How I became top-rated Upwork Android freelancer and earned first 2000$
Hi, everyone. I am Alex Misiulia and I am an Android dev with 3+ years of experience. Recently I have decided to try myself as a freelance developer. I want to complete projects fully by myself, improve my self-confidence, have a new experience.
The most difficult part at freelance is to get your first project. Many people surrender at this moment.
Disaster at the beginning
The first two weeks were a disaster as everyone described :)
I just watched all the new projects and was trying to submit a proposal for all of them. I had a mess in my brain.
Frankly speaking, I thought to give up freelance and find a stable job. But after the first two days, I read people’s opinions at Quora and they helped me to continue.
So I realized that first of all you need to understand what customers are looking for.
Customer goals
Customers don’t worry about your specialty or personal qualities. They just need their project to be completed on time. That’s all.
Customers just want to complete the job on time. This seems very intuitive, but trust me you will forget this soon. You should read it again and again.
Imagine that you need to create an Uber clone app for Android for your city in two weeks. What comes to your mind first?
To my mind you will look for these qualities in a developer:
- Experience in Android programming
- Experience in creating apps similar to Uber (taxi or transportation)
- Creating pixel perfect UI from design wireframes
- Done in 2 weeks
Will it be relevant for you if you see the skills such as SEO, Web development, copy-writing at freelancer profile? No, you want Android app, you aren’t interested in stuff like that. Bear in mind it while writing your profile description.
When you try to find a freelancer the first thing you look at is the profile.
Enhancing your profile
There is an awesome guide from upwork where you can read a step by step guide how to enhance your profile. I will share my experience and some key points with you.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Please, don’t reinvent the wheel. Writing a good profile description, portfolio projects consume a lot of time.
The best strategy is to check the best practice and copy the best parts of a resume of top-rated freelancers in your sphere.
Just find 2–3 attractive profiles with your skills, check their styles, copy keywords, rewrite sentences for your skills, qualities.
Don’t mess all your skills into one profile description
Don’t add C#, Python to your Android developer profile. This won’t help you to get an Android job. It is a good idea to add related skills like a design creating in Photoshop, Figma.
If you are really experienced in other spheres you can create multiple profiles. For example, you can add “Python Backend developer”, “Android developer” profiles.
Make customers trust that you’re a real person
Fill in your employment history, certificates (if you have), including your educational background and other experiences. It will provide more information about you and customers will believe that you are a real person. If you leave these fields blank you will have fewer chances to be hired.
Check your English
If you describe all your skills, projects, employment history, and other fields with mistakes this will decrease your chances to be hired. Also, you will communicate with clients in English in many cases. When they see mistakes they will understand that your English is not good and they can have problems in communication with you during work.
You can easily check your grammar online using an incredible service Grammarly. It helped me to find hundreds of mistakes before sending messages to clients.
If I had enhanced my profile at the beginning I would have saved 3–4 days. So it is worth spending 1–2 days to enhance your profile after you just create the account.
Ok, now you have a good portfolio. It is time to submit to projects.
Writing a proposal
The problem is that there are a lot of freelancers who write proposals for the projects. But most people are lazy and they just copy paste proposals without even reading a full description of the project.
Before writing a proposal you should remember that customers just want to complete the job on time. The goal of your proposal is to prove that you can do this job in time. Also, you can briefly describe how you will do this. This will show that you have knowledge in this sphere.
I found Jason Sheil’s answer very helpful. Below I shortly describe points that work for me.
Suggest something you think is useful
It is awesome if you can provide some suggestions like “You can use some technology for app prototype because it will save you 1000$”. Customers appreciate when you really care about their project.
Send the prototype of the app
This is the best tactic in my opinion. If you can create the prototype of the app and send it to the client — just do it! Sometimes it can be time-consuming but for fixed price small project this can really help you to get your first job.
I got my first project following this tactic. Customer request was
“Simple scanning/OCR app needed for Android”. I submitted the usual proposal and started to find other projects. But after an hour I realized that I can create this app in a few hours and send him a prototype. This was my new message to him:
Hi!
I resubmit my proposal because I COMPLETE THE MVP OF THE APP!
I attached the video to show you MVP version which I’ve done in 2 hours. So we need to decide where do you want to store the information on Amazon or firebase. We can discuss this in chat in details.
I have no doubt we can complete your project in one day, but the sooner we get started the better. Send me a reply with any questions you have and let’s get started today.
P.S: I understand that I don’t have 100 total hours at upwork, but I completed the app. I have enough skill. Don’t trust my words, trust my work.
You can see that I attract his attention because I created the MVP of the app. Also, I asked the question about technology. And finally, I added click to action at the end of the message.
The customer mentioned that he wants to hire a freelancer with at least 100 hours experience at upwork. But I had 0 hours, so my chances weren’t high. The Client responded to me:
Hi again, Alex.
Okay, I’d be happy to give you this piece of work. I like the way you just went out and did something. And your rate and time estimation is very good.
That’s it. The customer gives me this project even if he wants to hire a developer with 100 hours of experience.
Key moments:
1. Customers just want to complete a job in time.
2. You should remember point 1 all the time!
3. Your proposal is the most important part to get the project. Send client the prototype of the job if you can. Describe how you can complete the job.
Useful links:
I am a passionate android developer, feel free to follow and contact me on Twitter, Facebook, and Medium.
I’d also love your ideas on what to write about next! I have the following topics in my mind:
- Communication with customers after submitting proposals.
- How to understand that the project is bad and you shouldn’t lose your time on it.
