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 setting the “Client History”, “Client Info” and “Budget” filters. You want clients who’ve hired other freelancers and have their payment method verified.
NOTE: before a client can pay you, they HAVE to have their payment method verified. So, clients who don’t have that… can’t pay you.
I then, also, look for projects in my desired budget range:
Notice that the number of projects went from 1,644 to 669.
That’s still a massive amount of jobs.
And, for what I do, I only need maybe 1-2 per month.
So, I have a hard time when people tell me there are no “good jobs” on Upwork. In MY niche, there’s more than I could ever hope to even BID on, let alone get hired for.
Of course, FINDING these jobs is one thing… now, you need to get hired for them. I see a lot of people who have their opinions on this…
But, I see very few who will tell you THE most important thing…
Which is, your opinion doesn’t mean jack.
That it’s not about some sales tactic or how you write your proposals or what “order” a client sees your proposal in. I mean yeah… pay attention to those things.
But, they don’t mean squat if you don’t know what the CLIENT wants.
You can be the smoothest talker in the world, but if you’re not speaking the client’s language, it won’t matter and you’ll struggle to get hired.
The good thing is clients will TELL you exactly what they want. You just gotta know how to look for it AND prioritize what matters to them most, second most, etc.
Anyway, I show you how to do that in Lesson 6 of Module 3 in my Freelancing on Upwork course. I truly believe it’s the single most important thing you can learn about writing proposals on Upwork (or anywhere for that matter)… because it removes all the guesswork.
You’ll know exactly what to say and your proposals will have much greater impact.
In any case, you can get access to the course for nothing on SkillShare.
All the details on how to do that are here: https://skl.sh/2OIxQrO
Later,
John
