Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Upwork Freelancing Masterclass: Welcome to the Upwork
freelancing class. Upwork is the largest freelancing
platform in the world, but also one of the
most competitive. Finding work on Upwork isn't just about
sending more proposals. It's about clarity,
understanding who you are as a freelancer, and what the clients are
actually looking for. In this class, we're
going to break down how Upwork works from a
freelancer's point of view. We'll begin by choosing a niche, building a strong profile, setting out our prices, writing strong proposals, and then how we can manage
all the projects. Hi, I'm Hose kachii a freelance graphic designer
and creative instructor. Over time, I have learned
what makes profile stand out, how freelancers can
communicate better, what clients look for, and how you can grow the confidence to get
that first project. In this class, I'll be
sharing practical steps and real work flows from
freelancing experience. We'll start by understanding
how upwork functions. Then we'll start
finding out our niche. That's the thing that's
going to set you apart from the thousands of other
freelancers on the platform. We'll see how we can put that niche into a
strong profile, how you can start sending out your services, sending
out proposals. Once you have all
those projects, how do you actually communicate effectively and manage
everything all at once. Later in the course,
I'll be also telling you how you
can meet deadlines, how to manage your
time, as well as how to have a strong
presence on Upwork. This will include video
introductions and profile covers. You're new or have been
using Upwork for some time, but aren't seeing results, this class is made for practical use because
it's step by step, and it breaks down almost
everything about the platform. So this course will
hopefully help you approach the platform with
more confidence and strategy. So
let's get started.
2. What is Upwork: This course we're
going to learn about a very popular platform
called Upwork. Now, Upwork is a platform
where freelancers can create their portfolio and find
clients for their business. So if you are a freelancer and you know how
to do something, you could easily go up there, create your profile for free, and then attract clients to
conduct your business with. The platform is very easy to use and with the
right technique, you'll be able to create a successful platform where you will have clients
coming in every month, every week and that
way you can be a successful freelancer
on the Upwork platform. In this course, we're going
to start from the basics, such as making your profile, filling in the areas
with the right text, putting in the
right type of work. And then we'll move on to how you can get your first client, write a proposal, and finally, how to maintain the
streams of income, streams of clients,
and how you can manage your time
and your business. So let's jump in and see what the Upwork platform looks like. So this right here is
the Upwork platform. It's a pretty popular
platform, like we said, and this is where both
freelancers and clients come to to find a suitable partner
to finish a project. So whether you are a client
looking for a new logo or whether you are a freelancer looking
to create that logo, you would both come over here and find the suitable partner. Right here, we
have fine talents. This is for the client. So you could post a job, hire a pro, browse
and buy project. So these are pre existing
projects that you can just buy, and then you can let Upwork find you the right freelancer. So we have talent scouts, and you can just find the perfect freelancer
for your work. On the other hand, if
you are a freelancer, you would go over
here, ways to earn. So this is so this is a nice little guide on how you can on ways that you
can start earning. So we have testimonies
right here, and we can just click on any
of these and find our niche, which we'll talk about Zoo. So Upwork not only is a
great platform to find work. It also gives you
a lot of guides, both free and paid, so you're never wondering
what to do next. It's a very friendly platform, and it guides you
all the way through. The security is
also pretty strong, so you will be asked a lot of question and you would go
through a lot of procedures, but it's all worth it because
you would end up with a secure freelancing
career on Upwork. Let's go back over here. So we had ways to earn, and we also have fine
work for your skills. So once you go over here, you can just start finding
some remote works. For example, if I'm
a three D modeler, I can just click on this and I'm basically greeted
with a job board. Most of these are remote. So you can just go
on any of these. And you could read about it. You can see this
one is worldwide, meaning that I could
work from anywhere. I get a little description, some key points that I can take. Most of the stuff
that you will see on Upwork are project. That's basically how
freelancing works. You're not really tied to a company working
a nine to five. You are working
based on project. So this is different from the regular job boards that
you see on the Internet. This is project based. So sometimes there's
one project. Other times, there would be five projects that you would be doing throughout
a period of time. A more of these,
and there we go. Let's go back to the homepage, see what else we can find. We have a Y Upwork menu, which you can read and get a better perspective on
why you should use Upwork. There are reviews and success
stories, as you can see. Now, there is this other
thing called the enterprise. Let's open this in a new tab. Right over here, if you
have a big project, you can bring in your existing
team and Upwork will give you freelancers that can help you achieve
that big project. So we'll help your team choose the level of
resource, skill, and service they need and
build relationships with independent
professionals who can transform how they work. So this is a great place if
you have a massive project and you would want the help
of expert professionals. But again, this is
a freelance thing, so it's not like you are
hiring these people. They're just going
to be with you throughout a written contract. And once that work is finished, the relationship is off unless they choose to
renew that contract. Let's go back over here. Down below, you can quickly access the different categories. Let's go in design and creative
and see what we can find. So down here, we have fine
talent and fine work. If I'm a freelancer,
I would go over here. And then I'm asked to
sign into my account, which we will do soon. So it's a pretty big platform, and it's not as confusing
as it may sound. We're going to
break it down into the following lessons and see exactly how you can get
started on this platform. So let's move on and
learn about how we can find our niche
as a freelancer.
3. Finding Your Niche: Before getting
started, you got to ask yourself a very
important question. What is the service that you're going to provide
to your clients? Is it graphic design, poster design, video
editing or photography? You have to choose
your strongest skill and put that on your profile. When you put multiple random
things on your profile, it's going to be very
confusing for your client to figure out what is it that
you're exactly providing. So that's why you got to think about what
you want to give. Maybe write down the
skills that you have, see which one is the skill
that you're best at, and which skill had
the highest success. On your profile, you
can't just write that you are a graphic designer. You got to put in your work so clients can see what
type of work you've done and then make a decision based on how good that work is. So take a moment, think about
the skills that you have, and then you want to bring
those skills on the table, take a look at each one and
see which one's the winner. Once you have chosen that skill, you want to choose a
specific area of that skill. You could go around and say that you're just a graphic designer, but it will really
help if you could just make it more detailed. You are a graphic designer who's really good at making posters, a graphic designer that is
very good at making logos. When you bring these
specifics into the picture, it's going to help your
client a lot better, and that way they will
find you in a faster way. Because when a client is
looking for a service provider, they're not going to just
type in a general term. They will look for maybe go
posters. Business cards. They're going to type in
the thing that they want and if you have that
term on your profile, the chances of you showing up on the search results
will be much higher. Number one, think
of your skills. Number two, pick the
one that's the best, and number three,
find your niche. Once you've chosen these things, you are now ready to put
them onto your profile. It may take some time and maybe you'd want to
do some research, but this is a step that you definitely cannot
skip or else you're going to create a
very general profile and one that will just get mixed up in all the other
millions of profiles on upwork. Let's take a look at an example. I am a photographer and I
take photos with my camera. If I just put that
on my profile that I'm a photographer and I
take photos with my camera, it's going to be very
confusing because the client is looking
for someone who does, let's say, product photography, someone who does
fashion photography. I need to see what type of
photography I'm good at. I cannot just say I'm a photographer because
the client is looking for a specific type of photography for the service
that they're looking for. So I have to think to myself, am I good at product
photography? Am I good at landscapes, portraits? What am I good at? And there is a chance that I would be good at
multiple things, but I have to find out
which one I'm the best at. So let's say I'm really good
at portrait photography. I have, let's say 12
years of experience. I have many works to
show the client from my past works and that right there is what I should
put on my profile. The first thing that the
client needs to see on my profile is that I'm a
portrait photographer. Once they scroll down, they can later find out that I'm also good at product
photography. But the number one thing
that they need to find first is your main
niche, your main skill. If they don't find that in the first 3 seconds of
looking at your profile, you will end up
losing that client. So it's really important
to think to yourself and find the skill that
you are very good at. The more details
about your skills, the higher the chance that
the client can find you. In the following lessons, we're going to learn all about creating the right profile, using SEO to make your profile
stand out and much more. But now we know
what our main niche is and what is the skill that I'm going to
show my client. Now that I have
figured out my niche, I can move on with creating
my first profile on upward.
4. Creating a Profile: Et's go ahead and create
our very first account. Right over here, hit Sign Up. We're going to be a
freelancer and just fill up this form or sign
up with Google or Apple. Once you've created
your account, you're going to
enter your panel. Just do all of the verification, and then you will be able to customize your profile
in the next step. Once you verified your email, you're going to be
brought onto the screen. Let's get started, and it's going to ask
us a few questions. So you want to be as
honest as possible. You don't want to hit too high, say that you've had freelance before when you
haven't because Upwork is going to customize
the way that the platform is for you
based on these answers. So you want to just
give an honest answer. This does not affect
how your profile looks. It's just how Upwork provides services for
you as the freelancer. If you're unsure about these questions,
you can skip them. You don't have to answer them. But you can select multiple
if you're not sure, so I'm just going to select
this one and this one. And now I can create my profile. Over here, you can either upload your resume or link
your LinkedIn, which is a faster way to do it if you have an
updated LinkedIn page, or you could fill it up
manually, takes 15 minutes. I'm just going to import
from my LinkedIn. Once you've done that, you now have to give yourself a title. This is very important. You want to explain
to the clients in the fastest and most
forward way possible, what is it that you do? So you can just
type in your niche. For example, there's Full
Stack Developer web mobile. You can type in
anything you want. I'm just going to type
in something like this, and now we can go ahead
and add our experience. So based on my LinksnPfile, I brought in all of
these experiences. If you don't have
a LinkstNPfile, or if you don't have any
experience, it's okay. Just hit Continue and you can add these experiences later. You can also create
one manually. Just hit this plus,
fill in the form, and then it will be
in your experiences. Now, let's add our education, which is the next step. Once you've filled in your work experience and your education, you are now asked to
add your languages. Now, this may seem
like something simple, but it's really helpful if you put in all the
languages that you know. Even if it's a little
bit of Spanish, it's going to help with
the client to understand how well you can perform
in a certain project. So any language that you speak, you can go ahead and edit here. Again, there is this
option right here, so you don't have to
be perfect at it. You can just use
the basic option. Just bring in any
language that you know, it's going to be really
helpful for your profile. So something like
this would look good, it would be even better
if you're good at it, but just this alone
will let the client know that I can be helpful
in these languages, even if it's not to
the perfect level. But doing this will give
me a higher chance of getting other types of
projects based on language. Once you fill this in, you
can now share your skills. So we have suggested
skills that for me, it's brought out of
my LinkedIn profile. But if you manually
filled in your profile, you would have to just
type in your skills. You can click on these
to just add them onto the skill bar. Once you've chosen your skill, you can now move on
to writing your bio. The next step is the
work that we do, and now this is the niche
that we talked about. We said that we want to focus
on the main service that we are great at and focus
on that from now on. So you want to select
the category of that main service after
you've chosen your niche, of course, and then stick with this main service throughout
your Upwork work profile. You could create
sub services later. But right now just focus on your main niche and the
skill that you are great at. Now let's set our rate. So right now, you can
just put in a number. We can always come
back and change this. This is going to be on your profile when you
first get started. We will talk about setting our prices and rates
in a further lesson. But right now just put something that can go on your profile. You don't want to put
something really high, but you can simply
do a Google search. Just so you know what
you should put on there. And based on this,
I can see that I can go from $15 to 150. But here's the thing,
because I just started, I cannot put 150/hour
because my profile is empty. I haven't had any
projects from Upwork, and putting $150 per hour is going to
just be unrealistic. So you want to go with either
$15 in this example or $25. But again, because I
just made my profile, I shouldn't be putting my prices that high because it
just doesn't make sense. When you're fresh in a field, you want to start out
slow and then make your way up to $150 per hour. So right now just go
with the lowest number, and as you take on
projects from Upwork, as you take more clients, you can add to this rate. So based on this, I'm going
to set my hourly rate to $15. So Upwork will take
a service fee, and this is what I'm
getting per hour. Again, it's low right now, but as I move on, as I get better at my
Upwork freelancing, I can just add to this later. Once you've finished putting
in your hourly rate, you can go ahead and finish up your profile with the
photo and location. So these are the last
details for your profile. You just got to
put in your photo and some location information. Now, the thing about the photo
is that you want to make sure it's a professional
photo as it says right here. You don't want to
put a blurry photo or an old photograph. You want to put something professional,
something high class, and something that
will like Upwork says, helps you build trust
with your clients. Once you have filled
in the information, hit check your profile. Right over here, you can
edit things further. Maybe you want to add a
few things or remove them. You can do all the changes here, and then you just need to hit Submit profile for your
profile to be finalized. You can hit the pencil
there to add or remove from the stuff
that you've written, hit save when you're finished, and we can just go ahead
and submit our profile. And now my profile is ready. I can now start browsing jobs, writing proposals, and just get started
with my upwork journey. If I hit view My profile, if I want to add something, I can again edit them like so. I can even hit public view, and it's just going to show me exactly what the client
is seeing. Let's go back. I can go to profile settings
and change a few things. You can add security questions. I recommend verifying
your identity and your payment info at the start so that it
won't be a problem later. So just go over
here and you get to change your password,
your tax information, and everything that's
related to your account, but it's best to do it soon. So right after you
created your profile, take some time to fill in these forms and verify
your identity so that you can move towards your proposals and jobs without any
worries about this issue. When you scroll down
on your profile, you can see that there are
some boxes that are empty. The first one is work history, which would fill up as
you continue on upwork. But below here, we have
a portfolio option. If you have a portfolio, you can just link them up here. It really helps with clients seeing how
well you do at a task. So let's go ahead
and add a portfolio. So you can give it a title, show the date, and then
you can select templates. If you have done a
project on Upwork, you would be able
to link your work, but if you haven't and
you've just started, then you can just
bring in your works. Let's give this a name. Give a date that
you finished it. And you can choose the
template that's there. I will just choose a gallery. You can add your
file right here, use the bar right here to add
the skills that you used. For me, it would be animation, Illustrator, and
a bunch of these. I'm going to upload
my file so that there is something on my profile
that clients can see. If you don't have
anything right now, you can just leave it be empty. You can always come back and change the stuff
on your profile. You can add a description and anything else that you want. Let's hit publish.
And now I have my very first portfolio item. Right over here, I can delete it if I want or edit the
stuff that's in it. So down here, we have something
called Project Catalogue. So normally with Upwork, you would have connects
that are things that you would use each time that you
approach a potential client. But this project catalog
is the opposite, so you would be creating your projects for the
clients to come to you. So normally you would be
going to the clients, but with this project catalog, it's the other way around. The clients will come
to you for a project. Once you hit Managed Project, you can create your
first project. Let's see how this works. So basically, you're going
to give the type of service. For example, I will create
you a logo in two days, and you can set the terms for
what you're going to give. So logo in two days, I will give you some mockups. I'll give you a color palette, and the customer can see this and then decide
to work with you. So you're putting it out there. You can put a bunch of
these projects there, and the clients
will basically come to your it's kind
of like a shop. They will come to your
shop and they will see the services that you offer, and then they would just choose the services that
they're looking for. So this is a lot better
because instead of you having to search for clients,
writing proposals, going on the job boards, you can come over here and just put your
services out there, and then the clients
would just come to you. So you're saving
yourself the time of searching for clients. This is a really helpful thing. We'll get into this later. But this is essentially
how it works. You're going to fill up
all of these categories, and then you would
just submit it for it to be on your
project catalog. Let's go back here.
And then right below, we have something
called testimonials. So these are from
your past clients. Right now, we don't have any clients because
we just started, but you can request a
client testimonial, even if it's not on Upwork. So let's say I have
worked as a freelancer, but not on this platform. I could still go over here, fill up the items that you see. And then an email would
go to this past client, and I'm basically
asking this past client to share a brief testimonial
about my work with you. It doesn't have to
be upward clients. You can ask your previous
clients to come over here and just share their experience
on your testimonial board. So you can do that right
here. Let's close this. They will just show
up on this area. And this is great
for new clients. They will see these
testimonials, see how the past clients were happy with your work
and your service, and then they will
just be more hopeful about a project that they'd want to do with
you because they see all the good reviews and
all the good comments, and that way you can
earn their trust. Below, we have certifications. You can import it from
Gridley or add it manually. It's going to be a bunch of questions that
you can answer. Adding certifications is also
good for your credibility. If you have a bunch of
these certifications, it's going to gain
the client's trust. But if you don't
have any, it's okay. You can just leave this empty. We have employment history
that we already filled. You can add other experiences. For example, you can write in your volunteer works and some
side projects that you did. Even if it was
something for yourself, you can add it over here. It doesn't have to be a
work related experience. You can even write in something such as going to
a business event. Anything that can make
your profile look good, you can add it over here. But this is not
your work history. So you would write
things over here that you haven't written in
the employment history box. Like we said, volunteer work, events, side
projects, et cetera. So those were the areas
for your profile. And you want to
make sure that you have enough works in here. Like, you filled up all of these boxes before turning
on your availability. Because if you say
you're available now, the client will come
to your profile, but they will find that
you have no testimonials, no certifications, and it's
just going to look bad. So you want to make sure
that you fill your profile in the best way possible before turning on
your availability. Now that we have
created our profile, it's now time to learn
about pricing and rates. We need to see what causes
a certain person to have a higher price and what causes them to have
a lower price. I'll see you guys
in the next lesson.
5. Pricing and Rates: When you're first starting out, you're tempted to put
either too high of a price or too low of a price, but this can have a
different outcome when it comes to working
with your client. When you put your prices too up, they're going to look at your
experience and expect you to give a very good
high quality work. But when you put it too low, they will think that you're just not good at what you do and the work that you do is
not that a high quality. It's really important for freelancer to have
their own rates. And when you're
first starting out, you can't really go for that
high because like we said, they're going to look
at your experience and your work before accepting
to work with you. In this lesson, we're
going to be talking about how we can set our
rate as a freelancer. You will also know what type
of payment is suitable for you and how you would approach
that in the job board. So let's first talk about the types of payments
that are on upwork. There's one payment
which is hourly rate and another one which is a
fixed rate or a flat rate. The first type is hourly rate. You're basically getting paid a certain amount per hour that
you work on that project. The second type is a fixed rate, which is a set
amount that you will get paid by the end
of that project. So when you complete
that project and regardless of how many
hours you spent on it, so there are these two types and each client will have to choose their own
type of payment. It really depends
on the project. And when we look at the jobs on the Upwork fine work section, it clearly states
the type of payment. We're going to see how that
looks in a further lesson. But first, let's talk about which type of payment
you should approach. Should you go for the hourly
rate or for the fixed rate? So there are a bunch
of elements that contribute to you choosing
a certain type of payment. The first element is your
relationship with that client. If you've worked with
the client before, chances are that you know
their style and how they do things and you understand
their company well. On the other hand, when you've never worked
with that client, you would not be familiar
with their style, the company, and just
how they do things. Chances are when you're
working with a new client, you're going to be moving
back and forth a lot. Because you're getting
to know their style, maybe they'll give some
feedback on your work, say that this is wrong,
can you do this instead? There's going to be
a lot of back and forth until you can
finish that project. So because of all
of these changes, you're going to be
spending more time than you would if
you knew the client. Just for this reason alone, when you're working
with a new client, you want to go for
an hourly rate. So if you are indeed going back and forth
with all the changes, maybe spending three weeks on a logo because you didn't
understand your concept well, you want to make sure that
you get paid for all of these changes and all of these things that
you have to do. So you would go for an
hourly rate and that way you're compensated
for all the time that you kept for that, let's say, logo design. So hourly rate is great when you are working with a new client. And basically the client
will tell you that per hour that you
work on my logo, I will pay you let's say $10. Even if you did spend
three weeks on that logo, you're still going to get paid $10 per hour that you
work on that project. When it comes to hourly rates, there is a dektep
app that's going to track the time that you
spent on that project. So it's not like you can
just tell the client that you've spent three weeks on that logo when in reality, you only spent two days. This has a solution and
it's the desktop app. We're going to take a
look at that app later, but basically this
app is going to track the time that you're
working on that project. It's going to automatically
take screenshots of whatever it is that you're doing and send it to the client. There's no room for
misunderstandings and everything is right there. There are screenshots, there are timestamps, and that way, both the freelancer
and the client will be happy with the
work that is being done. Of course, when you send
a proposal for a project, you can change and suggest
a new hourly rate. If the client was like, I can pay $3 an hour, you can suggest that, hey, I would want to work with you, but could we make it $5? Hourly rates can be changed. You can negotiate
with the client before starting the project. Make sure that you fully
understand a project and then get into
working with them. That's the first type of
payment, hourly rate. Stick with it if you are a new freelancer and if you're
working with a new client. The second type of
payment is a fixed rate, also known as a flat rate. This is where you
get a certain amount of money by the end
of the project, and regardless of how many
hours you've worked on it, that is the only money that
you will get from the client. This again, can be
negotiated with the client. You can bump up the price
or lower it if you want. And you can just negotiate
with the client. Now, this one doesn't
really have a time tracking application because you're just
going to be like, Okay, I'm going to do
this logo for you. You're going to send
the finalized version. Once the client approves it, that money will be released
onto your Upwork account. It's a pretty
simple transaction. There isn't much going on. Of course, Upwork makes
sure that you get paid both for the hourly
rate and the fixed rate. Basically the client
will also have to deposit that money
before you get started. It's not like you
finish the project, you give them the
finalized content, and they just don't pay
you because Upwork has to make sure that the
transactions go well. So at the start,
the client will be depositing that amount
that you agreed on. And once you finish
and they approve, the money will be
released from Upwork. So in terms of payment, there's no need to worry. Upwork has a lot of security
in terms of payment, and you just don't need to worry about the client not paying you. One thing that you
do want to take a look at when you're
submitting a proposal is that you want
to make sure that the client's payment
is verified. It could also mean that they're
going to verify it later, but it's best to enter a
project without any risk. Now, fixed rates are great
if you know the client. You work with this
client multiple times, you know their style, you know exactly what is it
that they're looking for. That way you can just set
a fixed price of let's say $200 and you just get that
money once you finish. Now, because you
know the client, you know exactly what
their company does, maybe you know the
person who is writing that in upwork the
chances of you going back and forth
with that client because of misunderstandings
are quite low. That's why fixed rates are suitable for this
type of relationship. When you know the client,
you can easily go for a fixed rate and that way, it'll just be easier
for both of you. You get the job, you finish it, you get paid, and you move on. So this is how you can
choose the type of payment. Both have pros and cons. But the main element is if
you know the client or not. Now, on your upwork profile, there is an option to
set a hourly rate. This is regardless
of your proposals. We saw how we can write that. It's just write on your profile. It's the first thing that
the client will see. Let's talk about how you can set your rate as a freelancer. The first and most
important thing is your experience in
that field of work. Let's say you are
a marketing agent and you've never
worked in that field. You just graduated and you're starting to look for some jobs. It wouldn't make sense if
you put the highest number possible because you have nothing to offer to that client. You don't have any work history, you don't have any experience, and you're basically just telling the client that,
hey, I'm new here, but I'm going to
take as much money as an experienced marketing
agent would take. That's not suitable. When you're first starting out, you would want to go
with the minimum number of payments that a
marketing agent would get. If you don't know
that minimum amount, you can simply do a Google
search marketing agent, hourly rates, and
it's going to tell you the minimum amount
and the maximum amount. If you're first starting out, you have nothing to
bring onto your profile, you want to go for
the minimum amount. And once you get clients
and you're getting more items on your work history, you can slowly bring up that price to reach
that maximum amount. But if you have
freelance before you have job experience in
that field of work, of course, then you can just put the rate that
you had before. The client will see your rate and whether it's high or low, they can confirm it with the work history and the experience that you
have on your profile. If you have freelance before, just make sure that you bring in your work history and your work samples onto your
upward profile. Need to do some
uploading, some writing. And that way you can
see more credible to the client when they
see your high rate. That is going to
make much more sense because you're
telling them that, hey, I got all this experience. I'm very busy. I have
multiple other clients. So if you want me to put
time on your project, I will take more money than
an average freelancer. That's going to make
more sense than if you had nothing
on your profile. Once you have found the
minimum and maximum amount for hourly rates in
your field of work, you can go ahead and set that number based on the two
things that we talked about. One is your experience and
one is your work history. You want to put that amount on your profile and like we said, if you keep getting project, you can just keep
adding onto that amount as long as the amount is
relevant to your work history. Now, no matter what you
put on your profile, when you're going
to write proposals, you're going to have to
negotiate the price. Maybe your hourly rate
on your profile is $15. But after negotiating
for a certain project, it's going to become
$16 or maybe less. So what's on your profile
is not going to be fixed on every other project
that you do because you would have to
negotiate with the client. But that rate on your
profile is going to give the client an idea of how much it would cost
them to work with you. So when you're going
to write proposals, you can always look at
the client's budget, and if it's too low and it's
way lower than your rate, then maybe not work with that
client and go for someone who would give you the
right compensations for all the time that
you're putting in. When you're going for
a fixed rate project or flat rate project, you can set milestones so that you can get paid in
between that duration. For example, the client is looking for a website
which is going to take, let's say, two or three months. Now, it wouldn't make
sense for you to wait for the whole three months
to get paid at the end. That's why Upwork has kept
the option of milestones. Basically, you're going to be dividing that three
month project into segments and you can decide those
milestones yourself. You're going to of course, propose it to the client
and once they approve, you can divide the
work and the payment. For example, the first month, you're going to do one third of the work and then get
paid one third of that finalized amount
and just break it up in a way that would work
for both you and the client. Milestones are also very
helpful in fixed projects. Make sure to read
the description. If it's a five minute video
that the client wants, it wouldn't really make
sense for you to set milestones because it's
just a five minute video. But if it's a very long project, maybe more than six
months, three months, then you want to set milestones
so that everything goes well in a certain order and you don't have to wait
that long to get paid. But with hourly rates, like we said, there's
a Dk stop app, so your time is being
tracked at all times and you're going to be paid
for the time that you put in. The client will have
a work diary of you and they can see exactly
what you've been up to. Everything in upwork has been planned beforehand
in terms of payment, there's nothing to worry about. So that's how you can
set your rate on Upwork. With these two type
of payments in mind, you can go ahead and write your price for the proposals
that you write in. Make sure to read what
type of payment it is and see whether that's suitable for you before writing a proposal. In further lessons,
we're going to take a look at this desktop app, and we're also going to write our first proposal where
we can take a look at where these types
of payments are written and how we can
negotiate a price.
6. SEO and Right Keywords: So we're going to talk
about how to optimize your profile and
allow it to come into the search results
that the clients would get. So let's go ahead and search
for a service on Upwork and see how other freelancers showcase themselves
on this platform. So right in this search bar, I'm going to search for talent. I'm going to act as
a client right now, and you want to search
for your field of work. So for me, that would
be branding NUI. So I'm going to
search that branding. And I'm greeted with
a lot of freelancers, and I can see what is it that
they put on their profile, and then I can use
that information to make my profile better. This is a standard
way of researching. So you're going to
see exactly what sells and what is in
demand right now. So I search for branding, which is a general term. We'll get into that later, but usually you want to search
for a very detailed term, like a specific
term in that field. But we search something general to see what's in
demand right now. So we're going to
scroll down here, and what we want to look at is freelancers because
we are freelancers, as well. We're not agencies. Let's get rid of the agencies and stick with the freelancers. Let's scroll down
to job success. We're looking for
the top freelancers in the branding field. So 90% and up, we want to go for a very
high amount, ten K plus. I want to go for 100
hours and above. So someone who's
been on Upwork for a very long time and they
are just really successful. So these are the results
that I'm getting. You can see top rated plus. These two people have
the badge right here. I can go on their
profile and see what they put on display. Let's go with this person. So the first thing that we
notice is the profile picture. So the profile picture, like we said, is
really important. It's the first thing
that people will see, and you want to make sure
it's a high quality photo, and it really helps if you are either smiling or
laughing in that photo. Having a smiling or
laughing picture as your profile is going to
make you more approachable, rather than if you
had a very serious and very neutral photo
as your profile. So this right here, you can see she's laughing in this photo, and this makes her
approachable for the clients. The next thing is her
name and all that. But over here we are
seeing the headlines. So you can see that
she didn't just call herself a branding expert. She's getting into
these specifics, so it's branding and pitch
deck design specialist. So this specific term
is going to make her profile stand out among the millions of
other freelancers. So your headline really matters. You don't want to put
a general term like branding specialist or
just graphic designer. You want to put more
detail in that headline, so immediately people
know what is it that you do and what is your
main area of expertise? We can see that her
hourly rate is $95, which may seem high, but because she has
so many customers, you can see she's earned more than 100 k. She's done this many hours,
this many jobs. So for her to put time for you, it would be a little
bit more expensive. So throughout her years, she has finally got up
to this hourly rate. Like we said, you cannot put something high when you're
first starting out. You need to slowly make your
way up to higher rates. The next item is the
description that describes her and her service to the clients. Let's hit more. The first sentence is something that's
about us, the client. Let's make your brand pop. When people come
to your profile, they just want to know
what you can do for them. You don't want to know about your childhood, about
your favorite meal. It's all about the clients, and you want to immediately tell them what is it that
you will do for them? So you want to grab
their attention, and you only have 3
seconds to do this. If you don't grab the
attention of the client in the first three second of
reading your description, there is a high chance
that the client will just scroll
past your profile. So immediately, let's
make your brand pop. I'm interested as a client
because now I'm asking myself, well, how are you
going to do that? So right after this sentence, she starts to introduce herself. But because she's already
grabbed our attention here, I'm going to read this area. I can see that she has worked
with hundreds of clients. This already makes her credible, and I can confirm
that right over here. I can see that she has worked in different countries on a
variety of design projects, and you can see that she has
worked for large companies, Microsoft, Expedia
and Much More. And finally, after
all the description, she's giving us a
call for action. So let's work together and create something
unique for your brand. And then she's giving us a hopeful sentence that makes me as the client
excited to work with her. I look forward to
designing for you. So your description needs
to follow a bunch of steps. First of all, you want
to put a sentence that will grab the
attention of your clients. Secondly, you want to quickly describe what have you done in the past and how is it that
you work in this field. It would be great if
you could bring in some examples of the companies
that you've worked with, like she has right
here, of course, you want to bring in the names
of well known companies. And finally, she has
a call to action, which is basically telling
me what to do next. So if she just told me about her name and the areas
that she's worked with, without telling me to,
let's start working, I would kind of be lost as to, Okay, where am I
supposed to go next? So right now after reading this, I know that she promised me something unique for my brand. So you want to follow
the same structure, something to grab the attention, a short description of
you and your experience. You don't need to bring in
your entire work history in this description, and finally a call to action. You want to follow the
same structure for the client to be driven
through your description, and you definitely don't
want them to be bored. In a little while,
we're going to see what not to put in
your description and some examples as to how you can transform basic descriptions
into better ones. She has her work history
and all of that. And with the many testimonials, I can see that she's a credible person and she's
good at what she does. Her skills, this is
her project catalog, and there's her certifications. So this is an example of a
good profile for branding. Let's go back and take a
look at some other areas. So as another example, we can take a look at, let's say, a general
term like marketing. Again, we can see
that the headline is more specific
than what we search. And here's a tip as to what you should put
in your headline. Basically, as the client, you're looking for
a specific type of task and not just
the entire field. For example, if I'm looking
for a marketing specialist, I'm actually trying to get that marketing
specialist to do, let's say, SEO work. Or to help me get more sales. So this right here is a specific term that I will
be searching as the client. Instead of marketing, I
would be searching for a specific term like
sales specialist. Because this is exactly
what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for a
general marketing person because it's a big field, and then I would have to talk to that freelancer
as to what is it? What area of marketing
they're best at, see if they can help
me with my project. But when I search for
that specific term, I'm basically going straight in with what I'm looking for. So you want to put that
specific term in your headline. Instead of putting just a marketing specialist,
a general term, you want to put
marketing specialist, maybe a dash sales specialist or marketing specialist,
SEO specialist. Like, you want to put
that specific term in your headline or
else the client will just scroll past you
because you're not saying that you're going to give them exactly what
they're looking for. Let's take a look
at another example. Let's go to Design and creative. There we go. We can see
that this person is putting a specific term graphic
designer for social media. So he's not selling himself as a general graphic designer
who does everything. He's saying that he's
a graphic designer that specializes
in social media. So if I was someone
who was looking to make my social
media post better, I would go directly for
this person because he is telling me exactly
what he wants to give me, which is graphic design
for social media. But if he was just
a graphic designer, that's a really general term, and I would have to
chat with him and see if he can do
social media post, maybe go through
his portfolio and find if he does
social media design. But if he's telling
me right here that he can do the
social media design, then that will be a lot more favorable because I
don't have to spend time looking through
his profile to see whether he can give me
those social media designs. So when we scroll down, we can see we have expert
graphic designer as a headline. This is not a good
headline because it's not telling me exactly what she
does in graphic design. I would have to look
at her portfolio or the tags right here to find
out what she does exactly. Which after reading, I can
find out she does brochures, catalogs, posters
and other things. But because the first thing that people will see
is the pictures, I would want the main service
to be right next to them. I don't want the client
to search through my profile to find out what they want after minutes of reading. I want them to look
at my profile, find out immediately
what I can do for them, and that way they would be
more likely to work with me. So you want to keep
those key terms right around your pictures. So this is the picture that the person will see,
your profile picture. So you want to make
sure that the key terms are right next to it and not in your description
or any other place where it would take the
client minutes to find out. So those were some examples of really successful freelancers
on this platform, and you want to make sure
you spend enough time researching these
freelancers because it's going to give
you a better idea of what you should
put in your profile. So you would just
do your research, make sure you're looking for
the most successful ones. So search for the job success, the art amount, and then you would get the best of the best. Let's go in one
of these profiles and see what else is available. Like the previous example, she's immediately telling me
what is it that she does, short list of services. In less than 3 seconds, I know that she designs
business cards. Then it follows up with fliers, envelopes, and others
to open it up. After she tells me
what is it she does, she starts telling
me about herself. But if this area was below this, then I as the client would most likely not read
her description. So that's why she's putting
her services right over here, and then she's
introducing herself. Because like we said, you have 3 seconds to tell the client
what is it that you do. Now that we looked at some
profiles and we know what we should do and how our
profile should look like, it's now time to create a
description and headline ourselves and see what we
should not put in our profile.
7. Submitting Your First Proposal pt. 1: Um, by submitting proposals, you are going to offer your services directly
to a certain client. In defined work section, you're going to get something
that's like a job board. Once you scroll down, Upwork is going to give you
the best matches. Basically jobs that match your profile and the field
of work that you do. You can go for the
most recent ones, and you also have a
saved jobs category. So if you're interested in something but would
want to do it later, you can save those jobs here. Let's go in best matches
and take a look at the opportunities that
are here before us. So the first thing is the title, and right here is the payment system that we talked about. We said that there are either
fixed or hourly rates. And over here, you
can see which type of payment is on this project. So this guy is fixed. Most of these are
fixed, but this one, you can see it's hourly.
So they are different. It depends on the client, and they would just mention their payment type
right over here. One thing to pay attention to is the payment verification. You can see that some of
these have payment verified, but some of them don't if
their payment is not verified, that's kind of risky because Upwork didn't make
sure that they have a credit card
linked to their account. So the payment might take longer and there might
be complications. So it's best to just stick with clients that have their
payments verified. Next to that, you can
see the star rating of the client and the amount of money they spent
on this platform. So when they spend this much, you know that they
are a regular user of Upwork and they are trusted, can see all the stars and
all the verifications. So seeing a job like this is a safe place for me to start. And I just need to
see whether or not I'm at the level that this
client is looking for. But once I look at the
area next to the price, I can see that this
client is looking for an intermediate freelancer. You can see this one as well, but this guy is looking
for entry level. If you're just
starting out, you're a beginner in your field, you would want to go with
these entry level tags because this client is looking for and it's just looking for someone
to do an easy task. So you don't need to
be a professional to go for this job. You can see once
we read the title, Selfie recording for female
Azerbaijani speakers. So it's a simple task. You don't have to be a pro at selfie recording to
go for this job. And once I see this, I'm rest assured that even if
I'm not experienced, I still have a
chance at this task. On the other hand, if
you are a professional, you wouldn't really
want to go for an entry level job
because usually there are many other opportunities
for professionals with higher payments and
better opportunities. You can also see the
tags right here, graphic design, in design,
Illustrator, Photoshop. And if I'm familiar
with any of these tags, I could just go for these. This is where you get to kind
of dislike the job because the section we are
in right now is best matches for my profile. So if this is
something that I just wouldn't be doing and
I'm not interested in, I could just hit this, and
it will be removed for me. For example, this is a job for Azerbaijani native speakers. I'm someone who is
not a Azerbaijani, so this job will just
not be suitable for me. Can go ahead and
dislike this and give a reason why I will go
with doesn't match skills. And now this guy is going to
be removed from my matches, and I can just keep this
section for jobs that I would have a shot at and that I
know I would be able to do. We also have the heart next
to each of these projects, which goes in your save jobs. So I'm going to save this. And now you can see I have my very first safe jobs.
Let's go back here. Now, let's go in
one of these and take a look at how we
can write our proposal. So we can see that this
is a worldwide job, meaning that I don't have to be in the location to do this. This is really important
if you want to be a remote freelancer on Upwork. Make sure to always check the location because sometimes
you just scroll through, you see the payment is good, the description is perfect, but you forget to check the
location and then they're expecting you to be
in, let's say, Mexico. So you want to make sure
you read this and not enter that complicated situation
that would occur if you just didn't know that
you had to go to Mexico. We're seeing a description. Make sure to always read
the description carefully. Never skip the final lines
because maybe at some point, they're talking about an
unexpected expectation that they might have of you, and you want to make sure
you fully understand the project and how
it's going to work before submitting
a proposal because submitting proposals
is going to cost you, and we're going to talk
about that in a second. So you want to
make sure you read everything the best way
that you can go over to multiple times and
make sure you fully understand the project
before moving on. Down here, we can
see that I'm getting a fixed price of $40, no matter how many hours
I spend on this project, I will be getting $40. Let's come down here. We
can see the activity. You can see that there are
less than five proposals. This is good for me because
once I submit my proposal, the chances of the
client seeing mine is going to be much higher than
if there were 100 proposals. Every client also has a
recent history where you can find out whether they
are a good client. You can see down
here, freelancers are giving their reviews
for this client. And there's also the
other way around. So you can see
their work history, basically the work that they've done on Upwork and
how that went. This could help you
with the trust that you would have
towards this client. Now, let's go up and talk about
something called connect. So basically Upwork has
things called connects. Now, these connects are going
to be refilled every month. You could also buy them, but you could get them for
free if you wait every month. And when you first
start on Upwork, you're going to have
a certain number of connects that you
can use to get started. So I know that right
now I have 50 connects, and if I want to
submit a proposal, I would need two to get started. Or if you choose by milestone, you would have to write
down the description, due date, and amount, and you can add as
many as you'd want. Of course, the client would have to accept your proposal in
order for this to work. But you're just telling
this client how you would want to continue
with this project. So you can see I am
looking for five people, a short five minute video. Let's say I would go with, like, first five minute video. The due date when will
I finish this one by? Let's say one day and how much
from this $40 will I take? I could take less or
I could take more. It all depends on me. So
maybe I'd say I would take $5 for this first
five minute video. I could add more and just delete if I don't need
more than one milestone. So then I can see that this is the total price that
I would get $5, I would have to add more. Let's make this like 20. So I would just add as
many milestones as I want, but if I want to finish
the project in one go, I would go for this, and
I'm going to bid an amount. So I'm suggesting the client an amount that could be
higher than their budget. Or lower, and then they could decide whether they'd
want to do this or not. And then Upwork has
a service fee of $8. So this is what I will receive by the end
of this project. Once you're scrolled
down, you want to give a duration for this project. Something like this,
choose whichever you want. Now, the cover letter is one of the most important
parts of your proposal. In this part, you're basically convincing the client
to work with you. So you want to have the
best sentences in there and avoid some common mistakes that we're going to
talk about soon. So think of it like this. This client is getting
thousands of proposals, and the chances of you
standing out are already low because the client is just
scrolling through and is just looking for that one sentence
that will just allow them. Similar to the description, you have a few seconds to convince this client
to read your proposal. So it's really crucial
that you do not waste your time with
useless sentences, and we are going to
see right now what are some sentences that you should not write in your cover letter. So this is an
example of what you shouldn't write in
your cover letter. Hi, my name is Josh and
I am from New York City. This first sentence has
nothing to do with the client, and they're just left with this information that they
can't do anything with. So if you write this
in your proposal, the client's just going
to go past it because it's irrelevant to
the entire service. Another example is writing the cover letter in a
very email like way. So, dear sir or dear Madam. I hope you have a great day. So starting it off like an email is just not right
because, again, you're giving this to them
in the first 3 seconds, and this has nothing to do
with what they're looking for. In this sentence, you didn't really say what
you're going to do and how you're going to help
them with their project. So this is another
useless thing. Another one is thanking them before they reach your proposal. So thanks for reading
this. You won't regret it. This, again, is just irrelevant, and the client hasn't even read your proposal and you're
already thinking them. This is a bad example of how you should start
your proposal. And finally, this
is another mistake when you do something without
the client asking you to. So for this project, they
needed a quick video, and basically they want to check the they want to check our
setup first with a screenshot. So if I write something like I already created
five goods for you, please choose me so
you can see them. So without the client asking, you went ahead and
created five videos. If you had read the description, you would have known that
they want to first check your setup and then they would ask you to film that
five minute video. But right now, I just went
ahead. Without reading it. I created five videos, and this is kind
of weird for them because they didn't ask for this and you're like, Well,
I did this for you. Now you owe it to
me to choose me. But that's just not how you want to sound in your proposal. So those were some
common mistakes. Now let's take a look at how
we can write a proposal.
8. Submitting Your First Proposal pt. 2: So what should you
put in your proposal? Before we get started,
let's take a look at some rules that you
need to keep in mind whenever you're
writing a cover letter. Like we said, these clients are receiving hundreds of
cover letters every day, and already, it's pretty
tiring to look at all those paragraphs and
all those bulky texts. So the first thing you
want to do is to keep your cover letter short
because the clients can easily read
that compared to if you wrote a three
paragraph cover letter. If you have three sentences, instead of putting
them all together, you would want to make it more digestible by putting some
spaces in between them. Now this is easier to
digest for the client and if I had a large
text together, it would be tiring for
the client to even look. Now, even if they did read
your bulky paragraphs, the first sentence is going to set off how they would continue. If you start with one of the mistakes that
we talked about, they're most likely
going to scroll through and look for
another freelancer. So what you can do
in this scenario is to let them know how you can
help in a very short way. You want to write a letter consisting of many sentences
in a very short way, and always end your
cover letters with a CTA or a call to action. So you're basically telling
them, Oh, I can help you. Let's get it started with
a call, with a chat, and you want to include that in your cover letter because you're telling this client that, Hey, I'm not going to
beat around the bush. I'm going to be straightforward. Let's just get this project
done and get rid of all the unnecessary procedures. The client is going
to be impressed by how you care about
this project and how you want to get it done without without having to talk about yourself and your stories
and unnecessary details. B straightforward and always
end with a call to action. For this example where
they want a video, I can be like, and they're
actually looking for acting because you're
making facial expressions. I can one bring a
experience with a past client if I've
done acting in the past, and then use call to action. Now let's see what is a good cover letter for
this example where they want someone to act and create facial
expressions on Zoom. So this is a cover
letter that would work well for this project. I've just crammed it all
together to show you what not to do with your
text. Hey, there. I've worked with many acting
agencies in the past, and I think we can
create something great. I've been acting
for seven years, and I think I'd be a
great fit for this role. Let's have a quick call and
discuss the details further. Best, Josh. So this right here is getting
straight to the point. I'm saying that I've worked. I've had the experience, and I think that I'm capable
of creating this video. I'm bringing in some
experience background, one of the strong points that I can bring into
this cover letter. For you, it could be the number of clients, the
number of skills. We're going to talk about
that in a later lesson. But right over here, I'm letting this client know that
I have the experience, and I've done similar
things to this project. Finally, I'm ending it
with a call to action. Let's have a quick call and
discuss the details further. And then I'm just ending
it with a sign off. But here's the thing. I've
created this cover letter, but it's all crammed
in together, which makes it not as easy
to digest for the client. Simply, I just need to create some space between my
sentences, and that way, the chances of the client
looking at my cover letter, even for 5 seconds is
going to be much higher. So let's create some space. Hey there. There we go. Another one here. And
Best Josh goes down here. So naturally as humans, when we look at a bulk of text, we're just not as
excited to read it than if we had
a text like this, it's just how humans perform. When you have a text like this, it's more digestible and it catches your eye
compared to, let's say, if I wrote five paragraphs about my life and how
I'm a great actor. So you want to make sure you have these
spaces in between, but make sure that each
sentence is relevant. And if needed, you could have
two sentences in one space, but try to keep the
area clean like this. Another thing that
some freelancers like to do is at below where they say that they've
been acting for seven years or if they
had this many clients. They like to bring
in quotes from the testimonials that
are on their profile. For example, a past
client is writing a testimonial for me
that is on my profile. Josh is great, and
he is a great actor. Then I can write
Blue Acting Agency. Let's say this is an agency
that Josh has worked with, and Josh is just bringing in this testimonial to tell
this client that, Hey, I've worked with
this major agency, and here is what he had to say about his experience with me. And if the client is impressed by you and
decides to work with you, when they go to your profile, they can find this testimonial
along with many others. So this is another thing that some freelancers like to do, but if you don't have
any testimonials on your profile, it's okay. You can just leave this out. But now that I have my
right cover letter, I can move on with
the attachments. So let's say you want to
show some work samples and try to convince the client that you
know what you're doing. For this project where there is a video which we're not supposed to submit before
they check our setup, it wouldn't really
make sense for me to attach anything because these are videos where they'd want to put
a certain setup. But let's say if this was a graphic design project where
they want a logo design, you can go ahead and attach
some of your logo samples, the best ones, of course,
because keep in mind, you're just going to look at your proposal for a few seconds, so you don't have that much
time to show like ten files. You want to keep
the top three logos that you've done
onto this proposal. Once you've done that
and you've uploaded it, you can come down here where
you can boost your proposal, make it stand at the top. But this is optional, of course. You will have to pay
with your connect, but I recommend not doing
that because you're going to need these to submit
proposals in the future. You could buy extra connects, but you could just keep
these and try your luck with different proposals until
you land your first job. So if you'd want to jump start your proposal and boost it
to the top of the screen, you can do that,
but keep in mind that you're going
to lose connects. I can submit my proposal
for to Connect, and then the client can
choose my proposal. I will obviously
get a notification, and then it just
goes from there. The other is a chat and you
can talk to the client. And then there are
certain steps that Upwork will take you through so don't worry if you
were chosen for a job, Upwork is going to walk
you through each step. You will not be alone. If you had any questions
for the clients, make sure you ask that before starting the
job and before signing a contract to make
sure that you can perform this job in
the best way possible, because this client
is most likely going to rate rate your service, and maybe write
you a testimonial, which will be on your profile, so make sure you fully
understand the job and you ask any questions that you have before starting and
signing off the contract. So that's how easy it is
to submit a proposal. Just follow the steps
that we talked about. It's not that difficult
to submit a proposal, but the most important
part is this area. And like we said, you
want to keep it short, get straight to the point
and always have a call to action at the end of
your cover letter. This is kind of
like a cold email. So if you've ever
written cold emails, this should be easy for you. But if you haven't, just follow the rules that
we talked about. Now that we know how we
can submit our proposal, let's learn about
how we can make our profile even better
with a great description.
9. Common Description Mistakes and How to Make Your Profile Stand Out: Let's take a look at what
we should include in our upwork profile
and how we can grab the attention of clients
in the first 3 seconds. The first thing that we're
going to focus on is the description that you would put in your
upwork profile. The description, as we saw, is a small paragraph about
you and your services. And based on the
examples that we saw, we know how important they are. Every freelancer that
we looked at had a paragraph either stating their services or
their experience. So when a person is drawn
in by your headline, you want to make
sure that they're greeted with a very
good description. So let's see what
you should include in your description
and what you shouldn't going to take a look at
some common mistakes that you may make when you're
writing your description. And by looking at
a few examples, you can learn what you shouldn't
put in your description, and what are some mistakes
that you can avoid. The first mistake is starting off with
the wrong sentence. We have some examples here. Hello. My name is John. I'm 35 and I'm from Michigan. If I'm looking to
work with John, who is, let's say,
a SEO specialist, in this one sentence, nothing related to
me as the client, everything was with
the freelancer. And based off this sentence, I don't know what John
is going to offer to me and what I'm going to
get from John's service. Second sentence is just
being really thankful before the client even makes
their way into your profile. Just straight off
the bat, you're thanking them for
reading the profile. I'm glad you're here. Have
a nice day. These things. They're kind of
pointless. They are nice. They are welcoming, but but when someone is
visiting your profile, they just want to find out about your experience and what
service you want to provide. So make sure you don't have the wrong sentence
on your description, and you do not put
pointless sentences on there because you're just going to waste the client's time. Now, we did see an example where the person introduced
themselves, like the first example. But as you remember, she did so after stating her service. So the first thing that the
client saw was her services. And then Bulow she started
talking about herself, her experience, the school
she graduated from. And basically, after
seeing those services, and after the client is
drawn in by her skills, there is a chance that
the client would like to know more about this
person in a personal way. But you want to make
sure you do that after you have grabbed
their attention. So this sentence that I just highlighted shouldn't be the first thing that
the clients see, but it could be
something that they can later scroll down and
find out about you. So let's see what is a good sentence to start
off your description with. So this is a good sentence that we saw earlier
in our example. The first sentence was,
Let's make your brand pop. So if I'm looking
for someone who can help me with my
company's branding, I would want to
see this sentence. Immediately, the person's
telling me that I can help you. And the question that I would have as a
client is, Oh, great. How? And then I would scroll
down and see the services. So this sentence is good. It's a call for action. Basically, the freelancer
is like, Come work with me. I can make your brand pop. So this right here is a good
sentence to start with. Let's look at another
common mistake. Which is to repeat
your headline. So let's say this is the headline branding
specialist Pitch text. So you don't want to
repeat your headline in the description
because the client has already read that about you, and they already
know that you are a branding specialist and
you make pitch texts. So you don't want to
repeat that multiple times throughout your description
because there's no point. They already know
that about you. So these three examples
are not suitable. They're going to kind of
annoy the client because you're just repeating the
headline multiple times. Some people do think
that this is helpful because you're repeating
that I will do this for you. This is my specialty. But in reality, it's kind of annoying and inconvenient
for the client to read your headline
multiple time in that tiny paragraph
that's on your profile. But a good sentence
that you could put is with 20 years
of experience, I can make your pitch
deck stand out. So over here, I'm not saying that I am a branding specialist, but instead I'm bringing in my experience and the many
years that I have worked. And basically we are taking
a small bit of the headline, just this term, but I'm not telling them again that
I'm a branding specialist. I'm bringing in
something that can be impressive to the clients. So if this was the
first sentence, in the first half, I
would be impressed. I'm like, Wow, this person
has 20 years of experience. And in the second half, I can find out that this
person can indeed help me. And if I'm looking to get a
pitch deck from this person, I would continue reading
because this person is already telling me
that I can help you, and they can help me with
the 20 years of experience. This makes them more credible. Now let's look at
a third mistake. Which is to tell
unnecessary stories. You don't want these stories to be the first thing
that the clients see. It's not really important to them what you
want it to be as a little boy or how you grew up or some
motivational speech. These are just useless for the clients because they're
just here for the service. And instead, you're
wasting their time by saying unnecessary things. Such as when I was a little boy, I wanted to be a doctor. I grew up with three
brothers and two sisters. I always thought I wouldn't
make it as a photographer. People didn't believe
in me, et cetera. These are kind of
pointless and you are indeed wasting
the client's time. Now, storytelling is not forbidden from your
upwork description, but it needs to be related
to what you're doing now. So these things are
kind of unrelated. It has nothing to do with the service that you are providing, and it's just kind of pointless. But let's see how we can
include storytelling in the description
and how it can help. So this is a good sentence. I graduated from Harvard Law and had over 300 clients
in the past years. So this person is
telling a story about how they came to become
this successful freelancer, but it's related to what
they are doing now. So if this person
was a lawyer and I saw this as the
first sentence, I would be impressed
because they graduated from this prestigious school
and had over 300 clients. So that already tells
me that this person is experienced and they can definitely help me
in my legal issues. So this sentence does
have storytelling, but it's related to the service that the freelancer
is providing. Now, let's look at some items
that you should include in your profile and how you can arrange these items in a
way that would benefit you. Let's scroll down, and our
first item is experience. Second is education. Third is number of clients, and fourth is your skills. Now, depending on
the numbers for you, you would have to arrange
them in a way that would impress the clients when
they visit your profile. So let's take a look
at some examples. Let's say that Josh Josh is
our freelancer right now. He has maybe two years of experience as a
branding specialist, four years of
education background. 200 clients, and he's skilled at maybe two
programs, let's say. So Josh needs to put his number of clients first in
the first sentence. Instead of starting
his sentence with, I have two years of experience, he needs to start out
his sentence with I have had over 200 clients
in my career. So this is the most impressive
thing in Josh's profile. It's not his experience, his education, but the number
of clients that he had. Let's take a look
at another example. Our second example is Mary. So Mary had, let's say, 20 years of experience. And let's say four years of education, maybe five clients. Let's say they're agencies, and she has one skill. So Mary right now needs to focus on her experience
and put that on the front line B over 20 years of experience
is indeed impressive. But saying that she only has one skill is not
that impressive. So Mary has to stick
with her experience. And if she is talking
about her clients, let's say they're agencies,
so five companies. She could actually
say that she had 20 years of experience
with five major companies. She could combine these, but the experience
needs to come first because it's the most
impressive thing about Mary. Now, let's say you are
a young freelancer. Maybe you're 22 and you
haven't lived that long to have 20 years of
experience or 100 clients. You just started out in
this field and you're trying to get
experience from upwork. Let's look at our third example. So Peter has zero years of experience. He
just started out. He has maybe four years
of education or none. The age of four
doesn't really matter. He had no clients so far, but he is skilled at, let's say, ten
different programs. So Peter needs to stick
with his programs, and his skills seems to be like, I'm skilled at this and that, and I've been working
with the following. And when the client
scrolls down and sees their work in
their portfolio, they can be quite impressed. So what Peter is putting
on the front line is his skills and not his
experience because he had zero. So the order of things
matter in the profile items. Just because you started
out and you are young, it doesn't mean that
there's no hope for you because you didn't
have that much experience. You definitely want to stick
with your strongest point, which for Peter are his skills. Same thing goes for Mary. Just because she has one skill, it doesn't mean that there's no hope for her because
she has a strong point, which is her experience. So you need to write these
down for yourself based on your career and
see which ones you need to focus on when you're
writing your description. And one more thing to
point out if you are like Peter and you don't
have any experience, education, or clients, you need to instead fill up your
portfolio, like we said. So even if it's for fun, let's say you are creating
different brands, but there are no clients
on the other end, you still need to
put those works on your portfolio because
in these situations, the client is only
looking at your style. They're not taking in the experience and
the other things. So you want to make sure you have the works to
wow the client. So if you're saying that you're skilled at ten
different programs, you want to show that to the client throughout
your portfolio, which are your works
that you would put up on your upwork profile. You cannot just say that
you're skilled and there's no evidence because then you're just bluffing
at that point. So if you're going
for the skills, you would want to show
it in your portfolio. But in other cases
where you have more experience and
number of clients, it's okay if you don't have that many portfolio items
because you can just write out the name of the companies
that you worked with and that's already
in your resume. So you will see in profiles sometimes one of these stand
out more than the other, but that is because
that one thing is the strong point
of that freelancer. And they're just
trying to make it shine throughout their profile, which is the smartest
thing to do. So those were some common
mistakes that you would have made if you were to just write your description
without any research. Now that you know
what you shouldn't include in your profile
and what you should, you can go ahead and start
writing out your description. Again, make sure you do research on other freelancers
that are in your field, see what the top freelancers are writing in
their description, and take that as inspiration. Because that way
you know exactly what sells in your
field of work. So now that we know how we can write a very good description, we can now move on to working on our portfolio and
see what we could include to make our
profile look even better. What type of work can backup our skills and our
claims and just how we can wow the client
when they scroll down to your works and
your experience. I'll see you guys
in the next lesson.
10. Project Catalogue pt. 1: When you're using Upwork
on a regular basis, most of the time the
client sets the terms for you and you are to follow those terms and
meet the deadline. But with the Project Catalogue, you are setting
all of the terms, you are setting the deadline, and the client is just there
for the final product. So this is a great way to create more opportunities
for yourself. Usually on the Project board
that we are right now, if you go to Fine Work, click this and you'll be
brought to this page. Usually the client
is setting the term. You can see he's setting
the hourly rate, he's setting the time
limit and all that. But with the project catalog, you are doing these things. So basically, with
project catalogs, you will be setting the
price and the time. So you are going to
tell the client, whoever comes to your
profile that I will take $100 for a sketch, and I will take two
weeks to do the sketch. And then the client can look at your terms and then
decide to work with you. But with project catalogs, you're not going to be doing as much because the catalogs, you make them once you put
in all the information, and then they are
just sitting on your profile for the
clients to come. Usually, on these jobs, you would have to search,
write proposals for each one. But with project catalogs, you do them once, and they're just going to be
on your profile. And I highly recommend, apart from looking
for jobs like this, that you create some project
catalogs on your profile, so you can create more
opportunities for yourself. Let's go to our profile. Then we're going to scroll
down to Project Catalogue. Let's manage projects. And you can see, build it once, earn again and again. So these project catalogs
are just going to be there on your profile
unless you delete them. You can see some examples here, 1,000 word article within
24 hours from $30. So this person right
here is saying that I have set these terms. You can work with
me if you'd like. And this gives the
freelancer more freedom over how they manage their projects because they are
setting the term. Let's create a project. And we're going to start
with the basics and enterprises Gallery requirements,
description and review. Let's give our project a title. Now you can see that I
already have the set for me. You will get A, and I need to write something
that I'm going to give. You will get mockups
for your logo. For example, try to make
the title as fun and as optimistic as possible instead of saying you will get mockup, try to be like you're going to get special mockups
for your logo. I can go for minimalistic, try to make the description, the title as descriptive
as possible. And that way when people
search for minimalistic, they're going to get
my project as well. So instead of writing,
you will get mockups, put in a adjective and try to
describe your service more. Once you written your title, let's scroll down to category. This is where you get to
categorize your service. For me, it would be
Photoshop editing. And click it once, and then I'm getting more
items down here. But if you're not
seeing your category, you can just hit this and look for the category
that you are looking for, then narrow it down to the specific service
that you are providing. All right, I chose
Photoshop editing. Let's look over here. So image editing type.
This is optional. You don't have to
choose it, and for me, none of these match
what I'm doing. So I'm not going to
select any of them. You can choose your
file format for me would be PNG, JPEG. You choose multiple
if you'd want. Can even give the
Photoshop document, and then you want to
type in your search tag. It does say optional, but I recommend filling this in because you're
going to include the exact same tags that a potential client
will be searching for. This way, the chances
of your projects popping up in the search
results will be higher. So for me, I can write Mockup and you want to press Inter once you're
finished, Mockup, Photoshop. Editing brand, Logo. Those are my five tags. You cannot have more than five. Once you're finished,
save and continue. Now we're here for
the price and scope. So you can create different
packages for your service. For example, you have
a starter package, standard and advanced. So you're basically dividing the level of your
service from basic to, let's say, a golden
package, a premium package. For example, for starter, I can be like basic
mockup basic mockups with just basic mockup or
it can be like mockup. So there's only one with logo. Standard, I can write three
mockups with special effects. Advanced, I can write
animated mockups. Yeah, just animated mockups. You can see it's going
from a very basic thing to a really a different type of mockup because
this is animated. Here we're getting
special effects, and here we're just
getting it with the logo. So the client could
just choose between my packages and see which
one fits them best. Can give a custom description, your logo placed on objects. On objects of your choice. So they can be like, I
want my logo on a mug, I want it on a billboard.
They can choose it. But with special effects, let's choose here
on basic objects. You logo on special objects with
additional effects. All right. And then animated. The mockups A animated
or a cooler look. These are just examples, but obviously the person
who's going to get the advanced package is going to get some animation
for their mockups. And maybe that's what
they're looking for. But if they're not looking for animations and they don't
want to pay extra for it, then they can just go
for my starter pack. So instead of skipping
me and going for another person who has
a basic mockup service, they can just go for
my starter pack. So I'm giving them
three options. But if you don't have three
options for your service, you can just turn this off. And offer one package. So you don't have to
provide three packages, but it does help because the client can just
stick with you if they want something
different instead of going to another freelancer. Let's come down
to delivery days. This is the number of
days that it takes you to deliver this package. I will go for two days because this is
just really simple. Two days standard because it's additional effects,
I'll make it four. And animated will
obviously take longer. So this one would be six. Number of images, you
want to tell them how many end results you're
going to give the client. For the starter, we said one. So let's put it right here. You can also make this one. Standard with the
special effects. Let's say three
animated mockups. Let's say four.
Number of revisions. This is how many times
you're going to allow the clients to ask for a change. For example, you kept
the logo on the mockup, but they're like, Oh, could
you make this part red? And that counts as a revision that the client is
asking from you. So you can either allow that
revision or not allow it. For the starter pack, I could put zero revisions, but maybe I can provide
revisions for these two because clients are
usually looking for revisions. Maybe they change their mind and they want to do
something differently. So for standard,
I would put two. For advanced, I'll put three. Let's scroll down, and then
we have service tier options. So basically, with my type of work where I'm working
with Photoshop, I can give some
additional options. For example, source file
is the project file, which in my case, if I'm
using Photoshop would be the PSD file,
Photoshop document. And I could allow whether I give that to the client so
they can go in Photoshop, work with the layers and
change it up themselves. You can allow such a thing
by checking these boxes. Usually, you'd want to put
this for the higher packages, so they would go
for that package. I'm going to put
it for these two. High Resolution, you can choose
whether you want to give them a very high quality image, or you could just
uncheck this and give them a basic image. So high resolution, I'll
keep it for these two. Because I'm putting these
special effects here, and I'm animating these, so I will just make sure I'm giving them
high resolution footage. Then we have commercial use, which is when you're
allowing this person to take your work and use it to
promote their brand. So they could use it
on their product, on their services,
website, and all that. You can allow that,
but if you'd want to keep that work exclusive, then you can just
not check this. You can see you will provide
commercial use services, which is when a creative work is used to promote a product, service, brand or company. You could turn this
on if you'd want. I would check all of these. This is my preference, but
you just uncheck them. These are meant for you
to allow or not allow. Finally, we have
the project price. So for all of these
starter options, how much will I be taking? So let's say I will start with $5 because this starter
pack, I'm not doing much. I'm just putting one
logo on one mockup. So $5 for the special effects. $10 animations, Sco for 40. Keep in mind that a portion
of these will go to Upwork. So choose your price
based on that fact. Try to choose something
that is reasonable. So for a really basic pack where they're not
getting that much, I cannot put $50
because they're not getting anything from the
starter pack except one image. So you'd want to
make sure to look at this from the client's
perspective as well. You were going for a
freelancer yourself and you'd want one mockup of your logo, how much would you
be willing to pay? So $5 is pretty reasonable
for me at least. And personally, if the person was asking for $50
for one image, I would just not go
for that freelancer. So you want to put yourself in both the freelancers shoe and the client's shoe and base
your prices off of that. And if you're not sure
how much you should put, then you can always search
logo, mockup price. I can come over here and
you can see two to $7. And from the Internet,
I could just make up how much I should
be putting my service. So I can put $5 for this one mockup since the
Internet said five to $7. Now let's go for choose add ons. Now, you can put
these checkmarks next to your project catalog, so fast delivery, if it's possible for you,
you can turn that on. And basically, the
clients can add this fast checkmark next to the order and ask you for
the standard package that, Hey, I cannot wait
for four days, I'm willing to pay you extra. Could you make it
work in two days? So you're going to give them
that option to speed up for you to speed up their project and get more money in return. So for my standard pack, where I said four days, I can make this two
days and instead take an extra let's say $8. For advanced, where
I said six days, I can make it four days
and take an extra $12. You're just giving
them that option. They can choose
this if they want. Additional images. I maybe these numbers were
too low for the client, you're giving them the option to add and ask for more images. So for an extra, let's say
$10 and an additional, let's say, two days, I would give you one
extra media from my packages.
Additional revision. You're going to add to the amount for the
revisions right here. That's optional. You can
just not check this. Source file, if they
wanted, let's say, the starter package, and I didn't give them the
source file option, they can pay an extra
let's go in here, an extra $5.02 days for me
to give them a source file, which we don't really
need days for that. So just for an additional $5. Then we have high resolution, which you could add if you'd
want for an extra $6.01 day. You can also create your
own custom add ons. If you're not seeing
the things you want, maybe custom color change. So they could ask me to change their logos color when I'm doing the mockups.
This is optional. I will change the
color of your logo to match a certain mockup. For an extra $5.01 day. Add as many as you'd want, remove them if you're
not happy with them, and then save and continue to
move on to the next slide. This is the project gallery. In the next part, we're
going to fill that up and see how we can finish up this project catalog
and post it on our Upwork profile. A
11. Project Catalogue pt. 2: Let's continue with our
very first project catalog. We stopped over here where
we were supposed to upload the gallery items for
our project catalog. First, let's put
our project image. So this is the first thing
that the client will see. If you hit Project preview, this is the layout
that they get. So the picture would
be right over here. It's important that
the picture is related and it's the best
work that you can offer. So it's pretty big. Let's make sure we
have a good image. Since mine is mockups, I'm just going to
upload a random mockup. Once you have
uploaded your image, you're going to get this
panel where you can crop it and just
resize it to the way you want with these bars at the corners and just hit
Upload for it to be uploaded. There we go. And I uploaded two here to show you the
options that you have. You can choose one
of these images to be your project cover, which is the first image
that the client will see. So you can select
on each one and choose the project cover, and you can delete the
ones that you don't want. So this right here
is my project cover. You can upload up to 20 images. But I suggest keeping
the number low, so it's enough for the client to scroll through and try to put your best works on
your project gallery. And then we have Project video. This could be either from the work that you did or it could be you explaining
your service. For me, it could be
a logo animation. So I'm taking their logo and I'm putting it on an animated, sequence for my
advanced package. But if you guys
don't have any sort of video in your packages, it could just be a video of you telling the client that,
Hey, I'm going to do this. Let's make a great
mockup for your brand. It's kind of like a
commercial for your project. So just upload that right here. Er you go, make sure it's up to 100 megabytes in
less than 60 seconds. You can set this as your
project cover if you want. I'm going to go with this image. Can also put a document. For me, the documents
wouldn't really make sense since I'm putting
them as an image. But if your service
needs a document, then you can just
upload it right here as PDF files. Let's hit Continue. And right over here,
you're going to add some requirements
for the client. So basically, since I'm
doing a logo mockup, I'm obviously going
to need a logo. So add a requirement. So if I'm going to need a logo, I'm going to write in, please
upload your logo file. And I can specify
the format as well. Either PNG or SVG. And then for the answer, I'm going to make this a
file attachment and make sure that I turn this on
because without a logo, I can't really create
a mockup for them. So this is my first requirement. Was add. Going to add some more. Do you have a preferred mockup
object slash background? Please write them here. For example, the client
could tell me, Yeah, I want my logo on
a business card. Someone else could write, I want my logo on a pencil, so I'm giving them the option of where I
should put their logo. Go to make this
mandatory as well. If I want to put
special objects, can put this as a multiple
choice and only allow them to choose from this box, or I could allow them to
write anything they want, and I can just do that. I said, ad let's add
another requirement. Do you have a mockup
objects background? Maybe they already have an image and they
just want me to put their logo on it so I can turn this into a
file attachment, and I don't need to make this mandatory because some
people may not have that. Ad, and these are
things that you can ask your client
before getting started. Again, free text, and it can also attach
files if they want, to make this mandatory. Please respond in CM or inches. Well, let's hit ad, and now I can go
ahead and save this. You can edit any of these
or delete if you'd like. And now we're going to write
in our project description. So similar to what we learned, we want to stay away from unnecessary information
and just try to convince the clients that they should come to
me for their mockups. You can see the
example right here. You will get a
polished logo design that will bring your
company to the next level. With over five
years of experience in freelance and
agency environments, I care deeply about helping startups tell their
story through design. So this right here is
pretty convincing. The person has the experience. They're promising me a original
and high quality content, and they're also telling me that they care about their designs, and it's not just
a job for them. Alright, let's write
in our example with high quality mockups. You can advertise your
brand in a unique way. I'm convincing them that my mockups are high quality
and they're unique. I can now talk about
my experience. So here is my description. Number one, I'm telling
them that my mockups are high quality and unique. I'm telling them my experience. And again, I'm giving them another promise for
specialized mockups. And I'm also convincing
them that they need this service so they can showcase their logo
on many platforms. And finally, I'm ending
it with a call to action. Let's get you one now. So right away, you
can see that I stayed away from unnecessary
information, which is of no help
to the client. I did not talk
about my childhood, my name, where I'm
from, and all those. I'm just telling them
straight away in a very short format that I'm here to help you and I'm capable of creating
this mockup for you. Let's scroll down and
create our steps. So there's already
some presets here. One client purchases the
project and sends requirement, the stuff that we set in
the previous step two, you complete the project following the steps
that you add here, and three client reviews and approves of your work,
and you get paid. If needed, you can
add another step. You can see the
examples on the right. But for me, this is okay. I'm going to leave
this B as it was. We also have frequently
asked questions. This is where you get
to put yourself as the client and see what sorts of questions
they would have, or you could use the questions that previous clients
have asked you. For example, if you go
over it on the right, it's giving you some examples, what's included in a revision? What tools do you use? How often can I expect
to hear from you if I buy this project? You
can add a question. For example, what if
I don't like the Mu? And then I can write I have allowed revisions to make sure that you are satisfied
with your mockup. So I'm reassuring them that even if they don't
like what I do, I will be there to help them with that and give
them some revisions. This is a reassuring point. We can add some
curious questions like what programs do you use? And I can write DB Photoshop, maybe affinity photo and
anything else that I would use. The things that you would
use for all three package, not just one. So
you can add that. These questions are very good. Some people like
to skip over them, but it really helps the client connect
to you as a person. So you could include some
personalized questions like what programs do you use? This is not especially
helpful for the clients because
they're not going to be making the
mockup themselves. But it's just something that
they may be curious about, and you're just
letting them know you're open to that idea. And this can make them feel
a little closer to you. On top of that, we're giving
them a what if question. So maybe they are
thinking that if I were to pay this real answer and I didn't like their mockup, are they willing to
be humble about it? And are they willing to help me, or is this just a take
it and get paid job? You want to reassure them that you are a professional
and you want to make sure that the clients are satisfied with the mockups
that they receive. But just make sure
that the questions are related to the service. You don't want to
add a question like, what's your favorite
color that's not related to the
service or upwork. So you want to keep
it strictly about you and the service
that you are providing. We need to add a step here. Let's see. So after the client bought
this package for me, I will complete the project, and then I will finalize
the colors and mockups with the revisions that
I gave the client. And then finally, they
approve and I get paid. Let's save and continue. And now we're in
deep review option. Now, this is an important part. This right here, maximum number
of simultaneous projects. How many projects
can you do at once, keeping in mind the delivery
days that you wrote. If one project takes four days, would you be able to do another two projects that
also take four days? Can you handle all those
deadlines at the same time? It's okay if you put
one or more than one. This is really up to you and how much your
schedule is filled. Some people can dedicate
all their time to up work, other people have
other things to do. It's really important
that you think about this and write a
realistic number. You can always come
back and change this. You don't have to
do it right now. Just put in a number
to start with. And once you feel
comfortable about the projects in that you
don't have much going on, you can go ahead and
add more than one. But if you're just starting out, I suggest put in one and then
slowly make your way up. Let's check both of these
and submit for review. So make sure you don't
have any of these, which we don't send to review, and now they're going
to approve my project. Under review, there you are. Once it's approved, it's going
to move to this section. And when a client searches
for mockups on Upwork, they can find my project
and then come to me for a mockup. And this way, I can
create multiple things, multiple projects and
have them sitting on my profile and let the
clients come to me. So put your best works on the
projects and like we said, try to be as optimistic and
as professional as possible. And that way you
are most likely to get a order on your project. So that's how you can create your first Project Catalogue. Once Upwork approves or
rejects your project, you're going to get an email. So right now, there
isn't much to do unless you want to
create another project. So I recommend creating a few of these if you have that
many services to provide, and just let them
chill on your profile. And while you're looking for other projects on the
fine work section, you can also get clients
from your project section. So this is good. It's
a smart thing to do, especially when you're
first starting out. And just go ahead and create
as many projects as you can, as long as you have a service
and sample work for them. I hope you guys
enjoy this lesson. Let's move to the next one.
12. Personal Presence: We're going to take a
look at some examples among the freelancers
that are on Upwork and take a look at some tips
that can help us be more present in our work
that we do on Upwork. Let's search for a talent. I searched for writer on
the Upwork Talent board, and I'm greeted with
many freelancers that offer writing services. Now, what I mean by
personalizing your profiles is basically being visible as a person when a
client looks at you. So we talked about
profile pictures and how important they are. And what we want to make sure is that immediately when
the client looks at us, we are a approachable person, and our profile
looks approachable. So let's take a look
at the first element, which is your profile picture. Like we said, you want to
make sure that you're either laughing or smiling
in your image, and that immediately makes
you more approachable. Now, the photos that you want
to put on Upwork are meant to show you to the client,
basically your face. So you want to stay away from
photos where you're just not immediately visible
in this tiny circle. When we scroll down, for
example, this person, she's way too far away from the camera and I
cannot really see her. And this kind of gets in the way of me getting to
know this person. But on the other
hand, this person, we can clearly see the
head shot, and it's like, I've met this person in real life because
everything is clear. I can see his name.
And another example is when the lighting is bad and you can't really see the person. So the profile picture really helps with your presence
in your profile. You want to stay away from
images that have bad lighting, images where you're
too far away, and images where you just look really serious and
not approachable. So let's find a good
image right here. You can see this
is a good image. She is clearly visible. She is smiling. It makes her approachable. The
lighting is good. Immediately, I can connect to this freelancer because she's
right there on her profile, and it's like I'm meeting
her in real life. So the first thing you
want to make sure is perfect is your profile
picture because like we said, it's the first thing that
people will see when they're looking for
a certain service. So number one is your
profile picture. Number two is your name. You want to make
sure that you're putting your full name there. And, of course, what you
do as your headline. We already talked
about the headline, but your name is
also very important. If it's possible,
put your full name, it's really going to help again with the client
getting to know you. And they can immediately
connect with you by using your full name
instead of letters. So if I wanted to
connect to this person, I cannot say dear aKMParvsEg. It would be better if it was dear Margaret arrima instead
of Dear AKMParvesEg. So this way, declient
can address you better, and it's just more approachable because once you have
a name like this, declient doesn't know what
they should call you. So try to put your
full name in there. Let's try to go to this person who is the top
rated writer right now. So let me scroll down, we can see that she
has other experiences. We talked about how in here
you want to put things like volunteering
and other cases where you weren't working, but you contributed to a
certain foundation or an event. So this right here
is great for adding your presence on your profile. You're sharing an
experience right here, and clients can get to know you more through
these experiences. So these are not
your work history. This is not your resume. You haven't worked
for a company, but you contributed to
certain organizations in either a volunteer
form or another form. But your employment history is separate, so these
are not the same. So if I wanted to get
to know this person, I can come to other
experiences and see that she was president of
local Writers Group. So a group of local writers, this is going to tell me that this person is a social person, and she does works with
other local writers, which can make her seem more
approachable and generous. And this can help me in my future projects
with this freelancer. So if you have any
other experience other than your
employment history, be sure to add it in, write a little story about what happened and how it came to be. This is going to make you more approachable and it's going
to help out your profile. Now, let's go to offwor.com
slash ServiceS where we can take a look at project
catalogs of other freelancers. Let's see how people add their own personal presence on these projects and try
to learn from them. Let's search for marketing. So when you're scrolling
through all of these projects, the first thing that catches
your attention is when a person is visible on
that project cover. That's just the
nature of humans. When we look at a screen, the first thing that catches
our eye is another human. So right now when I'm looking at all these graphics
and all these colors, the person, there's
one here as well, the person is what's
standing out. Now, this person is
using a photo of himself to promote his project
and at the same time, add personal presents
to this project. So just by adding a
photo of himself, I am attracted to this project
because I can immediately relate to a human more than I can relate
to these graphics. Of course, it would be better if you looked more approachable, maybe put a smile on your face and just look really optimistic. But putting your photo on the project cover is going to
help you get noticed more. Now let's go on this
person's project. There you go. We have
the first photo. In the other slides, he's talking about his services, but the first one is what
caught my attention. So try to put your image
on your project cover. Let's go back in here and look
for another type of work. Let's go for author. There we go. We
have human faces. This is a video. It's really going to help grab my attention. So try your best to either put videos of people or pictures. Even if it's not you on
the photo or the video, it's still best to put a
human on your project cover rather than some paragraphs
and random graphics. This is going to catch the attention of the
clients more than this. So again, put humans
on your project cover. And that will just work
out better for you. You see, we got people
in all these examples. Let's go in one of these. We have a video
that is trying to convince us to get
these packages. But again, you can
see it's humans because that's going
to be more relatable than if it were some sort of animation without
any human touch. In the next slides, they're
talking about their services. Maybe this is one of their
books that they wrote, and it's just going to make
them look more credible. Once we scroll down, he has a good profile picture.
It looks professional. And, of course, his
description, like we said, starts with his services or some way to catch
your attention. And then he starts to
talk about himself. So always first state
what you can do for the client and then start
talking about yourself. We have a view portfolio. Right over here, so these
are his portfolio items. And I can take a
look at each one. Let's go to this fantasy novel, and we can see that he's done
some writing jobs before. And once we view his profile, you can see he has some work
history, complete a job. We can also see which
ones are in progress. This is a pretty solid profile. You can see his certifications
and all of that. So that's how you can add personal presents into
your project catalogs, your proposals, and
all the other things. The first impression is
your profile picture, so try to focus on that. You can simply take one
yourself with your phone. It doesn't have to be
that high maintenance. But as long as you
look approachable on your profile picture, the rest is rather easy. After this lesson, take a
look at your profile picture, see whether it's suitable. Are you laughing in that photo, smiling? Is lighting good? Are you close enough
to the camera? Once you've done
that, take a look at your profile and the projects that you've submitted so far, see whether they have
personal presence in them. If not, you can just edit them and add those things inside. So this is a very
important step. Make sure to put
enough time on it. And now let's move on
to the next lesson.
13. Deadlines and Time Management: All of these projects coming in, it's really important that you manage your time well
as a freelancer. Because if you don't
manage your time and if you don't have
a steady schedule, the chances of you reaching those deadlines are rather low. In this lesson, we're going to talk about how we
can manage our time, develop a steady routine
for our daily lives, and how we can reach those
deadlines in a better way. As a freelancer, you're no
longer working in an office, meaning that your daily
routine is not like your co workers and you're not always supervised
for your work times. As a freelancer, it's just you, so you have to set your
working hours and make sure that you get the
right task done on time. Now, because of that,
you would have to learn about one of the most important skills
of a freelancer, and that is time management. If you've done
freelancing before, this is not a new topic. This is for people
who just started freelancing and they're just confused with all of
these projects coming in. They feel unsure about whether they can meet those deadlines. And are rather frustrated
at the moment. If that is you and you don't know how to reach
those deadlines, or if you just started out and you're trying to
prevent that situation, by the end of this lesson, you will know exactly
what you should do. Let's talk about your working
hours as a freelancer. You have to set a
certain time during the day dedicated
to your project. This could be maybe 9 hours
a day, 5 hours a day. It all depends on how much you can get done in those hours. Once you have set a period of time dedicated to your work, it's easier to then distribute your projects into
those time segments. And if you are working with
multiple projects at a time, it's really important that distribute them one after
the other so that during one day you're focused on one project instead
of five projects at the same time so that you don't end up ruining
one or the other. Planning beforehand is a
really helpful thing to do. You want to make sure that
you know the projects that you would be working on in the upcoming months and
then based on that, you can just distribute them evenly throughout the weeks
that are going to come. And then all you
have to do is to meet those weekly goals, and that would be a
lot easier than if you don't plan anything
out and you're just cramming every project throughout the week and that could oftentimes be frustrating. So the first thing
you want to do is to find out and figure out what you're going to
do in the upcoming month. So if we are in May right now, you want to know what you would be doing in
the month of June, if we are at the end
of May, that is. You want to know what
you're doing during June, and that way you can plan everything out in
the month of May. So you're kind of preparing
everything the month before. And when you prepare beforehand, you're going to take
some of that stress from your shoulders because you know exactly what
you would be doing, and then you would just be
focused on what you're doing daily rather than what you're doing daily,
weekly, and monthly. So you're saving yourself a
little bit of that stress. Once you know your
plan for the month, you can go ahead and distribute those plans into the weeks
that are in that month. For example, if I'm working on three different projects
in the month of June, I would want to distribute those projects
throughout the weeks. Week one, I would be doing
Project A, Week two, I would be doing Project B and the third week I would
be doing Project C. Then the final
week I could just focus on wrapping things up and making sure
everything is perfect. So this way, I would be
a lot more organized in terms of my work schedule and
for my own mental health. You don't want to
cram everything and leave it last minute. That is the worst thing that you could do as a freelancer, because every project that
you do is going to give you a result on your profile
on Upwork at least. So when you do a project for a client and they're
not happy with it because you did it last minute and you didn't
put enough time on it, that client will return
on your profile and leave a testimonial saying that
you didn't deliver the task, you weren't you didn't
communicate enough. Some other things that could result in a negative impact on your profile and on the other clients that are
looking to work with you. Leaving things last minute
and getting bad results from your project is something
you want to stay away from as much as possible
because like we said, it's going to have
a very bad effect on your profile and therefore on other clients that are
hoping to work with you. The second thing that
you want to do is to plan out your days beforehand. So you would be
planning out tomorrow today and then do that for
the rest of the month. What I like to do is to keep a notebook with me at
all times where I can write out the schedule for the next day on
the night before. Tonight, I would be writing
out the schedule for tomorrow in the form
of a checklist. Tomorrow, whatever I do,
I can just check it off and get ready to write the
plan for the next day. Some people like to do
this on mobile apps. I like to write it
down with a pencil. You can choose whichever
works best for you. You can also use
calendars to mark out the events on a specific day. Again, you can write
this out on a piece of paper or a calendar or just use your mobile applications
to make sure that you are reminded of a certain
tasks on a certain day. Setting alarms and marking your calendar is
really important. Most people like to
just skip over them. They think that it's a hassle. But the truth is that as humans, we forget things and
as a freelancer, if you do forget
to do a project, that's just not going to
work out because that's your income and you're
going to need that income. You want to make sure that
you plan everything out and make sure that you meet these deadlines no matter what. You also don't want to overwork yourself just for the
sake of these deadlines. They are important, indeed, but you also got to think about the machine that is getting
all these projects done. If you overwork yourself and give yourself
no time to rest, then obviously you're going to cause the quality of
your work to decrease, and that is going to affect
the projects that you are getting and the projects that
you will get in the future. You never want to sabotage your quality of work just for
the sake of one deadline. It's important to give yourself breaks in between your projects. For example, you can give yourself some day
offs if you'd like, or a couple of hours of rest. You want to include maybe
some exercising time, some family time, friend time, any time where you can just
relax a bit and refresh your mind before going to
get started on another task. Maybe you can dedicate the most productive
times of your day, which for most people
is the morning, but some people say
it's night for them. You can dedicate those
productive times for your work and then leave the rest of the day
for some relaxation, maybe some exercise
time, tidying things up. That's really good for
both your work life and your life in general. You never want to
overwork yourself. That's something that
most freelancers avoid. They think that, well, because I don't have a steady income and it's
all based on my project, I got to work myself to the
very end and just push and push until I can get multiple projects done at the same time. But that's just going to have a negative effect on your life, try to stay away from that. If you are a
freelancer that just started out and you haven't
had projects before, then it's also important
to start out slow. You don't want to take multiple projects at the same time, knowing that you haven't done it before and
you don't know how to manage those
projects in the right way. If it's your first
time freelancing, go for one project, finish that project, then
go for the other one. It's going to take some
time for you to learn how to do multiple
projects at the same time. If it's going to need more
than just completing tasks, it's going to need
some management, communication skills
and other skills that a freelancer needs. It's also important
to know when you are supposed to decline
a certain project. If you have a lot of
projects on your mind, maybe some family issues are going on and you're just
not in the right headspace, you should not take
any other projects. You should respectfully decline the project and say that I'm busy and I don't have any space for a
new project this month. This is also something that
most freelancers brush over. They think that it's
all about the project. They can handle it even if
they stay up the whole night. But this is something
you want to avoid because
you're trying to go for freelancing for a while
and not in the short term. Try not to have negative impact on your mind just because of these projects. When you feel like you
cannot handle a new project, feel free to just say no, respectfully decline
and just let the client know that you're really busy and not just because
you don't feel like it. Try to use some real life events as an excuse, like, for example, I've been having some
family problems and right now I'm not able to
take on your project. Hopefully in the future, we can go for another project. The client will understand
it's a pretty standard thing, you don't feel bad about
saying no to a project and try to keep your
daily life as a priority. If you are going to
take on a new project, just take a look at a few
elements before saying yes. Number one is, do
you have the time? Do you have other items
occupying your schedule? Do you have some major
events coming up? If yes, then you
would want to think a little bit more about
accepting this new project. But if you don't have
any major events and your time is mostly free, then you can just
accept the project. And another thing to look at is, are you capable of completing the task within the time that
the client is giving you? Let's say they want you to
make a website in one day. This may be possible if you just use your entire day
for that one project, but it's really not worth it. So try to extend that deadline and bring your professional
reasoning into the picture, saying that making one
website in one day is just impossible because
you got to do all of these and convince the client
to give you more time. Most clients are flexible with their deadlines unless you
leave it for the last hour. But if you tell them beforehand, maybe two weeks
before the deadline, one week before the
deadline that hey, I'm struggling with this task. Could I have a little
bit more time? Most of them will understand, so don't feel bad about
extending deadlines and try to be as honest and
as upfront as possible. Even if you do manage
your time, well, there's always these
unexpected events that show up in everyone's lives and that is just
not in our control, we want to make sure
that we are looking for a solution in all
of the scenarios. There's also another
way that you can meet those deadlines even when it's just impossible
for you to do, and that is asking for help
from a friend or a colleague. The most important thing
for these project is that you get them done and you get the satisfaction of your client. So it doesn't matter
if you didn't 100% do that work yourself. You can ask a
friend or colleague to help out with this
project and in return, you will give them a
percentage of the pay. You could let the
client know that you did this with the team,
you and that person, but you could also not
mention it, it's up to you, but you could ask for
someone's help if you feel like you can't
meet those deadlines. Because the number one
thing you want from these projects is your
client satisfaction, so they can come back to you for another project instead of
avoiding you because you weren't straightforward
about the deadlines and about how hard it was
to finish those task. So those were some
ways in which you can manage your time
as a freelancer. Let's go over them
one more time. The first one is to know what you're doing in
the upcoming month. The number of projects
that you're doing, the deadlines for all of them. Make sure you have finalized the contracts with your clients. You know exactly which date you're supposed to
submit that project. So know how many projects
you're working with on that month and when they're
supposed to be submitted. Number two is to plan out your
days on the nights before, either using a mobile
application or a notebook, whichever you're
comfortable with. Number three is to specify working hours for your
days and resting hours. So maybe you would dedicate your mornings to
work and your nights to relaxation and
just life things hanging out with your
family and your friends. And just organizing your time in the right way so that
you get your daily goals done and you get some
rest for the sake of tomorrow so that you're energized and ready
for the next day. Number four, is being
realistic with your time. Since you know your schedule and the events that are happening
throughout your days, it's really important
to be upfront with your client if you feel like you cannot
meet that deadline. So you want to tell
them at least a week before and just be
straightforward with them. There's no reason to
beat around the bush when the project is on the line. There's no need to speak too highly saying that
you will finish, let's say, all three
websites in one week. You want to just be upfront
about it and be like, Hey, I feel like I cannot get
this done on the deadline. I'm letting you know
one week before. Is it possible if we can maybe add three days to that deadline? As long as you're honest
and upfront about it, there won't be an
issue with the client. Finally, you want to
make sure that you know when you're supposed to
decline a new project. Looking at your schedule, your daily life, and all the other situations
that you're in, you want to be realistic
with yourself too, if you feel like you cannot
take on a new project, just know when to say no. You can simply
decline a project. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you haven't
written a contract, you can just tell the
client that, Hey, I appreciate the offer, but there's other things
going on. I'm busy. You can also bring in real
examples if you'd like. I'm busy and I cannot take a
new project at the moment. Hopefully, we can do
this another time. Writing it respectfully
and respectfully declining a new project is nothing weird and it's just very common
in the freelancing world. So those were some five tips
that you can use to manage your time better and develop a steady schedule for
your freelancing. Right after this lesson, I want all of you guys
to take a notebook or a mobile app and write out the stuff that you have to
get done in the next day. And if possible, write out the stuff that you
have to get done in the upcoming month and keep these scheduling
habits with you so that you would have proper
power over your schedule, and you can manage
all the things that are happening to you. And with the right time
management and scheduling, you can go and get even more projects and be more successful in
your freelancing.
14. Reference Work for New Freelancers: So in this lesson, we're going
to see how we can fill up our portfolio when we
just started freelancing. If you were a freelancer
before Upwork, then you can obviously put
in your previous works. But this lesson is for the
people who haven't freelancing before and don't really have anything to
showcase their skills. There are a couple of
websites out there that are going to help us
with fake clients. Basically, it's going
to generate a topic, a different style, and then it's kind of
like a challenge, and you would have
to use your skills to create that project, but there is no real
client on the other end. Let's open up our
browser and type in fake clients. There we go. Design brief generator.
So over here, I can create different briefs and use my skills to
create different works. Now, these websites are
suitable for design. If your service is different
from media creation, then this may not be as helpful. But if you are an
animator, a video editor, graphic designer, anything
that has to do with media, then this can be
helpful for you. So this is the first
website, *** clients.com. We're going to test out
the different things. You can see web design and so many other options
that you can use. It even has writing. So if your service is
in any of these fields, then you can go ahead and
test out this website. Let's try Illustration. And we're going to
generate a brief. And now I have a fake client
looking for an illustrator, and they would like a charcoal
illustration of Beyonce, and they want us to use the color green as the main color. So now we get a fake
client that's asking for a watercolor illustration
of Morgan Freeman. Now, if you want to
upgrade to the pro, you can get longer briefs. But this right here
should give you a good idea of what
you need to do. Once you're finished,
you can click this. And if you create an account, you can upload your work, and people can give
feedback to you. Let's take a look at
some of the examples. For example, this person made this logo based on
another fake client, and if I sign in, I can comment and like it. So this person right
now, Abby Wright, can put this business card on
her upward profile and say that she designed this
for San Antonio bakery. It's not a real client, but it does show the
people who visit her profile that this is how she would design
a business card. And based on that, the clients can decide whether they want
to work with her or not. So this is a great
place to showcase your skills and challenge yourself into making
something cool. This is a poster that Joshua made for this
pretend client, Moose, and Moose that has
a business called Wox. You can see that it's pretty
realistic and convincing. It's just that there isn't a real person on the other end. So this was one platform. Let's look at another one. This is the second platform
called Good brief. The difference is
that here you get to choose an industry for
your type of work. So I can choose,
let's say, packaging, and then choose the
industry, food, technology, sports, and basically choose the
industry that I'm in. So if I'm in real estate, I could just choose this and
get a brief for real estate. Let's generate and here we go. I have this company name. I'm getting a description. So if I want to put a company description on my Upwork profile, I
could just do this. And I'm getting
these descriptions to create this packaging design, and I have a deadline
of eight days. You can also export these briefs as a PDF or an
image, whichever you want. And this alone is a great
way to practice your skills, regardless of whether
you want to put it on your Upwork
profile or not. Just spend some time here, practice your skills and get some awesome results in the end. Then you can decide whether you want to put those results on your Upwork profile or just
keep them for yourself. But I do recommend spending enough time here so you
can get some works that you're happy with and
then put those works onto your profile
and your portfolio. So when you do
submit a proposal, you can attach these outcomes
that you would get from here and be more
credible to the client. They can see that
you're very good at designing real estate packaging. And based on how
skilled you are and how good you are at
those packaging designs, they would choose
to work with you. This is also good for
project catalogs. Anywhere else that
you would want to show some of your work,
you can get them. You could get the
works from here if you haven't had real
clients before. Another way that you
can get sample work, and you'd prefer there
to be a real person on the other end is to
work for free and approach people
or companies with a simple proposal where you would design them
something for free, and if they like it, they
would take that design, but in return, allow their company name to
be on your profile. So that's another
way that you can get some sample work and get
someone's name on your profile. Say that you've
worked for X company, and you would have
something to prove it. So you can do that either way, whether you want a real person
or you want a generator. You can choose
which one you like. And this is just a great
way to get started. So let's go back to Upwork
and say that I've designed many things using
these generators once I come to the
find work section, and I'm seeing this
logo design job. I can attach the logos that I
made here in this proposal, and that will just
make me stand out. Because the client is seeing my sample work and based on whether they like it or
not, they can work with me. That's way better than if I
were to just say that I'm good at designing logos
with nothing to prove it. So if you haven't
had clients before, I highly suggest
that you go through these websites and you create some sample works to
present your skills. Once you do that,
you'll be able to enter the freelancing world on Upwork and just other
places a lot more easier. So go out there,
find those clients, whether they're real
or fake and get those awesome sample works to
put on your upward profile.
15. Proposals and Communications pt. 1: In this lesson,
we're going to wrap everything up and
summarize all that we've learned so far
and take a look at the exact steps that you need to take to win your first proposal. We're also going to
learn how to communicate with our clients what
tones we should use, and what are the
best ways to respond to rather odd requests. Let's get started and
look at those steps and figure out how we can
communicate with our clients. First, let's take a look
at the steps that we need to take in order to win
our very first proposal. These steps are from
start to finish, so we're just
wrapping up all that we've learned so
far in the lesson. Step one is to complete your profile and
verify your identity. Before moving on to
writing your description, uploading your sample work, you need to make sure that
all the necessary fields of your profile is completed and that you verify
your identity. If you don't complete
these steps, Upwork may suspend your account, and the process to take it back may be a
little bit bothersome. So try to avoid that
by fully completing your profile and just doing everything that
Upwork is asking from you. One rule that you
should remember in Upwork in the upcoming years is that you cannot have more
than one account on Upwork. So if you do make
another account, maybe you lost your email and you had to make another account. Upwork will find out that you did that and they will
suspend your account. So if for any reason you wanted
to create a new account, make sure that the
previous one has been deleted and that
it's no longer on the Upwork platform so
that you can go ahead and use another and
create another account. Secondly, you cannot have a client account and
a freelancer account. You can only have one account. So if you do want to
approach Upwork as a client, try to use a different name and maybe a different
email to avoid Upwork, assuming that you guys
are the same person. There is a way to
keep both accounts, so I could have account A as a freelancer and
account B as a client. Both of them have one email and both of them
have my real name. If I want to keep both
of these accounts, I can just contact Upwork Support and ask them
to allow such a thing. If I don't ask that from Upwork, they will just
suspend my account. So this step is
really important. You don't want your account
to be suspended when you have a lot of projects and a lot of clients
waiting for you. This second step is to fill in your profile
with previous work. Now, if you were a
freelancer before, anything that you've done for other clients should be
on your upwork platform, on your upwork profile because it can make you
look more credible. The client will come
onto your profile, and they can see that
you've done many, let's say, logos for
previous clients. Like we talked about, if you haven't had previous
clients before, just go to any of those fake client generators and use those works to
fill in your profile. So never leave your profile
empty because if it's empty, there's no way of reassuring the client that you are
good at what you do. Also, make sure that the
works you're putting in on your profile
are high quality, they're not blurry,
they're not old, and that you're putting
the best of your works on your profile because
you're going to be judged based on how
good those works are. And like we talked
about, try to avoid putting bulky text
on your sample work. So if you've, let's say, written a book before, you want to put the cover
of the book rather than the first page because
no one's going to zoom in and read
all of those texts. Let's take a look at step three, and that is for ask for testimonial from your
previous clients. Like we saw, there
was a section on our profile that says
testimonial or you can ask clients to give a little sentence about
their experience with you. So if you haven't had
previous clients before, you can just leave this empty. But if you did have clients, you can just ask them that, hey, I'm starting my
profile on Upwork. I would really appreciate
it if you could give me a feedback that I can
put on my profile. Upwork already has a template. So once you add a testimonial, it can automatically
send a message to the email or LinkedIn page
that your previous client had. Let's go down here and
look at step four. Step four is to invest time for looking good
on your profile. We've talked about all of these. I cannot stress how
important this is. Based on these things, the client will decide whether or not they
want to work with you. So your profile
picture is going to be the hook of grabbing
the attention. And once they see your
profile picture and they maybe spend 1
second looking at it, they can then look
at your heading, which also needs to be a
easy to understand heading. You don't want to
say a general term like graphic designer, but more specifically
onto what is it that you exactly do
as a graphic designer. For example, you can say
that you design logos, you do packaging,
and just bring in that specific term that is
related to that field of work. Finally, after
reading your heading, they're going to look
at your description. You don't want it
to be all about you and just unrelated
to the client. So first of all,
you want to start with the service that
you are providing. You can write a list or just summarize the
things that you do and always start with
a engaging sentence. So, for example, you can say that let's get you an
awesome website in, let's say, three weeks. That right there is
going to be more engaging than if you
were writing hello, my name is Daniel and I'm 32. So you want to put
an engaging sentence right at the top of
your description. And once you've told the client all the stuff that you
can provide for them, you can then start to
talk about yourself, your experience, the
number of clients, or anything else that
you'd like to add. The most important thing
is that you engage the client in a way
that they would want to read the rest
of your description. Step five is to fill
in your portfolio. There was a portfolio
section on our profile. You want to go in
there and upload all of the works that
you've done so far. So maybe it's logos, screenshots of your website, some books that you wrote, anything that you would want. So just fill these up
based on what you do, and the more the better. So the client can just look
at your previous works and see how well you can perform
in different situations. If you haven't had
previous works, just create them yourself using those fake client generators
that we looked at. Step six is to create projects
on your Project Catalogue. So after your profile
is looking good, you got that picture, you got that perfect heading
and description. It's now time to enter the project community and
create your very first project. So these projects
are free to create. You're not going to be
spending connects on them. But instead, you're
just putting them out there and Upwork
is going to review your project and then
decide whether or not they should be
on the catalogs. So it's right on your profile. Just scroll down to Project
Catalogue like we learned. And just put in all of
these services that you do. Remember to be as
specific as you can, avoid unnecessary detail and put in your best works
as the project cover. If possible, you can put
in video introductions, and you can just make your project more engaging
by just putting a video. We're going to be talking
about how we can get a good video introduction
in a further lesson. But basically, you
want to kind of advertise your service
on these projects. So you want a very good image, you want a good
video introduction. And based on that, you
will cause the clients to want to click on your project instead of
going to someone else. Be sure to divide your
service into packages. So you're giving the client multiple options instead of one, and also try to
research your prices before putting on the
cost of that project. You don't want to be way
too up or way too low, but a rather good amount
for your project. And just create as many projects that would fit your services. And these are just going
to be on your profile. They're separate from
winning proposals. These two are different
ways that you can make money on Upwork. So just make the projects
and just wait until Upwork Approves of your projects
and just let them chill on your profile while
you try to win proposals. This is going to give
you more opportunity on the upwork market, and therefore,
you're going to get a higher chance of making
an income on Upwork. The next step is to look for jobs and save the ones
you're interested in. So when we went to the job board in the fine Work section, we saw that immediately, we can see the title
and the description. We can also see whether or not
the payments are verified. So just look for the job, and if anything grabs
your attention, you can just save it
and then come back to it later once you've read the description and saw that the requirements are
exactly what you have. You can search for jobs, maybe type in a keyword like
logo design so that you're only getting the jobs that are related to the services
that you can provide. Once the headline is exactly
what you're looking for, make sure to read the description
and not skip over any of the details because
there could be a small detail in
there that you missed, and then later that's
just going to cause you trouble because you didn't
know about that detail. So read the heading, the description,
and then finally, you want to make sure that the payment is
verified on that job, so that later there won't be
an issue with the payment. When the payment
is not verified, it basically means that the person's card
or paypal account has not been
confirmed by Upwork, and Upwork cannot
take any money from that client unless they
verify their account. Of course, before
starting the project, they would have to verify it because Upwork
will have to take the deposit of the
finalized amount and then keep it until you as the
freelancer finish the job. But it's best to just stick with the people who have
their payments verified. That means that they've
worked on Upwork before. They have taken in freelancers
from Upwork before, and they're just familiar
with the way things work, and you wouldn't have any
complications moving forward. So check for the heading, read the description well, and then make sure that
the payment is verified. You can also click on the job and learn more about the client. If they have been
on Upwork before, you can see that they have
reviews from freelancers. Maybe a freelancer gave five stars because
they're just really good. They communicate well,
but on the other hand, they may just get
two stars because they did not they weren't
clear with what they wanted, and you want to read those
reviews so that you avoid starting a project with a client that is
difficult to deal with, especially when you're
first starting out. Step eight is to write
your first proposals. So you have a bunch of
jobs that you have saved. They're the perfect conditions. The payments are verified and you fully understand
what they are. Now it's time to write
your first proposals. Using what we learned, you want to write a very
engaging and straight to the point proposal so
that while the client is scrolling through
all of those proposals, they will stop for a second
to look at your proposal. You then have less
than 3 seconds to grab the a client into your proposal. So you want to start with a very engaging sentence instead of starting with
unrelated things like, Hello, I really
think your company is great or thank you
for reading this. You want to start with
something that relates to them. I can create that
ecommer store in less than five weeks,
something like that. And that's going to make
them feel like, Oh, this guy is getting
straight to the point, and immediately, I know
that he is here to help. So the first sentence
is very important. Stay away from
unnecessary sentences, just as the examples that we
saw in a previous lesson. Step nine is to write a certain amount of
proposals per month. Just because you're writing good proposals doesn't mean that the client is going to
answer to you 100%. There may be someone who
wrote better than you or their skills matched the
project more than yours did. So you want to increase your chances by writing a
certain amount of proposals. And since every month, you're going to
get new connects, you want to keep that number
in a way that you have a steady amount of connects every month to write
your proposals. So maybe that number could
be ten proposals per month, five proposals per
month depends on you. If you choose to promote your
proposals with the connect, that number may be lower. And you could always
just buy these connects if you don't want to wait
for free ones every month. So keep a steady schedule and write these proposals
every month. But one mistake that a lot of freelancers make
is that they copy and paste their proposals
for all of these projects, and that is the worst
thing that you can do. We talked about
personal presents, and when you just copy and paste text over and over again, you're kind of giving
the wipe that you are basically a
robot and you're not putting enough time
for the client to write a
personalized proposal, and that's just going
to make you look bad. So do not copy and
paste proposals. Write a fresh one
for every project. It may be a lot of work, but it's going to leave a good
impression on the client, seeing that you created this proposal and wrote it
specifically for the client. So keep a steady routine and
avoid copying proposals. Let's scroll down to step ten. When you're first starting
out, it's really hard to get that first project, and sometimes it
may take months. For others, it takes years. It really depends
on the situation. But the most important
thing is to not give up. You want to be active
on your profile. You don't want to
seem like you tried once, and then you gave up. That's just not the spirit
a freelancer needs to have. So don't give up, even if
it seems like you're not getting any engagement,
keep going. And try to improve
your profile and proposals instead
of just leaving them be because maybe it's the way that you
write proposals or the items on your profile that is just not getting
the right engagement. Some things that you
can do to improve that profile is to research
other freelancers. Just type in a term that is
related to your service and take a look at the top rated
freelancers in that field. See whether or not your profile is similar to that freelancer. Do you have the right terms? Do you have the
right search tags? And based on that, you can see whether or not you need
to improve your profile. So that's one thing that you can do research other freelancers. The second thing is to advertise your
proposals and projects. You can either do that on
Upwork or on other platforms. You can use the
video introductions that you made for a project. And just share that
another platform, maybe on your Facebook page, on your Instagram page, even in freelancing groups that are on Facebook and
other platforms. This way, you are giving more of an audience to your projects, and the people who
come across them may be interested in
working with you, but they would have to come
to your Upwork profile. So you could advertise your
projects outside of Upwork, but try to keep all the
business within Upwork. Always update your profile. If six months went by and you still had one
profile picture, maybe it's time to
get a fresh one, maybe write a fresh description, and just keep refreshing your profile every
six months or so. You don't want to change
the main message. You're just writing
a different thing so that if a previous client
came by to your profile, they can see that you are an
active person and you are always on upwork and you're
ready for a new project. But if you just write something and keep it the
same for one year, it's going to seem
as if you are not as active and that could decrease the chances of clients
wanting to work with you. So those are these
steps that you need to take to win your first proposal. We've learned about all of
these in the previous lessons, and we'll be talking more about them in the upcoming lessons. The key to winning proposals and projects on Upwork
is to be active, consistent, and not give up. So follow those three things, and you would have a higher
chance of being successful.
16. Proposals and Communications pt. 2: Et's talk about using the
right tone to our clients and some tips that can
help us better communicate with the
clients that work with us. The first tip is to never
assume what the client needs. So when you're first getting
this project description, you're going to
assume that you have gotten about 80% of
the information, and that you will fully know the project once you
chat with the client. So the client knows this and most of them will
want to talk to you in sort of a meeting or a chat to better describe
the project to you. But you should never assume
that you got everything. Never interrupt them, be like, Oh, I know what
you mean by that. Let them fully
describe everything, and just always ask questions if you are not sure of
what the project is. So once you're in that meeting
or in that chat session, whichever you decided on, you want to maybe
ask the question some general questions of
what the project is about. The client is supposed to tell you everything
about the project, that's just something
they need to do. So even if they didn't start by telling you
what the project is about, go ahead and ask
a question like, could you please explain a little bit more
about the project? Or could I have some detail about what the project is about? So the client will just have to explain to
you everything, and that way you would start the project fully knowing
what the requirements are. But normally they
do that themselves, so there's no need for you to
ask that general question. But if you saw that
they didn't and they're not saying
anything to you, then you can just start the conversation by
asking this question. And as the freelancer, it's not weird at
all for you to have some questions because you
don't work at their company, you don't know what is it
that they exactly want. So only through the
job description and this sort of communication, are you going to know
exactly what to do? So just listen to
what they have to say and if needed,
ask more questions. But don't assume that you know everything based on
that description that they kept out for
the public on Upwork. Tip number two is to set
up regular meetings. So you never want to seem
as cold to the client. Maybe you have a chat on, and then you have
nothing to say. So that way, you're going
to kind of be strangers, and that's just not
going to help you with the relationship that you will
develop with this client. This is especially
important when the project is longer
than one month. You want to develop a good
relationship with that client, maybe get to know
them a little and just have regular meetings
with them, maybe every week. To update them on the
progress of that project, and maybe they'd want to
add a few more elements and add that suggestion to
the contract as well. So set up regular meetings
maybe once a week, twice a week, depends on
which one you guys decide on. But you always want
to seem closer to the client than just
some freelancer that they found on Upwork. Once you develop a
good relationship, maybe the client will
come back to you for further projects you're good at if you were good at
the first one of course. So developing a
relationship and setting up regular meetings is one of the key things that you have
to do with your clients. But again, make sure
that you write all of these things about the
meetings on upwork. On the Upwork Desktop App, there is a chat box, and you can create a room for communicating
with the client. We're going to look
at the Dk Stop app in the next lesson. But just try to keep all the communications on
Upwork because like we said, Upwork will suspend your
account if they find out that you've been conducting
business outside of Upwork. So keep everything
within Upwork on the Dkstop app and just set up your
regular meetings there. The next tip is to make the client feel like they can
be honest about your work. So you should never seem as a biased and greedy person when you're talking
to your client. Of course, as freelancers, we do feel like we're
good at what we do, but we also need to be open to what the
client has to say. If you come off as a
difficult freelancer, the client will not be
able to be honest to you about how they feel towards the work that
you made for them. And if they feel that way, they may end up giving
you a bad review, a bad testimonial, and that is always going to be
on your upward profile. You cannot delete client
reviews on your profile, so you want to make
sure that they're satisfied and they're happy with the service
that they received. So maybe at the beginning, you can let them know
that, please let me know if there's any
feedback on this work. Try to keep the discussion open. And if they tell you that, Hey, this isn't that good, I feel
like it could be like this. Take it in a
professional manner. We're going to talk
about criticism soon. But when you're first
starting out with the client, you want to make
them feel like you are a humble freelancer, and you're open to any
discussion about your work. You want to come off as a friendly, professional
freelancer. The next tip is to accept criticism in a
professional manner. So let's say you spent
three weeks on a logo, and it's the best thing
that you can create, but the client is still
not happy with it. So they will tell you
that most of the time. They're going to
let you know that I'm not happy with this. I'm not going to
pay for this logo. So you need to be
accepting their criticism. Maybe they want the color to be different or a line
to be thinner. It's going to be small
adjustments like this. But instead of being biased on your work and just telling
them that they are wrong, you want to accept
their criticism and just seen as a
professional freelancer. Hmm. If they don't
like your logo, you can be like, I understand. Could you please specify the
part that you want changed? Maybe they will suggest
that you can change this small segment of the logo or perhaps
they want a new logo. Either way, your goal is to keep the client satisfied and
accept their criticism. Most of the time, they
will be logical about the criticism because they have already deposited
that money to Upwork. And therefore, they
just want to get this work done since
they can't take back the money unless
Upwork confirms that you as a freelancer have
not finished the job. So most times you're just going to be professional about it. And even if they
were a little rude, you as a freelancer
need to be professional and just keep your reputation
as high as you can. Don't be rude with them just because they
didn't like their logo. Accept it in a professional way and always offer a solution. If they don't like the
flower on the logo, you can instead write to them that I understand
your concern. How about I add a star instead? So instead of just
being like, Okay, thanks for the criticism, you can give a solution because that's what
professionals do. As a professional,
you're always trying to solve the problem of the client. So accept the criticism and
give a solution so you can progress on the project
in the best way possible. The next step is to never start anything without a
written contract. So with Upwork,
you would need to write a contract before starting so that Upwork can
confirm that you have accepted this project and the client is going
to be paying you. But sometimes clients may
want to go around this. They'll say that, Okay, you can give me my logo, and then I'm going to
deposit the money, and then I'm going to
write the contract. Just don't accept this. Even if they're
persistent on the idea, you should never start
anything without upwork realizing that there is a
transaction being made here. So even if they're pushy about working
without a contract, you need to stand
your ground and say that as a professional, I cannot work on something
without a written contract. Sometimes they may just be angry with that and
leave this project, but that is much better than if you were to work
on that project, you finished it up, and then they don't give
you that contract. That leaves you
without any payment. So it is a bit tricky, but you want to stand
your ground and not start anything without
a written contract. Try to follow
Upwork's procedures. When you first start a project, Upwork is going to
give you the segments that you need to fill up and the steps that you need to take. So just take all of those steps. And if the client is trying
to go outside, those steps, do not follow them and just stick with what Upwork
is telling you to do. Tip number six is to don't bring communication
outside of upwork. This is really important because a lot of clients are looking for beginners to bring
them outside of upwork and to keep them in
their own communication. Well, when you do
this, you're risking your entire work on upwork. Let's say that you have spent so much time on your profile,
on your description, and just because of
this one client, you're going to lose everything that you've
created on Upwork. So like we said, a lot of
clients are looking to target beginners so that they can take the communication
outside of Upwork. They do this because they do not want to pay the
Upwork service fee. But once you take it
outside of Upwork, your account will be suspended, and most likely Upwork is not going to return
that account to you. So you're going to lose a lot of things for the sake
of this one project. If the client is asking you
to come outside of Upwork, respectfully decline
that offer and say that my business will only be
conducted on this platform. So be straightforward with them, but be professional
about it and just decline their offer to
move outside of Upwork. Doing this is also
safer for you as a freelancer because you're not giving them a phone number. You're not giving them any
sort of private information that you would otherwise have to give to them outside of Upwork. So it's safer for both you and the client to keep
the work on Upwork. Upwork is secure when
it comes to payment. They make sure
that you get paid, and they also make sure
that the work is done. So it's good for both sides, and it's also good at
protecting private information. So it's best for both you and the client to stay on Upwork. The next step is to offer more than they
are asking from you. So because you are
the professional, you know exactly how to take
something from the client and give them something that's absolutely remarkable in return. If it's going to be costly
and time consuming, you can suggest
this idea to them, and maybe they will accept. They just need to
know that you're the professional and you
know based on experience that they are going to
need this additional thing that they are not
asking from you. So that's going to be more
opportunity for work, and also you're going to seem a lot more professional
by doing this. So let's take a look
at another example. A client has asked from you to rebrand and they've only
asked for one logo. They did not ask for a custom font color
palettes and other things. But you as a freelancer
know that they're going to need not just a logo, they're going to need new
social media templates. They're going to need a
custom font, a logo type, and anything else that you think is necessary
for their request. And even if they didn't
ask for those things, you're going to suggest it to them and be
like, that's great. But it would be even better
if you had these things. Try to convince them
that you know better. And that's just going to be more opportunity
for work for you. If it's a small addition
like adding a stock image, then you can just
do it for free. But try to suggest it to
the clients so they know that you're different from
all the other freelancers. You're not a robot that only
obeys what the client says, but you're also putting
in your creativity and your experience to
give the client something that they will
be truly satisfied with. Tip number eight is to
never argue with a client. Sometimes clients
can be difficult. They're going to argue with you for small things or big things. But your role as a freelancer
is to never argue. If you feel like you're
being harassed by the client and you just
you're being too difficult, you're not seeing that
the project will go well. You can always
report the client, but keep in mind that
you should never be the argumentative person
because once you do that, the client can then
report you and you will lose your
upwork profile. The client will just
lose their account, but you're going to lose
more than the client would. So be professional
in the manner. Even if they're being mean
or maybe swearing at you, you don't want to give in to that anger and instead
just try to stay away from any arguments and just immediately report
that person to upwork. The next tip is, if a client is being difficult, you have to document everything. So if they're being
too difficult, try to keep everything
on the chat. Try to chat with them
when they're angry instead of talking to
them in a meeting. When it comes to these things, Upwork has a solution, so you want to
make sure you have the right documentation to prove to prove that
you're not in the wrong, and that client was just
being way too difficult, even when you did everything that the job description said. So make sure you
have a contract, you have the chat history, and anything else that's
going to help you prove that the fault is
with the client. They're in the wrong, and
that you're just trying to solve this issue and move
along with your freelancing. The last tip is to get
straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary details. Try not to beat
around the bush and be straight with everything
that you want to say. You don't want to waste
the time of your clients, and you're just trying to show
that you are professional. And one of the keys of communication is that you're
being straightforward. It's okay to have small talk, but try to keep everything strictly business on upward and, of course, get straight
to the point so that you're not wasting the
time of your clients. So those were some tips on communicating with your client. After some time, you're
going to get the hang of it. Each client is different. There isn't exactly a
golden rule for them. As long as you keep your
cool and your standards, you will be okay, even if you're confronted by difficult clients. You just need to be
professional and document everything just in case a client is trying to make you
look like the bad person. So those are these
steps that you can take to get started on
your first proposal. Once you follow these steps, you would have a higher chance
of winning your proposal. And soon enough, you will
get your first project. Keep in mind to always follow those rules for communicating
with your clients. You never want to seem
as unprofessional and seem as if you have no
experience with clients.
17. Upwork Desktop App: In this lesson,
we're going to learn about the Upwork Desktop App. Like we said, this
application is meant for freelancers and clients that are working on a project, and it's a great way to track time when you're working
with an hourly rate and for you to
contact the client and communicate with them
in a more direct way. So if you just do a Google
search of Upwork Desktop App, you'll see this link where you can just
download it for the operating system
that you have. Let's download and
install the application. Once you've installed
the application, you would have to sign
into your Upwork account, and then you're brought to
this window. Just hit next. And you're going to
get two new windows where one of them is
for your messages. And this is really helpful
because usually on Upwork, there would be a chat
that was on the browser. And oftentimes you wouldn't
get the notification when the client would chat with you. So having an app and keeping it separate
from the browser is a great advantage for both the
client and the freelancer. So I highly recommend
downloading this application to make
the projects go smoothly. So over here, your chat rooms will appear every time that you search for a job and you start
the job with the client, that job will be brought into the Upwork app because it's
connected with your account. And over here, you can see that the contracts are written. This is where you can see the contracts that
you're working with, the different projects
that are open for you right now
to work on them. They will only
appear here once you sign a contract with the client. And we can see that
fixed price contracts no longer appear in this list by default because you
don't need to track time for fixed price projects. This is just for
hourly rates only. Let's go ahead and close this and take a look at
the options we have. So if you want to find
work to get a contract, which you could also do
on your upwork page, find work section, you
can also go in from here. Write your proposals,
and once your client chooses you for a freelancer
for that project, the contracts will automatically appear here and you
can just click on any of them and just track the time that you would be
working on that project. We have a search bar. You can
fix the settings over here. And once you hit this,
you get the chat bar, which you can either set your availability and you can access your account
settings right here. You can also create a room. If you don't have a room with your client, you
can create it here, change your shortcut keys, You can work with the
settings of your messages. Maybe you can show
the notification for maybe important activities or just no notifications at all. Just customize it to
the way you want. Send an email for all
activity every 15 minutes. And yeah, just customize
this to the way you want. It's safe once you're finished. You can also hit this
out of office option, which lets every client that's looking to work
with you know that you're not taking any more projects and you're just
away for a while. So that was the
Upwork Desktop App. It's really easy to use. Once you get your first project, Upwork is going to
work you through all these steps that you need
to take for that project. So you just have
to install the app and send proposals to
get your first project.
18. Bonus Profile Tips: Project Covers: As we learned, a good cover
photo is great to capture the attention of the client that is searching for
a certain service. Right now I'm in the
upwork.com slash Services, and now if I search
for anything, you can see how a
great cover photo can capture our attention. Right now we are a client. And if it's not that
professional looking, if it's not clean, then the client will easily
just scroll past it. For other services where
it's not media based, so local design is media based. Photography, video
editing and all of those services
relate to media. But when it comes to
things like this writing, where it's more about more about text rather
than visual media. You want to make sure you
have a good cover photo. So you could just go ahead
and get a stock image like this or cramp up a bunch
of texts together, but it's not going to capture the attention of the client. We learned that
putting yourself on the cover photo is a
great way to one add personal presents
on your catalog and to grab the attention of
anyone who is on this page. So this is the first
thing we saw because of the person that's
visible on the screen. And we also have
this image here, but it's a little too small. So in this lesson, we're
going to see how we can create a good
cover photo for a project that we did in a
previous lesson about mockups. So we're going to be using
online tools in this lesson, so it's accessible for everyone. But if you know how to use
Photoshop, Illustrator, and other programs, you can go ahead and
use those instead. So the first thing
you're going to need is something to work with. I'm going to work with
Canva in this lesson. Canva is free to use. We're just going to use
one of their templates. Doesn't have to be
that complicated. Another thing that you need
is a photo of yourself. I'm just going to
use a photo from the Internet from pixels. These are free to use and
they're stock photos, so it's perfect for me. Let's type in I'm just going to look
for a good photo. I don't want it to
be way too artistic. But instead, I'm going to choose this one because
it's approachable. The person is laughing. We have a good clear headshot, and I can easily remove the background of this
photo using Canva. Let's download the photo. Let's go back to Canva. Before that, let's find out the dimensions for a
project cover on Upwork. So with a simple Google search, I can see that it's
a four by three, and it cannot be larger
than 4,000 pixels. Would you create a
design custom size. Let's go for write
in 640 by 480. This is a four by three ratio, and this is where I need
to start making my cover. Now, all I have to do is use one of the
templates on Canva, or you could create
something yourself if you're experienced
with this program, or if you know how to
use other programs. So once I scrolled
through the templates, I found this template, which is pretty good for me. My face is right on the screen. And if I'd like, I can put in my mockup photo in
the next slide. So the first slide is all about me and I'm just
grabbing their attention. Maybe you let them know my name, and then when
they're interested, they can just swipe to the
right and see my mockups. So I'm just going to grab
this image and instead put my image because
it's a template, you don't really
have to do much. Let's write something else. Unique mockups, something I
wrote in the description. Let's just give
this person a name. Melissa Johnson, and it's write in professional
graphic designer. Maybe put in the
logo of the company. And we're just going to grab
this underneath the lady. Maybe just reduce the
transparency right here. So the focus is on this
lady and then they look behind and they
find the mockups. Let's grab these
texts and give it some shadow so that they
stand out. Let's put in lift. And for the logo, let's get rid of the
text at the trash icon. And now I have this cover
photo for my project catalog. Let's reduce the transparency
a little bit more. I'm just trying to
make this look a little bit more visible. There we go. So it's
behind all the text, and then I'm going to reduce the transparency for
this shape as well. They do something like
this. So there we go. I have my mockup in the back. Of course, you can fill in
the rest of your gallery with other examples for
your mock up skills. But this right here, I have I have my face on
the straight up, so they can see that first. I got their attention, then they find a big text saying unique mockups can
make it bigger if I want. And you're just trying to get their attention with
this first slide. It's okay if they don't fully
understand what you do. The sole purpose of this project cover is that you
just grab their attention, and then later you can convince them in your description
and in your skills that, hey, you can work with me. I can do and finish the tasks that
you're trying to provide. If your project is not about
design and any visual media, then you can just put
in some stock images. But try to stay away from bulky text on your
project cover. As we saw, some people like to put paragraphs on
their project cover, and that immediately
makes the clients not want to read that
Because first of all, it's really small
and second of all, it's not something
that would tell them immediately what their
service is about. So there's no point
in putting all of those texts on your cover, and there's no point in using low quality footage on
your cover, as well. You're trying to show
the client that you're a professional and that you
know what you're doing. So this right here,
I can just share it, download it here and then upload it onto my
Project Catalogue. It's okay if you
made the project catalog without putting
the good image, you can always go back and edit that project and
change up the gallery, maybe add some new items. So everything on the
Project Catalogue section is something that you can edit. So take your time
with the covers and try not to rush them. Now let's go to the
services section on Upwork and take a look at why some of the
project covers are not grabbing the attention
of the clients. So I'm going to
search for mockups, something that's in the field
that I'm in. There we go. So most of these
are pretty good. Immediately, we can
see their style. But when you first
looked at this page, the first thing you
saw was this lady. Now, like we said, there is
a theory that humans will find other humans more
attractive in a photo. So if you are a photographer
and you have a landscape, putting a human
subject in there is going to make your
photo more attractive. The reason for that
is that we can easily identify other humans, but it takes a
little longer for us to identify different
types of media. So that's why I
should always put human figures on
your project cover. Whether it's you or your
model, it doesn't matter. Just try to get
someone on that cover. And another thing is that when you're
writing your project, filling in the forms, that is, you don't want to put
any unrelated tags. So right now, I
search for mockups. Basically, I'm looking for people to put my
logo on objects. But instead, I'm getting this A project which has nothing
to do with mockups. So this is related to UX and UI. It's not what I searched for. But this happens
because this person kept mockups as one
of their search tags. So those search tags
are very important, but try to keep them
in a similar field. So if you are a lawyer, you shouldn't put mockups in your search tag because
someone who is looking for mockups is not going to be thinking about
getting a lawyer. They're not related. But if
I am looking for mockups, this UX and UI design is
something in this field. So maybe I could be thinking about getting
a person like this. So this is like a bonus that I'm getting while I'm searching
for something else. Here we can see
some great mockups. Here, because the person didn't
put the right dimensions, we're not seeing a little
bit of the logo here. So he has to make his
cover a little smaller. This area is a little too small. We can barely read
the text here, so it would be better if
they put one logo at a time, their best logo on the
first on the cover photo. So that's what
we're seeing first, and then when we like it, we can just click
on the next slide. But when you cram
it all together, the chances of me
wanting to look at your project catalog
like this and the search results will be low, and the client might
just scroll over because they can't quite
understand the logo. The text is really small. So you can do what
this person did. You can see nice,
big, and clear. And down here, I can see that they're not
exactly doing mockups, but they're creating
the logo first. Here, I'm not seeing
the logo very well, but I know it has something
to do with coffee. This is pretty good. I'm seeing that the logo is really
good with the packaging. It's bright and colorful. And just based on the
project cover alone, I can see how
professional a person is. So I'm not any of
these designers. I'm acting as a
client right now, who's looking for mockups. And the way a client
sees things is the way that you should also
consider seeing things. You should always put
yourself in the client's shoe and see whether you would
get your own service. Let's say there is a
packaging design right here. If I set my packaging
design for $500, I need to think first
if I was a client, would I pay $500 for
a package design? If the answer is
no, then you need to try to put another price. But if the answer is yes, then you can continue, but make sure to always bring in your experience and
your work samples. So you're letting the
client know that, Hey, I know the price is way too up, but look at all the
experience that I have. Look how good I'm at the
skill that I'm doing. And look at all these
satisfied clients that are on my profile. When the client sees
all of those details, they will consider
working with you because they're paying a higher price
for a high quality work. But if you put $500 for packaging design and you
got maybe one work sample, no testimonials and
no work history, then it just doesn't make sense. So one, try to put yourself in the client's shoe
and two see whether the stuff that's on your profile matches what
you're putting in your price. There really they're
related to each other. So you really got to think about your price that you're
putting on there and the stuff that you are using
to showcase your skill. You can see this person has
a bunch of other skills. Seeing how these are all
clean and so professional, I would be willing to pay $45. And this says from $45, so maybe I can pay them more, and I just can't pay less
because it starts from $45. Let's take a look at
the other slides. So once I go to the other page, I can see that this
is actually a video, and the cover photo is a
screenshot of that video, if I'm not mistaken, it would
have been better if they kept this photo right here and just brought it in closer so
we can see the full logo. That's why it's
important to know the dimensions of
project covers. So this right here is
not a relevant picture. They're showing the
photoshop layers, which isn't something the
client would want to see. So, this is a good photo. Again, the layers, they're
just not helpful for the clients because most clients wouldn't know how
to use Photoshop. So if you're putting the
photo of the layers, it's just an additional
information for them and try to stay
away from that. Put the information that's
useful for the clients. So make everything as
simple as possible. Again, we have small texts. I can't really see what it is. I can't see the large icons, though, and this is smart. Trying to put colorful
icons that will grab the attention amongst
this cream background. Again, we got clean mockups,
really professional. This is a logo design. But you can see how the ones that look really clean are going to make me as a client feel like they're really
professional in what they do. Let's search for
another service. So when the service is about
the person, for example, if you are a marketing
consultant or SEO specialist, the service is mostly about you. You're the consultant. You're not basing the service on a logo or a piece of media. Not really show SEO as a sort of media unless you create
something like this, which, again, the small
text is just not it. With these type of services, you want to use yourself as a project cover because
SEO or marketing, any other anything else in this field is not something that you can show with
colors and pictures. It's mostly about
technical stuff. So putting yourself on the
cover photo is a great idea. If you are going to put
text on your cover photo, make sure it's big and
the person can read it. Again, we have the photo here, but this person made his photo
smaller than the graphics. It should be the
other way around. We don't want to see
really tiny text. It's not something that
a person can read. And keep in mind that
you don't really need to explain what SEO is. Example, this guy right here
is explaining what SEO is. Anyone who searches for SEO on Upwork probably has an idea
of what this service is. And therefore, instead of
trying to explain it to them in your cover photo, you want to just tell
them immediately that you're here to help with what
they're trying to achieve. So something like this. Got a person. This is actually
a really good cover photo. The quick question is your services want to be
number one on Google. That's the only
reason people would come to services like this. They're trying to get
to that good result or number one on Google. We have a human figure which is going to
grab my attention, and we have a very simple
yet important question. Again, here we have this person. He's using his top rated badge to make himself more credible. That's really good. He's also letting us know that he has
12 years of experience. But something like this where you're not getting anything from that cover photo is kind of useless or something like this where it's
just a stock image. If you're putting yourself
on the cover photo, it's kind of like
you're getting to know the client before
you even start. Again, we got stock images
not really helpful. So if you're working with
a service based job, something that can't be portrayed as a sort
of visual media, then you can just go
ahead and use yourself as the primary subject
of your cover photo. But if you are a
photographer, a video editor, then you'd want to focus
more on your media rather than on yourself because it's mostly
about what you create. But with services like this, it's mostly about
what this person does or says to you because
they're giving you advices, and you can just use yourself
as the primary subject. Videos are also a
great way for you to introduce your
service to the client. If you guys remembered when
we were creating our project, there was a project
video option. That's also really helpful. But most people don't
go for that because it's a little bit of a hassle. You obviously need to
make the video yourself. But if you guys want to get to that point where you have a great cover photo
and a cover video, but don't know how to make it, you can also come to
Upwork for those services. So let's try that. I search
for video introduction. Maybe I can use a
animated explainer video. Maybe give my logo for
awesome animation like this. And using Upwork I can get these medias from
these freelancers and put them on my
project catalog. But that's if you want to
spend money on your project. If not, you can just
make it yourself. So those were some examples on what makes a project
photo good or bad. And we also saw how we can
make our project cover using a free tool called Canva. So right now, I want you guys to look back at your project. Do you want that you
submitted and see whether or not your project
cover is suitable? Are the text too small? Is the photo good? Does it have good lighting? And if not, go ahead
and edit your photo. And if the answer is yes to all of those questions,
then good job. You have a great cover photo, and you will be attracting
the attention of the clients. I hope you guys
enjoy this lesson. I will see you in the next one.
19. Engaging Video Introductions pt. 1: So if you notice when we
search for a certain talent, right here, I search
for graphic design. Some of these cover photos
are actually videos. You can see when I go
on it, it's a video, and this person right
here is selling his service in the
form of an animation, a logo design for a brand identity from your
imagination to reality. We get this really
cool logo motion, but some of these
are photocvers. So there is a
selection of people who use videos as their cover. You could choose which ones
you want to stick with. Generally with videos, the pros to that is that
you can take that video, upload it on Upwork for your project, but
at the same time, use that video on
other social media to advertise your
service on Upwork. So in that video, you're
going to explain to them the service and convince them
to want to work with you. And then at the end,
you would be like, head over to my Upwork profile
and get started today. So you could use that video on other platforms to advertise
your service on Upwork. You could do the same
thing with images, but videos are generally
more engaging than images. You can put a good
background music, a professional voiceover, some
great graphics or videos. And that way, just
engage the people who come across your service. So this is one
example of a video. This is related to logo design. There's also in the animation and motion graphics section. You can see that we
have a lot more. So this person is showing their creative two
d explainer videos. We have a photo realistic
three D rendering of your products more engaging than if it were just this photo. We have a promo
for your website. This way, I can
imagine my website. I'm the client right now, my website in that
computer right now, and it's going to look
a lot cooler than if I just did that myself. Let's see, we call it gift
files, mobile app promo. And videos are, like we said, a great way to
advertise your service. So I recommend thinking about it and seeing if it's possible
for you, of course. If you know how to
edit videos and you know how to do voiceovers,
then it's okay. You don't have to pay as much. But if you don't know
how to do those, you can always just either hire a freelancer to do that for you or just ask a
friend to do it. Let's try a third category. So here I'm getting a sneak
peek of the voiceover talent. And you can just see what video suits your service and
your field of work. And in this lesson, we're
going to talk about how we can make an engaging video
introduction for your service, regardless of what field
of work you're in, we have different examples
for different fields of work. So let's get started
and see what are the steps to making a
good video introduction. So the first step is
to ask the question. The client just came
across your video, and you want to start
the first sentence in a way that is going to
be related to them. So instead of starting off with something unrelated
to the client, for example, hi,
my name is Maria. Hello, I'm a graphic designer. You want to start
with a question that directly relates to that client. So let's take a look
at some questions that are suitable for
these types of videos. Do you want your website to
be number one on Google? Are you tired of
boring blog posts? Do you want to be
remembered for your brand? Are you struggling to explain your business to the public? So these questions directly
relate to the client. The client is going
to see these, and they could be like, Oh, yes, I am indeed struggling to explain my business
to the public. And if their answer is yes to the question that, of course, relates to your field of work, then they would continue
watching that video. But if the answer is no, then they would just go past it. But if they're coming
to your service, the answer would most
likely be a yes. So if you are a SEO specialist, you would want to put
a question like this. The only reason the client
would come to your service, which they found by
searching SEO on Upwork, it's because they do want their website to
be number one on Google or at least show up in
the Google search results. So by directly jumping to the main reason why
the client is here, you're going to cut through all the unnecessary details
and tell the client that, Hey, I know you've seen a lot of services and you're just
confused which one to pick. I'm just going to give you exactly what you're looking for. So watch the rest of the video. Ask a question like
this, be direct, and then if the answer is
yes to these questions, which 90%, it would be yes, they would continue to watch
the rest of the video. So think of this question as
the hook that is going to grab the client into the
details of your service. Now, let's take a look
at the second step. The second step is to
offer the solution, but leave the details for later. So instead of just
explaining everything that your service is about
right at that moment, you want to break
it up into pieces that is more digestible
for the client. You are just reassuring
them that they are in the right place if their answer to the previous
question was yes. So even if you do
want to introduce yourself in your
video introduction, this is not a good
time because you're not reassuring the client that they are in
the right place. So never skip step
number one and two. You can leave your self
introduction for later, but try to keep this
second step only for reassuring the client that they are in
the right place. Let's take a look
at some examples. Well, now you can with my help. Don't worry because that
problem is easy to fix. Well, now there is a
solution to that problem, and it's right in front of you. In three weeks, I
can get you there. So these sentences are reassuring the client
that they are in the right place and you are the right freelancer to help
them with their problem. So it could be
something general like this or you could add
in a specific detail. For example, in three weeks, I will get you number
one on Google. So you could add that tiny detail that
relates to your service, or you could go with
something general like this. Let's take a look
at the third step. Simplify your business
as much as possible. Now, this could be
about your business. Maybe you are a
agency on Upwork, or it could be about
your service alone. So you just want to quickly give an introduction
about what you do. You want to just explain it
in a really general way. Don't get too technical and
don't add too much details. Talk as if you're
explaining your business to someone who has no idea and has never heard
of your business. For example, if your service
is about creating websites, instead of explaining them what PHBHTML and all
these things are, you can just tell them
something like I create e commerce website where people can easily shop and
your business can grow. So you're staying away from explaining how the
website works. Steps that it takes to
create that website and all the technical details that is of no help
to the clients, and it would just confuse
them because they don't know what those website terms are. So don't get too
technical and just try to simplify it in the
best way that you can. Let's take a look
at some examples. All it takes is for you to
give me the required details, and I can get you that website. And don't worry the details
are pretty easy to find. So I'm reassuring them. I'm telling them how
this is going to work. And then in the end, I'm just reassuring them that
it's not that difficult. With my expert advice, your website will be
number one on Google. My writing style is easy to understand and it's
perfect for your blog. I can take your long videos and make engaging
content from them. So you're telling them what you can do in a really
simple manner. You're not getting
into the details. You're just telling them
that the process they would have with you
as a freelancer is rather simple and it's
not going to be that difficult because the client has been looking for different
types of freelancers, and the number one
fear that they have is that they may come across a freelancer
that is difficult to understand and
difficult to work with. So right here, you're just reassuring them that everything will be this simple and
you will get the job done. So right over here, you can add a tiny detail about
your service, for example, required
detail for website. Number one on Google, it's related to the
service that you're doing. Your writing style
indicates that you are a writer and you
write things for a blog, long videos, and make
engaging content, then you are an editor. You're just adding in a
little spark of what you do, and you're just telling them that I'm the right
person for this job. Let's take a look
at the next step. Bring in your experience. And if you don't have
any, show sample work. So we saw how we can get sample work from fake
client websites. If you were a freelancer before, you can just bring
in your experience. But if you don't and
you just started, you can bring in
your sample work. Just put it on the screen. You can also bring in the stuff you did for previous clients. Depends on what type
of freelancer you are. Here are some examples. With over 200 clients satisfied, I look to spread my expert
advice across other companies. As a specialist with ten
years of experience, my goal is to share the things I've learned to help others. I've made over 50 logos, and all my clients now enjoy
a remarkable branding. I've been told by
many clients that they have wished that
they found me sooner. So these things are just
showing in your experience. It could be the
number of clients, the number of items that you produced or the number of years you've been
in this industry. But again, if you don't
have any of these, you're just starting
out as a freelancer. Just bring in the sample
work that you created, put it on the screen and just
talk about, for example, I know how to design logos
in different styles. I know how to create
different types of websites. For example, you would bring
in an ecomers website, a informational one,
and just put in what you've made
on the screen if you don't have any of
these information. And the next step is to explain the steps that your business
would have or your service. So you want to explain
the process of working with you in the most
simple way possible. Again, stay away
from details that would otherwise
confuse the client. You don't want to get too
technical with what you do. You just want to
explain your business in a very fast way,
in a simple way. As if the client has no idea
about what your industry is. You don't want to
give them way too much information to digest. You don't want to make
them feel bad about not knowing what let's
say website is, and you just want to quickly explain the steps that
it would take for you to go from the start to the
finish of this project. All it takes is for you
to give me the name of your company and the industry that you're in.
It's that simple. I'll first analyze your website, and then I'll get started
on improving the text. In no time, you'll have more engaging text
on your website. Just give me a link of all
the videos you wish to edit, and they will be turned
into something awesome. Upload your photos to the Dropbox link and then
receive amazing photo edits. So in a really simple sentence, I'm summing up the
service that I'm doing. These are some examples. We have a photo editing
service right here. We have a video editing service. We got a copywriter service or someone who just
writes text on website. And we have a logo
design service. So these are different services, and I'm just telling
them what they have to do and that it's
really simple. I'm not giving them a hard time. I'm just here to reassure them that the process with me would be very simple and I will
not waste their time. I will just give them exactly
what they're looking for, and they will not
regret working with me. So writ in the process
that it would take for you to start the project, it depends on what type
of service you're doing, but this is a general idea
of what you should write. So those were some steps
that you can take. And the next lesson, we're going to wrap things up and see how we can conclude our
video introduction.
20. Engaging Video Introductions pt. 2: Now, optionally, if you
want to write your script, the video introduction
script in a different way, you can use storytelling
with characters. For example, let's use photo
editing as an example. Mary's wedding went by
and she's left with, let's say, 100 images. Now she's struggling to edit those images because she's trying to print them
and put it on her wall. But, luckily, Mary
found my service, and now she has really
beautiful wedding pictures that she can now
hang on her wall. So you can see I'm
using storytelling. We have a fictional
character named Mary, and I'm just explaining
how she has this problem. And I as a freelancer helped
her with that problem, and now she is happy
with the result. So if you're not sure
about how you can write a script that is realistic
to what you're doing, you can just use
storytelling and maybe avoid talking about
your experience if you are a new freelancer. You can use storytelling to not talk about the number of clients and the number of
years that you've had. And just create a scenario where you are helping
this fictional character. Just work with the storytelling. It's another way that you can engage the
client's attention. And finally, we're
down to the last step, which is to always finish with
a CTA or a call to action. We talked about call
to actions before, but it's also important to use them in your
video introduction. Because keep in mind
this introduction is actually like a commercial
for your service. And just like any
other commercial, you want to make sure
it's engaging and that you are ending it
with a call to action, where the client or whoever
that's seeing this video can do a certain action once they finish
watching your video. So you never want
your client to watch your video and then wonder about what
they should do next. You don't want them
to wonder about the point that they watch this video.
Was there any point? Did I just waste my time? You don't want them to think
about these things at all. So you want to start with an engaging question and end
it with a call to action. Let's take a look
at some examples. Let's get you a new
and awesome logo now. Choose one of my packages, and we can get
started right away. Well, what are you waiting for? Your new website is
just one step away. Now, with my help, you can easily advertise your
content. Contact me today. So these are all
examples of CTAs, and they're really
engaging for the client to know exactly what to do
after watching your video. If you don't put a CTA at
the end of your video, the client will be rather
confused because they're like, Okay, I got all of
these information, but what am I
supposed to do now? And it may be obvious to you, but putting a sentence like this at the end of your
video will kind of push them towards wanting to learn more about
your service. Maybe after this video, they're going to read
your project description or look at some of
your sample work. So you never want
to skip this step. You're just kind of
putting a route for the clients to go over
after watching this video. So don't skip this step, put an engaging CtA at the end of your
video, and that way, you would have a fully
engaging video to put on Upwork and on other platforms
to advertise your service. Now that we learned
some things to do, let's talk about some
things that you're not supposed to do in these
video introductions. Here are some things to avoid. The first one is bulky text. You don't want to put
big chunks of text on your video because no one is going to pause and
read those things. The client doesn't
have a lot of time. They just want to get the right freelancer
for the project. So try to avoid bulky text. Number two is complicated fonts. You don't want to use
something that's hard to read. Stick with easy to read
fonts such as this one. Can see right here, this
is easy to understand, and I'm not making it difficult
for you guys to read. So stay away from
cursive fonts and other fonts that
have shapes in them. The third thing you want to avoid is technical information. You're not trying to sell
the idea of SEO to them, but sell your services
to that client. So you're not advertising
what photo editing is. You're not trying to
convince them to edit their photos because
they already chose that, and they're just looking
for someone to do it. So stay away from
technical information is just going to
confuse the clients, and it may cause them to
just scroll past you. It's okay to give some
information about how it works, how your service works, but you don't want to get into the details because this person most likely does not have that much knowledge
of that service, or otherwise, they would
have done it themselves. So try to keep things simple and not too complicated
for the client. The fourth thing is blurry
pictures or bad images. If you're using sample work from previous clients or just
pictures of yourself, make sure they are high
quality and they're new. Try to avoid using
blurry pictures and just bad images that could
make you look unprofessional. And the fifth item
is old footage. Similar to the fourth one, you want to make
sure that you're professional and a clean
person in what you do. So you want to show good
content, sharp images, sharp graphics, and that can just easily make you
look more professional. The final item is a
low quality audio. Most likely, you
would have to do a voiceover for your video introduction
because like we said, when there's a human
touch in your media, it's going to be more
engaging for the client. So if you want to make your
videos more successful, you would need a
voiceover artist. Now, if this is going to
be you or someone else, it doesn't matter as long as
the audio is high quality, and it does not hurt the ear of the clients because they just
wouldn't listen to it. So either invest in
a good microphone or hire a professional
voiceover artist, which you can do
on Upwork as well. So those were some
things to avoid. With all of these in mind, the chances of the
clients being more engaging in your video
introduction will be much higher. And this way, you can get closer to getting
your first project.
21. Class Project: Build Your Upwork Profile & Proposal System: Now it's time for
your class project. For this project, you're going to be building or improving an upwork setup using everything that we have
learned in the class. Your project should include
your niche and services, your profile, and everything
that you have set out, your pricing
structures, and rates, and a draft for a proposal, whether it's for a real
job or a hypothetical. You're new to Upwork, you do not need to publish anything, you can send them out as drafts, and that's going to be perfectly fine for this class project. The point of this project is for you guys to gain
more clarity and confidence on how you approach proposals and your
profile entirely. Once you're ready,
you can upload your works to the
Class Project Gallery, where I will be
checking in from time to time to provide you
with some feedback. At the same time,
you can also see how other students
approach this project. And that way, we can have a
community where we're all learning from each other
and growing all together. This project is the foundation
of your upwork journey. So take your time and see
what you can come up with. H
22. Congratulations! What’s Next?: You've reached the
end of the class. Well done, you've
now understood how you can approach
Upwork strategically, not just as a job board, but as a professional
freelancing platform. You also learned how
to choose your niche, set out your services,
define the prices, how to write proposals, and then how to have some time management
skills that will help you once the project
start rolling in. Upwork rewards freelancers
who are consistent, clear, and passionate
about what they do. So your first proposal or
project may not do so well, but the point here is
to keep on refining, keep it consistent with the amount of time you
put into this work, and you're sure to
see some results. Next step here is
to keep refining that profile, try
different services, if you want to see what is currently on
the market and just continuously build
upon that profile until you reach where
you want to be. If you haven't
already, make sure to upload your project to the
Class Project Gallery, as I love to see what
you guys have built. Thank you for learning
with me in this class, and I wish you all good luck
on your upward journey.
Skillademia Academy, Creative Skills for the Future
