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I posted an Upwork proposal!

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

Sadik

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I took a family vacation for two weeks and I returned two days ago. This was the first time that I went away on a vacation without my Laptop. While on my holiday I found myself browsing through TFF a lot on my phone. I rarely post here but read a LOT usually but on my vacation it seems whenever I wanted to "connect" I instead ended up reading this forum. I blame poor content everywhere else! :)

AND I noticed a pattern. I could be wrong but I saw many people struggling to come up with a few bucks when they are really struggling. Like for example, they really need an extra $1K per month to extend their runway while they are building their business or maybe someone who is in a lot of debt and HAS to come up with some extra cash to cover costs etc. I kept reading these posts and wondered why don't these people just get some freelance jobs off upwork? It's so easy, I made a ton of money there, And getting a couple of jobs per month to generate an extra $1K can't be so hard, right? RIGHT?

And in my moment of self importance, I made up my mind to finally properly step out of the shadows and make a detailed guide on how to write killing proposals and guarantee a decent side income from Upwork and post it on TFF. Sure, there's @Lex DeVille's brilliant threads and guides on Upwork. But I can write them simpler and hammer the message into their brains, I thought! (in the said moment of misguided self-importance :D) I even made some mental notes and outline on what I would like to write.

So I got back home and started my PC and reality did hit pretty fast. Sadik, you haven't written a god damn proposal on Upwork for more than two years! And you have perhaps written three in the last five years! The reason, well, I get a lot of invites. One of my upwork jobs turned into a remote part time job and I have had to decline invites every few days! Well this last part may seem a boast but it's 100% truth. Here's proof:

declines.jpg


So, I, who has NOT written a proposal in more than two years am in no position to advise people on how to win jobs on Upwork. So, can I change that, I wondered. So I decided to do an experiment. I modified my Upwork profile to a different skill set than the skill set I am in demand for. I searched for jobs and just about 10 minutes ago sent a cover letter proposal after two years! YAY! :)

What I would like to do is the following:

1> Test myself that what I would like to advise other people works as I think it does.
2> Outline my way of thinking in as simple a language as possible and post here.

What would really make me happy is if someone out there who's struggling to get a job on Upwork can implement what I have to share and win some projects! :)

Let's see what happens. Fingers crossed. The client is in Melbourne, Australia so it won't be before tomorrow that I receive a reply or NOT :(
 
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Vairavan

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The advice you gave me on PM is pure gold.

I can't wait to see the results.

Watched with email notification.

P.S. My 2 cents on the title: Use something like"How to write a proposal that will guarantee 1k/month" to get more views for this (future gold? :smile: ) thread.
 
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ZF Lee

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What would really make me happy is if someone out there who's struggling to get a job on Upwork can implement what I have to share and win some projects! :)
Looking forward to this thread!

IMO, getting the first job isn't the hard part.

Staying true to the client, and upkeeping with the next 4-5 projects IS the hard part. :)
 

Sadik

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The advice you gave me on PM is pure gold.

I can't wait to see the results.

Watched with email notification.

P.S. My 2 cents on the title: Use something like"How to write a proposal that will guarantee 1k/month" to get more views for this (future gold? :smile: ) thread.
I actually deliberately kept the title low key. I meant to start a new thread if this went well... :) I was kinda still hoping to stay below the radar you know, he he. It's a subconscious trait I have.

Edit: How's your upwork bidding going on? Have you landed any clients yet?
 
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Siddhartha

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So you're aiming to test whether or not you still have the upwork mojo, and whether or not you can take and simplify this for others?

Any hot tips for the neophytes?
 

MitchM

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A little story related to this: I wanted to get some cash to pay for my trip overseas instead of spending my amazon money.

So, over the course of 2 hours I applied for a bunch of amazon consulting stuff and by the next day I had a $5k gig helping someone launch on amazon.

Didn’t expect that at all, but it would make great clickbait:

How I earned $5,000 in 2 Hours on Upwork.

Edit: Also, the way I qualified myself with a new account and everything was easy.

Essentially I just told the truth. I have zero reviews because I actually make my living from Amazon (unlike these other people).

But... extra money never hurt.

I also immediately made the person who contacted me call me instead. Because I’m actually knowledgeable about the topic it was easy.
 

Sadik

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Ok, so this guy I sent a proposal to has NOT replied. I was perhaps a bit too overambitious thinking I would get a gig from a single proposal. Looking at it, there are a few reasons I can think of why he hasn't. One of them being that he simply hasn't seen it... Been only 24 hours.

But, this reminds me of an important lesson. The market doesn't care about how good you are. The market only cares about the problems needing solved.

I want to carry on this experiment. So tomorrow I am going to shortlist and post on a few projects. This is actually good because I will have to dig deeper than I thought.

To provide some more details, I am kind of an expert on a particular php based MVC application. It's pretty niche and I have several projects to my name so getting a project in this field is easy for me. I have now switched my profile entirely to a "Wordpress Expert". Wordpress as you all know is a "catch-all" market. My goal is to show that even in an over crowded market there is demand for quality providers and one can still command premium rates.

So let's see, I will keep you guys posted.
 
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Sadik

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So you're aiming to test whether or not you still have the upwork mojo, and whether or not you can take and simplify this for others?

Any hot tips for the neophytes?
I have several tips, but I am gonna hold off writing anything until I have the results of this exercise.
 

Sadik

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Update! :)

I have good and bad news.

The good news is that the client I submitted the first proposal for replied! YAY! We are discussing the work he needs and it looks like I should have his project. He actually hadn't logged in for 3 days after posting the job and only today saw my proposal and replied!

The bad news is that in the 3 days that I did not hear back from him, I applied on 3 more jobs and none of the three replied. Two jobs look like they have been abandoned. These two guys also haven't seen my proposal yet! :D The third guy hired someone else.

Yesterday while pondering upon why I hadn't heard back from any of the four proposals (at that time), I decided to conduct a second experiment. Maybe there's something about Upwork's clients which I am missing, I thought. So I logged into my Upwork client account (I have hired people off Upwork in some unrelated tasks) and posted a Wordpress job. And BOY was I in for a surprise. There's so much s***t going on in there. I have received 16 proposals in 24 hours ranging from $8 / hr to $40 / hr. There is SO SO much going on there that it will take quite some time to unpack. The short conclusion is that Upwork's interface is heavily biased in favour of a>First Movers and b>Low priced ok-ish providers.

This means that if you are a quality provider who takes their time to analyze a client's requirement and respond and you do value your time with a decent rate, you are at a slight disadvantage. But it's a half empty / half filled glass kind of thing. The counter argument is that you don't want to work for clients who want to pay so little for your time and who aren't patient.

Anyways, I do plan to post my observations and results of these tests and hopefully help some upwork freelancers out there. I will have to write more than I originally thought so it's gonna take a little while, but I will do it. Between coding for my new SaaS service and managing existing clients there's pressure on available time! :)
 

Sadik

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Update! :D

So I now have two new hourly clients on Upwork! YAY! :) Both are very nice people and am enjoying talking to some new clients after years!

28227

Sorry I had to hide details. I am also in talks with a third one and he has to take care of some things and would probably hire me too.

In summary, I started writing proposals on October 14th. I sent a total of 7 proposals and I have two hourly contracts now and one potentially coming very soon.

The Four that I missed. Two were abandoned likely before I sent my proposal. Probably they found someone elsewhere, we will never know. Of the other two, one was a mistake on my part where I went in for a client who needed immediate urgent help, and I was late. The final one is the one where someone else got hired though I would like to think the client never read my proposal.

As I mentioned earlier I also posted a job on Upwork to understand what's going on in the client's interface. And I then modified my profile and proposals based on my observations. I honestly liked Elance more before Upwork took it over and merged it. I wish there were another platform which gave competition to Upwork because at the moment they are a near monopoly.

I will write a thread soon based on my experiences here and what I know of Freelancing generally.
 
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Sadik

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I will write a thread soon based on my experiences here and what I know of Freelancing generally.

Done.
 

Sadik

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So I completed a couple of wordpress projects on Upwork and have another couple in process. I just now turned down THREE wordpress related job invites. One of them was a long term project worth more than 3K USD at least. I declined because it would have needed at least a couple of weeks of full time attention which I can't provide at the moment.

Just goes on to show how saturated Upwork is!

Yes I do have a 100% job satisfaction score and am top rated but those were all for my past tech work. The two projects I just completed were the first two I ever did on wordpress.

I am seeing an insane amount of demand on Upwork for wordpress. The main challenge isn't really the thousands of low priced freelancers, the main challenge is separating the good clients from bad ones and reaching out to the good ones.
 

GigMistress

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The short conclusion is that Upwork's interface is heavily biased in favour of a>First Movers and b>Low priced ok-ish providers.

This means that if you are a quality provider who takes their time to analyze a client's requirement and respond and you do value your time with a decent rate, you are at a slight disadvantage. But it's a half empty / half filled glass kind of thing. The counter argument is that you don't want to work for clients who want to pay so little for your time and who aren't patient.

I see that assertion about speed and price on Upwork posted often in various freelancing forums. My observation has been that it depends entirely on the type and level of service you offer and the type of client you are looking to work with. The vast majority of jobs on Upwork are crap, and for many of those jobs and some of the others, what you say here seems to hold true.

But, the people I know who consistently do well on Upwork all charge upwards of $100/hour, and none keeps a close eye on the job feed. My Upwork bidding experience, while not fresh, is a bit fresher than yours, and I have been hired on jobs I bid on several days after they were posted--my assumption is that none of the quick posters had the skill level the client was looking for.
 
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