How To Make Money On Upwork :3-Tips From A 5-Year Upwork Veteran
Learn the 3-essential tips I use to write proposals that get me booked and finallystop asking how to make money on Upwork and start doing it!
Are you not getting clients on Upwork and don’t know why?
You aren’t alone.
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
You find a job you are excited about, you send a proposal you take your time writing, and you never hear anything back.
Does your active proposal line look like this?
But your messages are empty like this:
If you are tired of it-I can help.
I am going to help you book yourself solid by sharing my 3-essential tips on how to make money on Upwork like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Quick Note:Please don’t think I’m bragging. I’m not. I shared these screen-shots so you can see i’m actually in the trenches making money on Upwork.
Before we get to the 3-tips I need to dish out some brutal honest and tell you the ONE reason freelancers don’t hear back from clients.
The ONE Reason Clients Don’t Respond
Upwork is a great resource. It has tons of clients, new people show up everyday, and you can find gigs you’d never discover by yourself using it.
So why aren’t you getting any work?
Simple.
You aren’t getting any work because you are to broad in the jobs you apply for! You aren’t focusing on the people you can help the most.
If you want to know the real secret on how to make money on Upwork it’s this:
Only serve people who you bring MASSIVE value to.
Look at this job post:
I would never apply to this job.
Why?
Because I am not a real estate writer, nor do I create content.
I offer a highly specialized service to a select group of clients who generate massive value from what I create in multiple ways.
Serving clients you bring massive value to also has the added benefit of getting EPIC testimonials that lead to you scoring more work down the road-like this:
How do you identify the people you can bring the most value to? Simple.
Create a list of the services you provide and who would benefit most from them-then only pitch people who fit that list!
To make the most of every pitch I’m going to share three essential tips to help show you how to make money on Upwork.
3-Essential Tips To Help You Start Making Money On Upwork This Week
The secret to getting clients to respond to your proposals and book you out of the 30–50 freelancers they got proposals means you need a competitive advantage.
To get that advantage you need to do three things.
1:Correctly Identify The Right Job Posts To Respond To
2:Read The Job Post To Discover What A Client REALLY Wants And Sell Them That
3:Write Proposals That Start Conversations
Here’s how:
Tip 1:Correctly Identify The Right Job Posts To Respond To
When you sign up to Upwork you fill out a list of services you provide. In return they give you a nifty list of places to look for work. Here’s mine:
The idea is you click on one and see a bunch of jobs in that skill set you’d be a fit for. Let’s check out the copywriting options available to me while I am writing this post.
The first thing you see is this:
This is a dashboard you use to filter out tags you don’t want, types of posts to look for, and turn off non-US jobs.
I’ll be honest, I ignore this. You should to. Why?
Because, if you want to know how to make money on Upwork, know this:
You don’t want to let their system filter results for you.
Upwork’s system only reflects what people post. It doesn’t sense intent. It also doesn’t account for user error.
When I start the only thing I do on this page is turn the ‘US only’ switch from ‘On’ to ‘Off’.
Once you scroll down you see a list of jobs available. The jobs are posted in order of newest to oldest. These two jobs were posted one minute apart and the freshest of the two is at the top.
What you want to do is highlight jobs that align with the types of people you can bring the best results to.
Do this until you have at least 5–7 jobs to review. This sounds and looks like a lot:
But here’s the thing. You aren’t going to apply to them all.
‘What if I can’t find that many jobs?’
-You
You need to visit ALL the suggestions Upwork made for places to look for work. Clients don’t always know the right place to post their job. Here’s a copywriting job that was posted in ‘Marketing Strategy’.
Quick Note:I clicked on the ‘Email’ option and found the same job posting there-but I didn’t find it in ‘Copywriting’.
Now you have a list of tabs to review. Your next step is to pick the best 2–3 jobs that:
A:Fit your ‘Massive Value’ list.
B:Feature key details the client is ready to book.
This part is key!
If you want to know how to make money on Upwork you need to know what clients are ready to hire and what clients aren’t. Here’s how I do it.
When I am looking for clients to send proposals to I look for details that show they are ready to do the work. Like this:
If I was a landing page copywriter I would apply to this job. The client has included details that show they:
1:Know what they want-rewrite their existing copy
2:They have everything you need to get started-They have the outline and the existing page ready for review
3:They tell you exactly what they want-They want you to make their page sound better
These are the details you want to look for when sending a proposal. If you don’t look for these details you’ll end up wasting time sending proposals to clients that will never respond, like this job here:
Let’s review why this is a BAD job to apply to.
1:No reviews-new clients rarely hire on their first job post.
2:Vague job description
3:Wants two different services-templates and email marketing
4:Doesn’t provide details of what they want, examples of things they like, or even what their business is!
Another key detail to avoid is when a job is promising you TONS of future work. This is stupid.
If a client has a lot of future work they plan to award it to the person who does a great job. They can’t know if that’s you until you do the work. People that use the promise of future work often use it as leverage to get cheap work up front on the premise that ‘more is coming’.
‘Wait, the good example had that promise! Does that make it bad?’
-You
Good question. The answer is ‘No’.
The client mentions they might lean on you if you do a good job. They aren’t outright telling you that you are going to be booked solid.
This is the first key on how to make money on Upwork. The next one is figuring out what clients really want and explaining how you can deliver it.
Tip 2:Read The Job Post To Discover What A Client REALLY Wants And Sell Them That
Most of the clients on Upwork don’t know how to communicate what they want.
This makes sense because clients aren’t marketers, graphic designers, or email template creators.
Client knows they need something, they just don’t know how to word it. Rewording the RESULT a client wants in a way they understand will immediately qualify you as an expert and push your proposal to the front of the line.
So how do you identify what a client REALLY wants? Read their job posts! Take this job for example:
The client has written a ton of stuff that covers everything except what result they want.
They say they want someone to write material to ‘bring it to life for our brand’.
The mistake you see most freelancers make is parroting this statement back at them.
Don’t do that.
Instead you should read this and try and understand what the client wants as a RESULT of accomplishing these things.
At a glance I’d say the client wants content that increases engagement that leads to sales. So I would write something like this:
‘Hello ‘X’ I see you are looking for a copywriter to create targeted content for your site that really speaks to the user to build trust and increase your sales.’
Out of the 30–50 proposals this job will receive that one sentence I wrote above would make me stand out like a blinking light on a dark night.
You want to know how to make money on Upwork?
Follow this principle.
It led me to booking a $6,000 gig within my first few weeks of being on Upwork AND getting me featured on Danny Marguiles blog Freelance To Win:
This had a compound interest like effect.
I was able to refer back to this article (which I wrote) as part of my portfolio-which created social proof that led me to getting booked more!
If you want to start booking more work you need to change how you approach proposals. That means you need to stop treating proposals as ‘transactional’ and starting treating them as a way to start a conversation. Here’s how.
Tip 3:Write Proposals That Start Conversations
Okay, let’s review.
We’ve covered how to make money on Upwork by:
1:Identifying the right jobs to apply to.
2:Figuring out what a client REALLY wants.
Now we are going to look at how you use proposals to start conversations.
What do I mean by this? Simple.
Your proposal is the first interaction a client has with you. Think of it like a first date.
You wouldn’t ask a person to go home and marry you on a first date (at least if you are smart you won’t).
No.
You would focus on starting interesting conversations. You want to capture your date’s interest and make them want more.
The same thing works when writing proposals. Here’s an example of this idea in action. I applied for this job post:
It was a big one-but it fit my ideal client type so i didn’t mind.
I used the principles taught in the second tip to identify exactly what the client wanted and wrote this:
It took me less than five minutes to write and I booked the gig. To understand how this works let’s break this down into three sections.
Section one is the opening line. It speaks directly to what the client wants (ie-tip 2).
Section two is qualifying what they want and how I have delivered it. I validate myself by speaking in language that resonates with this type of project.
Section three invites them to start a conversation. I do that by saying,
‘If you are interested in seeing how my style fits your needs let’s talk.’
That’s it. Nothing crazy, clever, or over-promised.
That’s how you want to do it. Invite the person to talk about how what you can do will help them.
Don’t oversell with big promises that read like this,
‘We should talk. I can literally transform your business and get you massive traffic. If you call me I can start you on the path to mega success’
No one is going to buy that. IT reads too ‘salesy’.
You don’t want to sale. You want to talk. It worked for me. This was a 1-day project that netted me $2K and a great testimonial:
Final Thought On How To Make Money On Upwork
Upwork is a great resource to make money.
If you want to create a consistent income that comes in month after month use the tips I shared above.
If you want more help writing proposals that get you booked check out my free:
‘Ultimate Guide To Booking Your Schedule Full’
And see how you can write proposals to book your schedule full.
