looking for a new freelancer who can work for the cheapest rate.
If a client goes with Intermediate, then they’re looking for a freelancer(s) with some experience in the field that can work for the average pay.
You can choose both or any of the two levels depending on the pay you’re willing to work for.
Using this filter will show jobs within these expertise levels. They will be clients with a specific and limited budget. With a limited budget in hand, the client knows they won’t attract freelancers that are already at the peak of the mountain.
So they will consider inexperienced and new freelancers on the platform. That’s a great opportunity for freelancers wanting to build up their profile. And a great opportunity for clients seeking value for their limited budget.
And this filter sets you both up for a date ;)
3. Number of Proposals
The final option to check helps us filter out job posts based on the number of proposals it’s received. The key here is to find postings with less than 15 proposals.
To drive them out, you can use this filter and check the first three options- Less than 5, 5 to 10, and 10 to 15.
Some job posts get hidden away due to the irrelevant tags the client use while posting the job. Because they’re hidden away, they won’t have more than 5 proposals even after 24 hours of posting the gig.
Since we are searching for jobs with multiple keywords in multiple browser tabs, such hidden job posts will show up in one or more of the searches. This opens up a portal of untapped opportunities for you.
In my case, I usually find 2–4 fit freelancers for my job posts out of the 15–20 proposals I receive. The remaining freelancers will be mostly unprofessional and they’ll sound like kids. So even if I receive 50 proposals, I’d have hired someone by the time I get the first 20 applications.
If you’re good with your skills, and you can sound professional using the initial methods in this article, you’ll certainly stand out among the proposals. And you’re ultimately increasing your chance of success if you manage to be in the first few proposals.
Combining these 3 filters will pick out the best opportunities for you to build your profile. Finally, you can save your searches to access them faster the next time.
These are some of the techniques you should practice to get your first few freelancing jobs on Upwork. From my experience, I haven’t seen many people follow these methods so I’m sure this article will be a great insight for beginners on Upwork.
I know this article is already a long one so I’ll wind up now. In the next week, I’ll release a follow-up story that will guide you through some effective interview techniques to increase your odds of winning jobs after getting interviews on Upwork.
My rate of being hired from interviews is over 50% on Upwork so I’m sure it will benefit you big time!
I really appreciate you for reading this far. Thank you and keep an out for the follow-up story.
Cheers :)
