How can you use Upwork to become your own boss?
B2C Marketplace Supplier stories; Part 4
I’m Lottie, co-founder of Reallm, we provide reports and recommendations for marketplace suppliers. In this series, we’re shining a light on people making a living or a little extra dosh from their skills or unused assets through marketplaces.
I am sure that most people have considered using one of these platforms, either to rent out their room on Airbnb when they go on holiday or their car when they are working from home. And then thought “Is it really worth the hassle”. Well, in this series we’re presenting the real experiences of those that have just got on and done it. We’ll include top tips, funny stories and unavoidably, how everything changed in 2020.
In Part 4 of the series, we speak to Harry, who is a full-time digital marketing freelancer, who has used Upwork to become his own boss and work totally remotely. He moved from London to Lisbon in 2019.
TL;DR Clients, especially on sites like Upwork, are becoming much more used to working with people they have never met. This gives the freedom for you to live wherever you like. Make sure to diversify your income streams, do good work, complete your jobs and don’t take on any jobs that are out of your comfort zone, so that you only get good reviews and trusted referrals. This will mean you can raise your prices over time and make more per project.
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Hey Harry, tell me, when did you start using Upwork?
It was when I became a full-time freelancer and moved to Lisbon at the beginning of 2019. Before that, my experience had been in agency and in-house roles. Upwork was my first hoorah into selling myself as a consultant and finding business.
How often do you use Upwork and how does it all work?
I check Upwork every day. There are two ways in which I work. Firstly, I have a few contracts, which are long term, and exclusively through Upwork. Whenever I work with them, I switch on the timer and start charging. Secondly, more infrequently, I provide strategic consultancy advice on digital marketing, and then the client goes away and implements themselves.
Why does Upwork suit you particularly?
Most of my clients are in the US or UK and I live in Portugal. Pre-pandemic, I had probably met face to face around 50% of my clients. In the last year, every single new client I’ve onboarded, I’ve never met.
Can you give us some examples of people that have found you on Upwork?
One of the best things about Upwork is the complete variety of clients that you’ll get, from small e-commerce stores to huge enterprise clients with big budgets. Most of my clients tend to be small, medium sized businesses, who are at the point of growth where they don’t have the resource to do something in-house yet, but they need an expert to take something on. Generally, that’s where there’s a good niche generally on UpWork.
“small, medium sized businesses, who are at the point of growth where they don’t have the resource to do something in-house yet… that’s where there’s a good niche generally on UpWork”
Any weird / funny projects you have worked on through Upwork?
I’ve worked on everything you can imagine. From bathroom warehouses to children’s shoes. I’ve even worked with a rubberized toe grips company called toegrips.com, who are actually a fantastic company. I love them to bits.
“ I’ve even worked with a rubberized toe grips company”
How do you decide how much you charge a client?
Initially, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing pricing wise. I think that’s probably a very common story when someone goes from being a salaried employee to ahing to price their own services up.
I started at around $25 an hour because I was trying to undercut the market in order to build up a base of five star reviews. I knew that if I took clients on, I would be able to do a really good job, generate quick reviews, which would enable me to increase my pricing over time. My pricing now is $80 an hour.
If I’m bidding on Upwork, I always bid at the rate on my profile, otherwise I think it is confusing and somewhat suspicious for potential clients.
If you don’t have all the skills for the job, do you have other freelancers you can call upon? Can you talk through your collaboration a little bit?
Yes, for example I’m much more of a Google ads expert than I am a Facebook ads expert. I will therefore often pass the Facebook element on to a trusted partner and take a referral fee. I have this set-up with a few people and it works both ways.
What other channels do you use to get work?
A lot of the work I’ve been doing over the last two years comes from referrals. The problem is, it’s less reliable. You can’t control when someone is going to refer you, it’s completely out of your hands. All you can do is deliver good work. Referrals will come as a consequence of that because naturally people talk. With referrals, people often check out my LinkedIn profile if they have been given my name, so I make sure to maintain an active profile and keep up with all the best practices. I’ve definitely learned over the years that it’s bad to rely on one platform as your single source of income.
“A lot of the work I’ve been doing over the last two years comes from referrals. The problem is, it’s less reliable. You can’t control when someone is going to refer you, it’s completely out of your hands. All you can do is deliver good work”
Have you got any top tips for people who might be thinking about becoming a freelancer and setting up a profile on Upwork?
Don’t focus on selling your time, sell your expertise. A job may take me an hour because I’ve been doing it for five years. And so I’m very good at it. It would take a complete novice hours and hours of training, understanding and reading around the subject.
There’s a huge danger in pricing based on your time, because it’s very hard to equate your time with the value that you can provide. If I can generate leads for a business, who’s lifetime value could be £50,000 or even £500,000. If it only took me a few hours, and I charged at my hourly rate, I would be completely screwing myself over. In lots of cases, the value I can provide for that business is much greater. That’s my huge tip, price based on value, not necessarily on your hourly rate.
“Don’t focus on selling your time, sell your expertise.”
How has Covid changed how you work?
When COVID hit back in March 2020, I lost all of my retained contracts, which I had outside of Upwork. Upwork, for a while, therefore became my primary source of getting new business, which I had to do very quickly. Obviously, this coincided with a lot of other people losing work. The market was flooded with proposals from other freelancers. At the same time, there was a limited supply of new jobs being made on Upwork. It was a perfect storm. Happy to say that I have almost entirely recovered from the COVID situation and my earnings are back at a higher level than they were before the pandemic.
“In March 2020, I lost all of my retained contracts, which I had outside of Upwork. Upwork, for a while, therefore became my primary source of getting new business, which I had to do very quickly.”
One of the potential upsides of the impact that COVID has had on our lives is that people are much more open to working fully remotely with people that they may never have met and making assessments on them based purely on the strength of a profile or a rating that they see online. Upwork is a fantastic tool for doing that. I know there will always be some old school people out there who will always want to do business face-to-face but the pandemic has sped-up the transition to online trust.
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Reallm helps online marketplaces and their suppliers to earn more through recommendations such as price, profile and portfolio changes.
