Category: Upwork

Upwork Just Made a Big Move and You Should Pay Attention

There ARE still people who believe the future of work is NOT freelance. Hard to believe, but it’s true. They’re the people who put air quotes around “work” when you say you work from home. And couldn’t tell you what Zoom is. They’ll also be the people asking you how you did it in a few years. Try to be nice. I experienced something similar when I told people, way back in 2004, that the internet would be the future of business. “The Yahoo chat thing? Bahaha. Okaaaay.” they scoffed. We know how that played out. Meanwhile, big companies see

John Morris July 31, 2020

How Upwork Turned Freelancers Against Each Other

That’s an actual article on Hacker Noon. You might think this kind of thing gets my jimmies rustled. Au contraire! I love it. It might be the most glorious summation of crap ideas about Upwork, ever assembled. Here’s a few of my favorites… “There’s no such thing as ‘competition’ in freelancing. Can we agree on that? Every freelancer is unique. Every freelancer plays his or her own game. You set your own price that makes you happy and you bid. You DON’T compete!” Nope. We can’t agree. That’s like saying the 100-meter dash isn’t a competition, because every runner has

John Morris November 14, 2019

Why I Copy/Paste My Upwork Proposals

An astute Upworker posteth: “I’m not sure why everyone says don’t use a generic letter, because my ‘generic’ letter works great. But when I start seeing examples of other people’s ‘generic’ letters, I start to understand. Boilerplate text is good to have and useful, and my generic letter is pretty successful. Yes, I do some personalization for each one. But the key is: is your generic letter any good? I get lots of responses to something I consider generic and not hurting for work, so we need to steer away from telling people they shouldn’t have a standard cover letter

John Morris November 12, 2019

Mechanical Engineer From Montana Finds Lucrative Side Hustle on Upwork

I just got this email from Dan: “I’m starting to do really well in my freelancing career, and it’s mostly thanks to you. Just today, I reached a 100% job success score on Upwork. I just wanted to say thank you, and share my story with you. Read it if you’re interested, skip it if you want (I get it, it’s long), but either way I think you deserve to know how big of an impact you’ve had on my success. I just checked: I’ve been following you for over 3 years. I’m a mechanical engineer, and 3 years ago,

John Morris September 30, 2019

The Easiest Way to Make Money on Upwork

You’ve never seen this strategy before. And, for a minute, you’re going to think I’m crazy. But, trust me, this works and it’s the simplest way I know to make money on Upwork (or anywhere else for that matter). (BTW, if you also want to learn the more traditional approach to making money on Upwork, I have an article on that, too… here). This is a 3-part strategy. The first part is… 1. A Problem-Focused Title In the traditional approach, we focus on keywords. So, we might do something like “WooCommerce | WordPress eCommerce | WordPress”. In fact, you’ll find hundreds

John Morris August 22, 2019

How long does it take to start making money on Upwork as a new freelancer?

You could get a client today. Some people go on there and never get work. It’s really not about time, it’s about what you do. The freelancers who do the right things and put in the effort tend to get work. And those who go in feeling like Upwork owes them something and expect work to just fall in their lap… don’t. And, they rave about how Upwork is a “scam” or a “huge waste of time”. When I first started on Upwork, I made every mistake I rant about, today. I blasted out a bunch of bids, didn’t spend

John Morris June 21, 2019

Upwork’s network effects

The concept is pretty simple (from Investopedia): “The network effect is a phenomenon wherein increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service.” The internet. Social media. They all operate on this idea of network effects. Both across the platform AND for individual users. So, as Facebook’s user base grows, Facebook becomes more valuable. But, also, as YOUR individual friend’s list grows, Facebook becomes more valuable TO YOU. Save those few “friends” you’d rather not follow, of course. 😀 Thing is… Freelancing platforms have network effects, as well. So, the more freelancers on a platform,

John Morris March 26, 2019

Opening up Upwork this morning felt like winning the lottery

You’ve got a decision to make. What kind of person are you going to be? Person A: Or person B: I can tell you who’s going to get further in life. Who’s going to have more success as a freelancer. Who’s going to actually create the life they imagine for themselves. The funny thing about this is if you look at Miro… He very easily could’ve devolved into the same piss-poor attitude as Terry. He tried Upwork. And, his first attempt didn’t work out. He could have very easily just given up and became a troll who hunted down every Upwork video

John Morris January 31, 2019

Finding the perfect freelance clients

Back when little JMO was just a freelancing tadpole… I made the mistake virtually every new freelancer does. That makes freelancing 10X harder than it has to be. Awful clients. Projects you hate. Getting paid pennies. It’s easy to see why so many people give up on it. My mistake was taking any and every client I could. I built a weird e-commerce app for a guy. Jackin’ around with creating PDFs in PHP for another. Hacking WordPress for yet another. I didn’t enjoy any of it. So, I procrastinated HARD. Clients got pissed. I had to refund a couple,

John Morris January 13, 2019

It’s not Upwork. It’s YOU!

So, I got this comment on a video today: “Sir, I am new on upwork. I’m submitting proposals from 6 months, but no one is accepting my proposal.” And, I gotta be straight up with you… I get this a lot. And, it never makes sense to me. If you try ANYTHING for 6 months and it’s not working… it’s way beyond time to re-think and re-strategize. Whatever you’re doing isn’t working. And, it’s not Upwork… it’s you. Which, nobody wants to hear… But, it’s true. In any case, what I wanna do today is give 3 big things to

John Morris December 21, 2018

100k/year on Upwork

To hear the trolls tell it, these people don’t exist: “I have wasted 10 years of my life on a Master’s degree. And guess what? I am happy to realize that I don’t need it at all. Currently I make 100k+ yearly from my freelance business on Upwork/Freelancer, I am absolutely debt free, and going to become financially independent soon.” Boris Vasilenko Nope. Nothing to see here. “These freelance sites are scams!” “La la la la, can’t hear you!” Truth is… There’s plenty of this out there. AND, there’s plenty of people who’ve got on Upwork and never made a

John Morris December 14, 2018

I can smell your excuse from here

Once upon a week ago, I got a YouTube comment from a student of mine: “Really? I made 35k on Upwork in the last 12 months. Seems like a good scam to me :)” This was in response to the typical loser-screech of the Upwork haters that come out of the woodwork every time I do an Upwork video… calling Upwork a scam or whatever the excuse-word of the day is. Then, some dingbat responds to her with this doosie: “35k on Upwork? That’s because you’re a woman, you’re privileged and people pay you more.” Lol. The excuse-gerbil is spinning

John Morris November 24, 2018

The 3 best freelance websites for beginners

There’s 100s of freelance sites out there. When you’re new, it can be overwhelming trying to sift through all of them to figure out which ones are actually going to get you clients and give new freelancers a fighting chance against all the established ones. One of the things that annoys me about this topic is the articles you see with “73 Best Websites for Beginners” and that ilk. How does that help you any? Are you really going to apply to 73 different websites? So, I’m not going to do that. In my opinion (and experience), these are the

John Morris November 13, 2018

Success really is simple sometimes

Take this comment I just got: You ever heard the saying: “success leaves clues”. It’s true. And, sometimes, success slaps you in the face on a daily basis and implores you to pay attention. To quit using “being skeptical” as an excuse to really just stay comfortable. To get serious about your life and your career. There’s plenty of complicated things in life. Relationships. Kids (oh boy!) Rocket astro-surgery. But, this isn’t one of those things. The people who take the time to learn how systems like Upwork operate and put in the effort to take advantage of those systems

John Morris October 15, 2018

How to find the GOOD jobs on Upwork

I get this one a lot. It’s the most common refrain from the “Upwork is a SCAAAAAAM!” folks that troll my YouTube channel. But, there’s also some well-meaning folks who just haven’t learned how to do this, yet. Anyway, there’s a simple way to weed out all the junk projects on Upwork and get to the good, high-paying jobs… with clients that are easy to work with. First, log into your Upwork account and run a search for your niche: Then, click the “Filters” button. A list of filters you can apply will drop down: At a minimum, I recommend

John Morris October 8, 2018

The one thing your Upwork profile overview MUST have

There’s actually three… and an exact order to put them in. But, THIS is definitely the most important. It’s the one thing you can change about your Upwork profile overview, in a matter of minutes, that will have the most impact. So, let me show you. (Quick side note: In this article, I’m talking about the “traditional” method of getting work on Upwork and what you’ll, ultimately, want to do long-term. But, if you’re brand new, I have a non-traditional method that’s been working very well for my students. I wrote up an article on that HERE that I recommend

John Morris October 6, 2018

How to get your profile approved on Upwork

When I first started on Upwork, they didn’t do this. At least, not that I remember. But, apparently, it’s becoming more and more of an issue because I’ve been getting asked this a lot more lately. And, the thing here is… when you understand what Upwork’s goals are and how it’s technology works to support those goals, the answers here start to become obvious. Take this, for example: In case it’s not clear… This is an Upwork employee stating that WHO performs a search and WHEN they perform it affects Upwork’s search results. So, if you’ve been thinking that Upwork

John Morris October 5, 2018

You’re an idiot, please help!

This is the weirdest [email protected]# I get: And, this is not unique. I once had this guy stalk me for about a year. He’d send me these 10-page emails where he spent 9 pages telling me all the ways I was an idiot, then the last page outlining what he needed ME to help him with. I finally blocked him on email. Then, he went to Twitter. Blocked him there and he want to YouTube. Then, Facebook. He was obsessed with telling me how dumb I was… Then, asking for my help. I still can’t explain it. Anyway, to his

John Morris October 4, 2018

How I got 39 Upwork job invites a month step-by-step

I’d been on Upwork about a few months. And, I decided to try this “crazy” thing that ended up being the single most profitable freelancing strategy I’ve discovered. I wound up with 39 job invites that next month. I’d had none the month before and 3 the month before that. It got so bad, I had to turn off my availability in Upwork. And, that year I had my first six-figure year freelancing. When, I started teaching… I took the exact same strategy and applied it to selling my courses. And, it’s how I’ve sold 1000s of copies of those

John Morris September 22, 2018

My exact digital marketing strategy

This is what happened when I turned my digital marketing “machine” exclusively toward my courses on SkillShare: I went from 5,000 minutes of watch time in April… To almost 30,000 minutes in August. And, September is on pace to surpass August. That’s a 600% increase in watch time. And, this is real money in my pocket, because SkillShare pays its teachers based on watch time. So, that’s also a 600% increase in my earnings from SkillShare since April. Here’s another one: That’s 101 students in April to 441 in August. An over 400% increase. None of this is to brag.

John Morris September 21, 2018

The simple secrets to high-paying freelance clients

What makes clients willing to pay $5,000, $10,000 even $20,000 and up for your services? Download and install my mobile app and I’ll show you. It’s free. Just click the button below:

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Lewis Howes

John is amazing at building membership sites. He converted one of my sites over from it’s existing (hardly working) platform over to the clean and simple to use WishList membership platform. I highly recommend using John and WishList for any of your membership site needs.

Jim DeJonge

John has a relaxed and engaging manner. His advice is solid and the explanations are well thought out.

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Very professional worker who is extremely knowledgable in WordPress and Wishlist Member. I would definitely hire again.

Erika Swafford

John really delivers!

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John is one of the best instructors I have come across, I learned a lot from his online tutorials.

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John is top-notch and a great guy to work with.

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He significantly improved my site through his expert knowledge of PHP, CSS and Javascript. Would definitely recommend John to others.

Oliver Wainwright

I’m a fan. I have completed several of John’s courses. I find him very knowledgeable and he has a great delivery.

Jason Rumley

John has a habit of over-delivering on the expectations he sets up. That’s why he’s the best.

Sukh Plaha

John is a fantastic and patient tutor, who is not just able to share knowledge and communicate it very effectively – but able to support one in applying it. However, I believe that John has a very rare ability to go further than just imparting knowledge and showing one how to apply it. He is able to innately provoke one’s curiosity when explaining and demonstrating concepts, to the extent that one can explore and unravel their own learning journey. Thanks very much John!

Lori Grant

John did an outstanding job on my project. I highly recommend him and look forward to working with him on future projects.

Steve Dimmick

John has provided expert knowledge and advice on multiple occasions that have helped me better serve my clients. John is a Rockstar!

Bob Patterson

Not only is John a very talented programmer and developer, he is also an excellent communicator. He has a talent for taking complex subjects and communicating them in terms that anyone can understand. This is a rare combination. This ability has enabled me to take my skills and knowledge to the next level. Thank you John for for all that you do.

Bradley Smith

John and I have worked together on numerous projects. John is very quick and efficient and was a pleasure to work with.

Category: Upwork

The simple secrets to high-paying freelance clients

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