With the advent of COVID-19 and the subsequent depreciation of most world currencies, most people have turned to freelance to augment their income. One such freelance site that is receiving much attention is Upwork.
What then is Upwork, and how can you make money on it? This is the question we’ll be answering in this article. If it interests you to make money on Upwork, then you may need to grab yourself a cup of coffee or your favorite drink, relax and read this article through. I assure you that you’ll find something very interesting.
Table of Contents
What is Upwork?
Upwork (formerly known as oDesk and Elance) is one of the world’s most popular freelancing platforms. It enjoys tremendous patronage from companies that need to outsource some tasks or projects to qualified professionals to handle their problems.
Upwork is not just for companies seeking to outsource their tasks; it’s also a community of professionals of varying degrees of competence, most of whom want to build a career by solving problems and performing tasks for others who are willing to pay for their services.
What do you need to take off as a freelancer on Upwork? Simple! All that is needed is your computer and skill(s) to take advantage of this marketplace. You can use it to jumpstart your career and build a continual residual income flow.
How Does It Work?
What kind of tasks, you ask? Upwork, like Fiverr, covers almost every kind of task that is done on a computer, from language translation to online teaching. Name it, and Upwork covers it.
Your first step as a talent or freelancer is to put up an attractive profile. Fill in the profile with your credentials, such as your skills, your academic qualifications, your accolades, previous work done, etc. This is to showcase the kind of job you’re suitable for and to entice job advertisers to select your services.
It’s extremely difficult for job posters to find you and give you a job directly unless you’re a well-established freelancer. And I don’t see how you can be a well-established freelancer if you’re just starting out.
You, therefore, need to make your profile healthy and attractive. You’ll need to write job proposals to enable you to get your first job offer. Like any other business, it may not be easy to get your first job. But once you’ve done your first job well and you have a good review, then you’re good to go
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Is Upwork a good way to make money?
According to Jake-Jorgovan, Upwork has the highest-earning community of freelancers, with a gross earning of about $920 million. This makes Upwork one of the veritable platforms to begin your freelancing business journey.
Both the contractors (job advertisers) and the freelancers benefit mutually from the Upwork platform. The freelancer builds a career with the jobs he secures on the platform, and the contractor is also not left out in the cold as Upwork provides an app, which the contractor can install on his computer.
This app randomly takes a snapshot of the screen of the freelancer’s computer while the contract is in process. This enables the contractor to monitor the progress being made on his job and also assures him that the freelancer is not just surfing the internet with his money.
This is a big plus for Upwork above other freelancing platforms and a point of attraction to many contractors.
The tip for making money on Upwork as a beginner is to start small. Apply for the tiny jobs in your niche. They don’t pay much, but it’s a good place to start. Give the job your best shot. With quality work done and a bit of luck, you may have good reviews. Be consistent and patient.
When your good reviews build up and your reputation skyrockets, you can then hike up your rate and start making good bucks.
Just a side note! When your reputation builds up and you become a go-to freelancer, always remember to update your profile.
How to Make Money on Upwork Without Experience
We’ve already covered most of the things I want to say here in the preceding sections. Nobody is born with experience in any niche. It takes learning and practice to gain experience.
The same applies to working with Upwork. The first thing to do upon signing up with Upwork, which you can do >>HERE<<, is to look around and see what others are doing, how they set up their profiles, and most importantly, how they bid for offers. This may take a little time, but it’s worth it.
As already stated above, you need to start small. Remember that, presently, there’s fierce competition on Upwork. It’s like the survival of the fittest. Apply for those tiny jobs that the big fish ignore.
Do your best to impress the contractors or job advertisers, and with a bit of luck, you may accumulate quality reviews. I say a bit of luck because those who post these tiny jobs are the most difficult people to please. If you encounter such people after you’ve done your best on the job, don’t let that deter you. Keep doing a quality job for others, and you’ll surely cross the bar.
Please note that having no experience does not mean you have no skills. Look for jobs that require your skills. It may come out counter-productive if you go for any kind of job available simply because you want to build your reputation very quickly.
Building a reputation takes time, and the rate is not the same for everybody. A lot also depends on the niche you are in. So many niches are saturated that it may take a long time before you’re noticed. This calls for proper research before you put up your profile.
One of the surest ways to make money on Upwork is to be online almost 24/7. This will enable you to be one of the early birds whenever a juicy job is posted on the platform. Throw in your proposal as soon as the job offer drops. Spread your tentacles to many job offers because there’s no guarantee that the job you bid for will be given to you even if you have the best proposal script.
But you may say, “I have no skills.” Don’t worry. I have you covered. You can become an Upwork affiliate marketer. You can sign up for an account >>HERE<<. After signing up, you’ll locate the affiliate program at the bottom of the page as you scroll down. Follow the prompt when you have clicked on it. It will take you to impact.com, the affiliate network that is in charge of its affiliate program. Finish up your registration with them, obtain your referral link, and you’re good to go.
Your job is to find a way to get people to sign up with Upwork and transact with one or two businesses, and you’ll be rewarded with commissions.
What to do? If you have a blog, you can replicate what you’re reading right now and insert your affiliate link.
Of course, you are at liberty to do the same through social media. A better way is to use paid advertising to promote it, if you can afford it.
How to be successful on Upwork
Being successful on Upwork is both simple and complex. It depends on which side of the coin you’re looking at.
To be successful, you must have a humble beginning. You must treat your venture on Upwork as a business, not a hobby, especially now that there’s fierce competition in the freelancing business. The first port of call is your profile.
Your profile is like your CV for a job hunt. It’s your first marketing tool for potential contractors. I encourage you to take some time to put up a pull-in profile. It may not be easy to make it the first time, especially if Upwork is your first freelancing platform to work with.
One thing you must avoid at all costs is claiming what you’re not. Internet users are getting wiser by the day, and they have a way of sifting through your claims to know what is true or not.
Before putting up the profile, do proper keyword research. This will enable you to know which niches are very competitive. When you find low-competition niches, find out the five top sellers in that niche. Check their profiles and model your own after the most impressive of them, but please don’t copy and paste.
You must note that no matter how impressive your profile is, at the very beginning, not many contractors will trust you enough to give you their tasks. This is the reason why I advised earlier on, and I still advise, to start small. Look for, and apply for, those tiny jobs within your niche. The pay is not always encouraging, but if you know where you’re going, this shouldn’t deter you.
The biggest mistake you’ll make is treating the tiny jobs with laxity because the pay is not much. To put it simply, how you treat these initial, tiny jobs could make or mar your career on Upwork.
Try the best you can to accumulate positive reviews. This is your ladder to success.
You must be consistent. Be online 24/7 (if that is possible). Make sure you over-deliver on your completed projects. Give extra to what you promised. This helps to build trust between you and the contractors, some of whom may come back later with bigger contracts.
Interact with the contractors in the process of completing the tasks. Make suggestions to them, establishing rapport if need be. Step after step, your reputation builds up. When it does, you can review your hourly rate. And if you have established a good rapport, it will not be out of place for those contractors who gave you tiny jobs to seek you out and still give you more jobs even with your price reviewed upward.
Finally, don’t be greedy and accumulate offers when you know your hands are full and you’ll not be able to deliver on schedule. If you’ve already made that mistake, you can outsource some of your offers to less busy freelancers, especially the newbies. This will help you deliver on time and maintain a healthy relationship with your contractors.
How much can a beginner earn from Upwork?
There’s no straight answer to this question. Several factors come into play here. For instance, the attitude of the beginner to his business on Upwork. A beginner who sees his stay on Upwork as a casual thing will also make casual money. A business-minded newbie who invests his time and energy into it may make a reasonable income out of it.
A lot of freelancers make as much as $10,000–$20,000 a month. Others make $5,000, $3,000, or $1,000 per month. It all depends. Some niches are hot, and talents in those areas can earn so much. I’ve already advised that you need to do research to find those niches, and if luck is on your side, you may have skills in them.
The bottom line is that how much a beginner can make on Upwork is a combination of many factors, including luck. You can make money in even the dullest niche, provided you know how to go about it. Remember, smart work pays better than hard work.
The easiest jobs on Upwork
I’d like to see the easiest jobs as those where you put in minimal effort but make a high income. In my many years at Upwork, I haven’t seen such a job. If there was, by now it would have been overcrowded. Who wouldn’t want a job where you do little and earn so much?
If we follow job analysis or profiling, then such easy jobs will not yield high dividends. It’s just like a come-easy-go-easy kind of thing. If you want to build a career out of Upwork, there’s no need to look for the easiest jobs, because those contractors who post such jobs must have weighed them and know what it will take to have them done.
By the way, what is easy for one professional may be very tough for another professional. So, it’s your skills and experience that will make a job look easy or otherwise.
Which is better, Upwork or Fiverr?
Upwork and Fiverr are both freelancing platforms. Their modes of operation are similar.
Being a member of both platforms, I see them as duplicate copies of each other.
Fiverr derived its name from the original charge of any single operation performed on its platform: five dollars. Each operation or service offered on the platform is known as a “GIG.”
On the other hand, Upwork started as oDesk and Elance, and their initial charge for each operation was $4 (four dollars).
Both platforms have made tremendous changes to their policies, thereby allowing freelancers to build careers around them. For instance, on Fiverr, you can offer gigs and charge as much as $100 or more, depending on the niche. The same goes for Upwork. They have also become so versatile in their gig offers that there’s hardly any task done on the computer that you’ll not find on their platforms. You can get more information from our blog post “Fiverr affiliate program: what you should know about the various types“
They’re so versatile that I’m reluctant to answer which is a better question because both are good. As for different platforms, it will naturally be expected that there will be slight differences in administration, but you will achieve the same result (at least, almost).
My candid advice is that if you’re building a career around freelancing, you can apply to both platforms. If you have two skills or more, you can showcase one skill on one platform and the other skill on the other platform.
If you decide to be a Fiverr affiliate marketer, register =>>HERE<<
You may decide to follow my way. I registered on both platforms with the same skill profile. When the jobs started rolling in and I could no longer cope with meeting targets, I outsourced to a less busy freelancer I had trained.
How to get jobs on Upwork
To get jobs on Upwork, you must learn to hunt for jobs. This means that you must be online at least 98% of the time. Go to the marketplace to scout for job offers already posted. Bid on the offers. Bid for as many as you can, provided they fall within your skill set and profile.
Learn to write a professional job proposal. Select your words carefully. Make your proposal short and straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary niceties. I have seen people keep a job proposal template, which they copy and paste into every job offer.
You must avoid this at all costs. Before you apply, read the contractor’s offer carefully, noting his terms and conditions as well as his requirements. Repeat some of these requirements in your proposal to let him know that you’ve read his offer and understand the task. Address him by name if he has made his name available on the job offer.
A note of warning! Don’t apply for jobs that you’re not competent to handle, even if they fall within your profile radius. Avoid things that will earn you negative reviews. One negative review can pull you back 10 steps. So, avoid it.
Also, note that it is unprofessional to ask your contractor directly to give you a 5-star review, even if you’ve done a high-quality job. You may be penalized if Upwork discovers what you did.
Be consistent in delivering your jobs promptly. Nothing makes a contractor happier than delivering your job on schedule. If, for any reason, you will not be able to meet the target, it’s advisable that you solicit the understanding of the contractor and humbly ask for more time.
The Best Skills for Upwork
In my opinion, there’s no best skill on Upwork. What we refer to as “best skills” are those that are in high demand and that bring you the most money. The internet world is changing rapidly, especially with the advent of COVID-19. The skill that is in high demand today may take a back seat tomorrow.
The important thing is to give your best in whatever skill you are learning. As long as that skill is listed on the platform, there’s a market for it. Keep grinding, and you’ll get there.
increase, expand, and increase. Freelancing has come to stay. Today, almost everyone, especially stay-at-home moms, prefers remote jobs.
Upwork is revolutionary, and it’s abreast with the times. I believe that beyond 2023, they will come up with policies that will make them relevant at any point in time. Find out what the future holds for affiliate marketing and freelancing business in this blog post.
Yes is my answer to the question, if the question is directed at me. I encourage you to invest in your freelancing business, either on Upwork or Fiverr, if that’s what you want. You’re not about to lose your investment.
Is working on Upwork worth it?
Yes! It’s worth it, especially if you take it seriously as a business. Upwork is expanding its scope very often, and it’s becoming more popular by the day. A lot of small business owners have confidence in posting their job offers on the platform and monitoring the progress of the tasks with the app recently introduced by Upwork. This app kind of assures them that action is being taken on their tasks and not that freelancers are playing around with their money.
The higher this confidence goes, the more jobs are posted on the platform and the more money freelancers make on Upwork.
Conclusion.
Let’s have a recap of this discussion.
Upwork (previously known as oDesk and Elance) has come to be one of the world’s most popular freelancing platforms. Upwork, like Fiverr, covers almost every kind of task that is done on a computer. From language translation to online teaching, Upwork covers it. Both the contractors (job advertisers) and the freelancers benefit mutually from the Upwork platform. The freelancer builds a career with the jobs he secures on the platform, and the contractor is also not left out in the cold as Upwork provides an app, which the contractor can install on his computer.
Experience is needed to handle most of the challenges in Upwork, but If you are low on experience at the moment, don’t worry. At least you have skills, and that’s the building block of experience. Look for jobs that require your skills. You need to be online 24/7 as that is the surest bet to make money on Upwork.
A lot, however, depends on the niche you’ve chosen, as it may take a long time before you’re noticed. How to be successful on Upwork is both simple and complex. Your job is to find a way to get people to sign up with Upwork and transact with one or two businesses. If you have a blog, you can replicate what you’re reading right now and insert your affiliate link.
To be successful, you must have a humble beginning. You must treat your venture on Upwork as a business, not a hobby. Be online 24/7 (if that is possible). Make sure you over-deliver on your completed projects. This helps build trust between you and the contractors.
A lot of freelancers make a substantial amount of money every month. Some make $3,000, $5,000, $10,000–$20,000 a month. How much a beginner can make on Upwork depends on a combination of many factors. If you want to build a career out of Upwork, there’s no need to look for the easiest jobs.
Fiverr derived its name from its original charge for any single operation performed on its platform: While Upwork started its operation with $4 (four dollars) per task performed, Each operation or service offered on the platform is known as a “GIG.”
If you have two skills or more, you can showcase one on Upwork and the other on Fiverr. Go to the marketplace to scout for job offers and bid on the offers. Don’t apply for jobs that you’re not competent to handle, even if they fall within your profile radius. Be consistent in delivering your jobs promptly. If, for any reason, you will not be able to meet the target, let the contractor know ahead of time and humbly ask for more time.
There’s no “best skill” in Upwork; what we call “best skills” are the skills that are in high demand and that bring the most money. Upwork is revolutionary, and it’s abreast with the times. Most people, especially stay-at-home moms, prefer to work from home. If you want to invest in your freelancing business, either on Upwork or Fiverr, go ahead.
