Como ganhar o Upwork: um guia passo a passo para conquistar mais clientes no Upwork em 2024

1. What's Inside The Course & How To Get Support: Hi there. A warm welcome to the course, Winning Upwork. If you want to create a freelancing business online, then this course will help you do that. Online freelancing is getting popular day by day. There are many online marketplaces from where you can start your online freelancing career. Among this marketplace, upwork is one of the best. As a top rated upwork felancer, I have revealed all my techniques, strategies, and knowledge in this course so that you can also do better on upwork. Well, before going to the actual learning, let's see what's inside the course very quickly. Okay, the course is divided into four sections. The first section is all about setting up the right mindset. I know this is not directly related to upwork, but trust me, this is something you need the most as a freelance business owner. Then comes the second section. It's all about positioning yourself on work by doing profile optimization in the right way. In the third section, you will learn how to craft winning proposals and you will learn how to get response from clients. In the last section, you will learn all about client management. You will learn how to deal with upward clients, how to communicate effectively, how to make a long term business relationship with clients, and all the milestones you need to achieve as an upward filancst. Except for these four sections, there is another bonus section. In this section, you will get extra tips, tricks and giveways from my end that may help you smooth your upwork journey. Okay, let's take a quick look in each section, one by one. In the first section, there is only one lesson called Prepare for the Marathon. This lecture helps you build the right mindset for starting your financing business. It will help you set your goals and show you how you can achieve the goals, okay? Then in section two, there are 14 lessons. All the lessons will help you position yourself on upper marketplace and also help you maintain the position for a very long time. The first lesson is about understanding the reality of per business. Then comes the second lesson from where you can understand the psychology of high quality clients. In the third lesson, you will learn about how to design upper business with profitable niche. Then you will learn how to find the appropriate users. Then you will learn about all key elements you need for optimize your upper profile. Then you will learn how to craft a killer title. You will learn why professional profile picture matters to your profile and you will learn how to get one professional profile picture. You will learn the effective strategies for designing concrete overview for your Port profile. You will learn how to boost your upwork profile with online presence. You will learn how to create portfolio, even if you have no experience at all. You will learn how to set and raise your hourly rate without fear. You'll learn how to make your business strong by creating specialized profile. You also will learn how to create prepackage, survey, and consulting service on port. Finally, there will be many tips for finalizing your profile. Okay, the third section, there are five lessons here. You will learn how to craft winning proposals that get response from clients. The first lesson of this section starts with why most proposals get rejected. In the second and third lesson, you will learn my three step magic hack for writing winning proposals with ten studies. In the next lesson, you will learn how to deal with invitations, then you will learn how to deal with screening questions fearlessly. Okay, in section four, there are only one lesson. In this lesson, you will learn how to deal with upper clients, how to communicate effectively, how to make a long term business relationship with clients, and all the milestones you need to achieve as an upper plans. Okay, there is a bonus section here, you will get extra tips, tricks and giveways from mind. You will learn how to find high quality clients using advanced search. You will learn how to track and send proposals to your previous clients job post without losing any connects. You will learn about upwork direct contracts. Also, you will get my three proposals that gave me almost $5,000 earnings in total. I will give you 48 of my winning proposals for you. You can use them as reference. Okay, one more thing. I keep updating this course, so I may add new lesson to any section or may add bonus lesson to bonus section. If I do so, I will give even update. Okay, I know you will have doubts and questions about the course and I'm here to hold your hand when you need it. If you have any questions regarding this course, just ask me. Here on this platform, I usually check queries at least once every day. You will get your answer within 24 hours usually. But it may take a little more time if I'm on a vacation or if it's a holiday. In that case, you need to vote a little more. But I assure you that I will answer your question as soon as possible. Okay. And in the Kevan a section, there are many questions already answered. You can also check them for resolving your doubts. So that's all. Let's start learning together. Thank you so much. 2. Prepare for the marathon: Hey guys, welcome to the first lecture of winning upwork, which is prepare for the marathon, which is not directly related to upwork. Why I am starting a lesson which is not related to upwork anymore? At the very beginning of my upwork pilancing course, you probably are thinking the same, right? Well, there is a reason for that. In general, there are three types of students out there. One who buy courses but never ever study or even they start, they never finish second category by courses they learn, but they do not imply the knowledge. Okay? Trust me, most of the people are either from the first or from the second category. But the good news is, there is a tiny percent of people, mostly three to 5% like you, who study and imply and finally become the gainer. If you are in the last category, what I'm sure you are, then you don't need to learn this lesson. You can easily skip this first lesson. Prepare for the marathon. This is not for you then, but if you are not, then this lesson will help you to prepare your mindset for upper business. Actually, for any kind of business you want to do, either you can skip or let's start, You all heard the name of Hendi Ford, right? One of his famous is, if you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you are right. It may sound a bit contradictory, but it is the evergreen truth you must accept. You all know they are successful people and there are losers. In many cases, losers are more talented, qualified, and even more brilliant than successful people. But why they cannot make it, isn't it? It is the mentality that pulls them back. They do not believe that they can make it. They made excuses and they escape. Whenever you are entering this business, work business, the first thing you need to believe in yourself, that yes, I can do it. This is the most important thing you need. Repeat with me the mentality, I can do it is what you need the most. You may ask why? Because upper business is not like a cake walk or an easy to earn money online scam. In reality, there is no such way to earn easy and consistent money. For a long time. You may earn millions from a casino, overnight, from online game or something like that. But you can't do it again and again and again. If you are thinking this course will teach you some freaks that fill your pocket immediately, then this is not going to happen. In that case, you can skip the course. But if you have the courage of changing your life and want to leave the life you deserve, then you are very much welcome. Okay? Believe me or not, the technical parts of upper financing are secondary. Yes, you heard me right. The primary and mandatory part is setting up your mind for the marathon you are going to run. Remember, with the wrong mindset, you will always end up on the wrong path. I'm not demoralizing you, this is not my intention. I'm just trying to help you by sharing my experiences so that you don't have to do the same mistakes I did, okay? So the first action you should take is to believe in yourself. You must believe that you can make financing a successful business. Just hold for a second, close your eyes, take a deep breath and say yes, I can do it. Repeat with me. Yes, I can do it. Feel the excitement inside you. Think about what you can do when you have the freedom, time and money. You are traveling, you are enjoying yourself with your friends and family. Something which makes you very, very happy. Well, quicky for you, just don't do it once. Do the same practice for 5 minutes daily in a safe and sound place where no one can disturb you for just 5 minutes. And make it a habit or a ritual for yourself. Do the exercise and you can't believe how powerful this 5 minutes exercise is. It will just fill your mind with positive energy. You need to keep this positive energy inside you for a very long time because this energy will keep you up for your financing business, remember. Upwork is just a media to enter or to start your financing business. This is not your ultimate goal, you need to become a successful felancer, okay? Trust me, this 5 minutes which will help you to reach your ultimate goal, it is not very hard. You just need to understand two basic things. Two things that make you ready for the race, two things that make you unpredictable for the financing business, better say for any kind of business. What are the two things? The first one is setting your goals, the second one is consistency. Okay? Now, let's start with the first one, which is goal setting. People often get confused with a goal and a wish setting. Goal and making wish are completely different things, but most of us can't make it apart initially. Both looks the same, where in reality they are not. Now, what is a wish? It is simply what you want right now. Think we want many things in our life, don't we? You may want to be a singer. You may want to be a millennial. You may want to be an actor, You may want to buy a Ferrari, whatever. We all have our wishes. Without wishes, we can't become what we want to be. This is obviously a necessary thing to want something for becoming successful. I agree with that. Nowadays, you can see on the Internet, on TV, shows, books, and everywhere, that if you want something really, really bad, you must get it. But trust me, this is ha, the equation we will never get you on your destiny, which is actually an imaginary factor. You just imagine things, right? You are thinking that you will become an actor. You are thinking that you will become a singer, you will become a millennia, et cetera, et cetera. Suppose you are thinking that you earn, say, $10,000 per month. You are thinking this daily, hours after hours. Now tell me, is that really going to make a difference will not exactly for success on your thinking you wish will not work. You also need something more with your imagination. Actually, you need two real factors with your imagination to make your dreams true. Which are the two factors? The first one is time and the second one is sacrifice. Or you can say determination. Okay, let me explain it with an example. Suppose you want to earn $10,000 per month. That's okay. If you write, your wish statement will be like this. I want to earn $10,000 per month. See, this is just what you want, it's only your imagination. You're probably thinking that with this amount of money, you will buy this or that, or you will do this or that, etcetera, et cetera. But isn't it a daydreaming until you work something to achieve this goal? Your statement, I want to earn $1,000 per month, doesn't give you any direction on how you can achieve this goal right Now let's understand how with adding two real factors, which statement can help you set a goal? Let add the first real factor, which is time with this statement. Now it will become like this. I want to earn $10,000 per month by January 2026. Now you see you have a certain time period to make this happen. You may have two years or more to achieve your goal. Now the question is how you can achieve it? To get the answer that, how you need to add the second real factor, which is sacrifice. Or you can say determination. Adding the second real factor, sacrifice in your statement, the statement will become more concrete. You need to ask yourself, what can you do to make you wish a reality? Once you get the answer, your wish will become a goal. You may write your statement like that, I will sacrifice two productive hours from my everyday routine so that I can earn $10,000 per month by January 2026. Or maybe you can write the statement like this. I will learn a new skill, maybe website development or managing clients 2 hours every day. So that I can earn $10,000 per month by January 2026. In general, the formula for setting a goal is to write things like that. I will do then what you want to do, your sacrifice, so that I can get what your wishes or what your goal is by the time then you want to achieve your goal. Once you are set, you are done with your initial goal settings. Then ask yourself a question every night before you go to the bed. The question is, did sacrifice today so that I can get my goal by the time you set you get my point. In our example, it will be like that. Did I sacrifice two productive hours today so that I can earn $10,000 per month by January 2026. Get my point. Human usually are forgetful. We forget things. It's very natural. It is very important to remind yourself again and again and again about your goal. That's why asking this question to yourself is very important. The purpose of this exercise is not to forget your mind about your dream for a second. So that your powerful mind finds a way to make these dreams true, okay? You see the difference. When you add time and your dedication or sacrifice the equation with your wish statement. Your wish become a goal and I won't. I can back to Henry Ford's word. You are now thinking you can do a thing, aren't you? That's it. Pretty simple. This is how you can set your goal. You know now what you want, when you want it, and how can you achieve it. Trust me, when you are clear about when, then you know your goal very well. Now it's time to take some action. Well, by taking action, I don't mean to work for 15 or 16 hours a day. Actually, people get excited, start doing things to make some real changes in the life first. And they put their full energy and effort. And what happens within a few days or weeks, Their energy drained and they come back where they are. To avoid this energy trap, you need to be consistent. And this is the second thing I have told earlier. Okay, let me tell you a story. The rabbit and the title story you've seen in the video. You already know that. I know this is a real incident from my own life. That time I did a regular nine to five job and lived with three of my other friends in a small apartment. We all worked in different offices, but we all have a common problem that was a very nasty food habit. Mostly late night dinner, no breakfast at all, and lunch with Chinese food or first food. The result was obvious. All of a sudden we noticed that we all have a fatty ugly tummy growing day by day. It was a horrible feeling. We all set a plan and started doing exercise together in the morning. Just after a week, one of my friends said, oh gosh, it's too much. He quit and went back to his normal life. Within the next one to two weeks, I and another friend started showing excuses and we also quit. After a few days, we got separated. One of my friend's mother died, he left the apartment. One got another job to another company. Far from that area we lived in. I just had some family issues to solve, so I had to leave also, and one got married, where our own life has different paths. Anyway, after a few months, we met all at a get together party and what we found, the last friend lost his weight up to five kilogram, damn five kilogram. Whether we all gained three to 4 kilograms extra on average. We got surprised. I asked him, hey man, how could you do that? He answered, Why not? I still do exercise every day. That's the power of consistency. Remember, this is the key to success. If you set an action, do it regularly, no matter what happens in your surroundings, keep yourself safe. I will do it tomorrow syndrome. Otherwise, you will never, ever reach your target. Now it's time to use this knowledge in the upwork business. I'll show you practical steps by steps. What you need is to practice those daily. No excuses and no I will do it tomorrow syndrome, okay? So let's start practicing. Well, let's assume you are an employee. You do a regular 95 job and you want to earn some extra money. You are told that your friend's friend earning better than a 95 job from up. It sounds amazing to you. You joined up and didn't hit the first job in the first two or three months. You are getting frustrated. What will you do now? Go back to the first principle, which is setting a goal rather than making a wish. You know how you can make the goal right? A goal means, with your imagination, you need to add two real factors that are time and sacrifice. And you need to know what, when, and how. Ask yourself three questions. What do I want to achieve? How much time I will take to make my wish a reality? And what can I sacrifice so that I can achieve my wish? Within the time period, I said find any answers. Okay, let me help you. The answers may be like this. For the first question, you may answer. Well, I want to get my first client, Okay? This is what your wish you want to achieve, right? For the second question, the answer may be, I want to get my first client within two weeks from today or one month from today. Here you add up a time with your imagination or imaginary statement. Finally, for the third question, you may answer like this. I will dedicate to productive hours daily so that I can get my first client with two weeks, or maybe one month, from today. Finally, you have a goal. Now here is a problem. You may ask, how can I get 2 hours daily? I do a regular nine to five job. Man, I don't have this time. Well, let's do a simple math for you now. Health is the most important thing. You need to care about 2 hours for your exercise and taking good meals, okay? You need a good rest. 7 hours for sleeping. You have a regular job. I assume 9 hours is good. The job time including Tiffin and traveling. Family and friends matter. Keep one for them and one for social media. Facebook, whatever you want and one for your soul entertainment. Maybe Netflix, maybe TV shows, maybe book, whatever you like. Including all of these. You spend 21 hours of a day still. You feel you don't have that 2 hours time daily. Really excuse is a disease. Don't give excuses, At least not to own self. I cannot help you if you giving excuses, right? Well, now you get a clear vision of your goal. You now need to make two level action steps. The first level is making your position strong on work, and second level is maintain and secure your position. And trust me, this will take time, not going to happen overnight. First, sit and relax and try to find out the reasons why you are not getting any client. And list it all one by one. Check through your profile, Is it good enough? Does your profile title contain keyword? Does your profile picture show that you are a professional? Does your skill set have enough demands in the market things properly and find out as much as possible reasons for your failure, right? Make a table like you see on the screen, set a deadline for each action and start fixing it. If you see here in the example on the screen, I put some imaginary problems, need to change my profile. Title. Need to study top ten freelancers. Profile from my area works. Need to create portfolio item and put some possible deadlines. You need to find your own problems and write it down and put the deadline and try to finish it within the deadline. You may fail to do some task in the first place, trust me, it happens. For example, you may fail to make your portfolio item within your set deadline. It's okay. It's completely okay. In that case, write a new deadline and try again. Okay. You can apply this method for any reason you find that causes a failure in the very beginning. It will be very difficult to do and a little boring also. But with practice, it will be easier anyway. We will discuss these techniques more deeply later in the course. Please download the Making Position action sheet and try to find out your own problems and make a list to fix them. Okay, now comes the second label, which is maintain and secure position. To maintain and secure your position, you need to follow the table. Or you need to break your actions into three sections. Which actions you need to do every day? Put it in the daily actions column. Which actions you may not need to do every day, once in a week will, okay. Then put those actions in the weekly action column. Which actions you need to do once a month? Put them in the monthly action column, for example. You see in the daily action column, I practice writing two proposals. That is an essential and apply one job that suits for me. Okay, in the weekly actions, I need to add a portfolio item in my profile. And study one top rated freelance profile in the monthly action. Need to communicate with old clients. That's how you can divide your actions into three columns. You can use this table. You can download the making position action sheet and you can use the table. Or you can use some apps like Toast or Google Calendar, whatever source for you. Okay. And once you set your actions for daily, weekly, and monthly basis, then make another tracker for maintain it. You may follow the style you see on the screen for you. I have already made the tracker and the list. Just download the secure position action list and secure weekly tracker and you can just use it or you can use any app like to waste or Google Calendar. As I told you, I know this section is not covering every steps to become a successful freelancer, but I believe you at least get an idea where to start, right? And get an idea how to set your mindset positively for starting a financing business. Before going to the next section, which is actually the core part of the upward felancing, I encourage you to do some trial and error method of what you have learned from this section. This is obvious that you will fail. You will not get results every time. But keep trying and you will get result. Definitely. Let's recap the entire thing from top to bottom once more. Well, what you have learned so far is you need to believe that yes, you can do it. This is the most important thing. You need a positive and strong mindset. Number two, you need to set a realistic goal that you can achieve. And finally, you need to work consistently to achieve the goal. Again, consistency is the key. Remember, this is important. The action step for doing this, to maintain or follow the 5 minutes ritual, best practice is to make it a habit. The ritual is like that. Close your eyes and take a deep breath and say, yes, I can do it. Practice this in a safe and sound place where for 5 minutes, nobody or nothing can destruct you. Feel the excitement inside you. Think about what you can do when you have the freedom. You have time and the money, okay? This is the first action step. The second action step is answer the three magic questions. Question number one, what do I want to achieve? Number two, how much time I will take to make my wish a reality? And number three, what can I sacrifice so that I can achieve my goal within the time period I said? And your answer will define your goal, okay? And then the action step three, which is making an action list. You can use the making position action sheet or you can use any tracker. And the last action step is to divide the list into parts so that you can maintain it easily. You should divide the actions into daily, weekly, and monthly column. Okay, you can use the secure position action sheet and finally maintain a tracker. You can easily use secure position weekly tracker or you can use any app, like to do Evernote, Google Calendar, whatever suits you. That's it. I hope you enjoyed the lesson. See the next lesson. Thank you. 3. Upwork Business The Reality: Hi, welcome back. In this short lesson, I'm going to share some facts with you about upwork business. It will help you plan your upwork business accordingly. Okay, so let's check out first thing first. Maybe it will sound disappointing, but most of the philancers on upwork do not enjoy the success at all. If we see the statistics, you see 91% of philancers on upper platform get totally failed. They don't even earn a single penny. 6% of philancers anyhow manage to earn a little money between $1 to thousand dollar in their entire por career. And the rest 3% of the philancer just enjoy the cream. They earn more than $10,000 on average. Sounds shocking. Well, I'm going to show you some proof. Please see the screenshot. This is the search result of finding a philancer on upper platform. I took this screenshot on 2019 when I first published my course winning upper course here, but later stopped showing this search result has changed their filtering system from 2020. It may be March or April anyway. They now stop showing how many philancers are actually earning from. I understand that this is the business policy. These numbers maybe disappoint many felancers, they stop showing these numbers well. But from this screenshot, you see there are 2.1 million felancers out there in 2019. Surprisingly, 1.9 million felancers can't even earn a single penny. 189,000 felancers only earn $1 or a little more. On average, 166,000 Felancersar $100 or a little more. On average, 127,000 philancers earn one K dollar. That is $1,000 In their career, only 72,000 philancers earn the most more than $10,000 On average, 72,000 philancers out of 2.1 million philancers is nearly 3% Right? So you now understand that why I told you only the 3% philancer enjoy the cream, right? Anyway, I will share my experience and show you all my three extent strategies so that you can also be in the top 3% okay? But to do this, the first thing you need is to set up your mind for this battle, because the shocking figures may pull you back. But once you set your mind for success, no one can stop you. That's why I created a lesson on how to build the right mindset for upper business or any kind of business. If you didn't see it, I insist you to check the previous video called, Prepare for the Marathon and then come back to this. Listen. Okay. Now you may ask why such a big number of filancers are facing failure. Well, there are several reasons. Especially after the covid situation, filancing platforms like per five were just overflooded with hundreds of thousands of filancers. That makes the competition more harder. Okay, you need to accept it, but still, most of the freelancers make some terrible mistakes. Most of them fail to understand how to get high quality clients. Failed to position themselves in this marketplace. And finally, they failed to get quality invites. Okay, By any chance if they managed to position their place or get high quality clients. In most cases, they failed to maintain the position for a long time and failed to get repeat businesses from their existing clients. Also, they fail to make their own clients parallel. Anyway, I will show you how to avoid the theme mistakes so that you have a chance to become a top 3% philancers on upwork. Believe me, the top 3% philancers are not there by any chance. They design their business in that way. They had plans and strategies and they executed them. And you need to create your own plan. I'm going to guide you how you can do that, okay? You all heard the name of Benjamin Franklin, right? He once said, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. This is true for your upper business actually. For any kind of business, you have to plan your business in the right way. Otherwise you just write your name in the 97% Freelancers group, which you don't want to do right anyway, how horrible those statistics are. Please don't get upset because freelancing is such a business that gives you freedom. This is a career where you can make your own decision. You can take leave whenever you want. You can do work when you want to do. You can decide with whom you want to work. You will have enough time for yourself and for your family and friends. You don't even think to hop into the first local train, tube or bus every weekday mornings. But it we're not going to happen overnight. I suggest you whatever you are doing right now, just do it. If you're doing a nine to five job, if you are a student, keep your study on. If you are in some business, do it initially, Just find two productive hours daily to design your financing business. Later, you can reduce the time to 15 to 30 minutes a day, actually. In the beginning, it takes extra time, okay? So don't rush, Study all the techniques I'm going to show you, adapt them slowly and apply them. Though, this is a course on upwork, but your goal should be build and grow a solid financing business. And upwork is just a ladder to reach you to the top right. That's for this lesson. See on the next lesson. Thank you. 4. Understanding High Quality Clients: Hi, welcome back. In the last video, I told you that only 3% of upper pilancers earn the most. It is obvious that if you want to earn from up work, you need to enter into the 3% group. How can you do that? Okay. There are two ways. The first one is you can work with low ticket clients who pay you less for your hard work. This means you have to spend more hours to earn less money. And you need to work with many clients and your hourly rate will be very low. And the second way is more promising, here you have to work with high quality clients who value your hard work. This means you have to spend fewer hours to earn more money, and you can charge a premium hourly rate, okay? Now, for example, suppose John is a graphic designer and he does Powerpoint presentations. He works with average or low ticket clients. And suppose he took $3 per slide on average. Also, suppose he needs 30 minutes on average to make a single slide. If he want to earn $50 per day, how many hours he need to work? It is, if you calculate it will be around 8 hours, 20 minutes. Okay. Consider another presentation designer. In she designed her business for high quality clients who pay $12 per slide on average. She also needs 30 minutes to design a full slide and she also want to earn $50 per day. Now, how many hours she need to work? It will be a 2 hours, 5 minutes. You see the difference. Both do the same work, but Jen still has 6 hours of a day to enjoy her life. This example may not real, but things happens in the same way in real life. One of my friends, a top rated upper financers, he and his team earn more than 100 K USD from up from the last ten to 12 years, I guess. But he's still working so hard to maintain his earning. He and his team, I guess they are three to four members, work more or less than ten to 12 hours every single day. Why? Because still today, after so many years of experience, their hourly rate is $10 only. It's your choice what kind of clients you are going to serve. You can choose a lot of low clients or you can choose a few of high quality clients. Now what I mean by high quality clients thing first, don't leave in the illusion that high quality clients means only high payment, whatever the task it is. No, it's not like that easy. Okay, Think it differently. Suppose you drink coffee. You are a coffee lover and only Starbucks coffee. Suppose you go to some place, Starbucks is not available. You buy a coffee from a local coffee shop. The question is, will you pay the same money as you regularly pay in Starbucks for a coffee? What will you do? Definitely, you will not give the same money. Why should you? The fact is, nobody want to be overpaid even for a single cup of coffee. In that scenario, though, you are a high quality coffee buyer, you are still not willing to pay the same amount for a local coffee. And the reason behind it is the local coffee shop is not designed for high quality buyers. They have designed their business for local and avert customers, and that's what they're getting exactly. You can check the same theory for other cases, like you pay thousands of dollars for a shoe in Woodland, but you will not pay the same amount in your local shop for a shoe. You can easily spend $500 for a T shirt in Pentalons. Will you experience the same for a local shop? There are so many examples in real life, probably you also experience it right now. Think about your work business from this perspective. Consider work is your own shop and design your business for high quality clans. So it's totally up to you whether you make it a local coffee shop or you make it a starbuck. Get my point. Now let's see. What benefits will you get if you design your upper business for high quality clients? First of all, high quality clients are easy to work with. And don't misunderstand me, it doesn't mean the work is easy itself, but you can save a lot of time, energy, by not negotiating terms, price and other small things in between a project. Trust me, low ticket clients have many hidden conditions. They told you one thing before the project started and start demanding many other things in between the project. The irony is they don't want to pay you for your extra work. On the other hand, high quality clients will be happy to pay you extra money for your extra work. So that's the biggest benefit of working with a high quality client. Okay. The second benefit is they have potential to give you consistent work. So if you have some high quality clients, you can save a lot of time, again, by not sending proposals on upwork. And probably you have a chance to work with them for a very long time, even outside upwork. And the final benefit is high quality clients are happy to pay you 2x5x or even ten x for the same type of work you do for a low ticket client. Okay? Now here is a common mistake. Every filancer does, they think, okay, I understand this is the secret. High quality clients search for high priced filancers, they just jump into their Po profile and make their hourly rate double or triple. Think now I will get quality clients. Are you willing to do the same? If please stop, don't do it. Trust me, I tried it, it doesn't work. High quality clients seek for a high valued filancer, not high priced finances. There is a difference between high value and high price, right? And they're happy to pay higher price for the value you input to their business. If you need high payment, you need to put high value first. Otherwise just forget it. Let me tell you a story. You probably heard the story Al. The story is like that. One day a donkey found a lance skin led by some hunter. He dressed himself in it and amused himself by rushing out of the trees to scare the other animals who passed by. A few times he got so excited that he opened his mouth and laid out a loud sound, a donkey's brain. Okay. A fox who had run with the rest of the animals stopped. As soon as he heard the donkey's sound, he went up to the donkey and said, if you had kept your mouth shut, you might have frightened me. You might have fooled me. But you gave yourself with that silly brain. Now, trust me, raising your hourly rate to the moon without giving value will be as same as the donkey's act. You cannot just pretend that you are a high value felancer to a high quality client just raising your price only. You may fool the clients one or two times, but by doing this, you will definitely bury your chance to grow. If you are going to run your business for low ticket clients, then you should at least charge accordingly. But if you want to design your financing business for high quality clients, you need to do some dedicated research, labor, and planning, rather than just saying you serve high quality clients. Now you may ask, okay, I understand what high quality clients mean, but how can I find them? To do it, you need to go through two stages. The first stage is to position yourself in this marketplace so that you can attract high quality clients. And the second stage is maintain your position for regular earning. From the next lesson, we will learn how to get a position on a port marketplace step by step. Till then, have a nice day. 5. Design Upwork Business With Your Profitable Niche: Hey guys, welcome back. In the previous lecture, I have mostly talked about fundamentals. I know fundamentals are boring, but you can't ignore them, because without understanding the fundamentals, you will become a blind worker. So yes, fundamentals are important, even if they're boring. Anyway, we are going to keep this boring part from this lesson. You have to take action. Now, from this lesson, I will set some actions for you. And you must have to do that, no excuse. Okay, so let's start, let's recap what we discussed in the previous lessons. I told you that you need to go through two stages. The first stage, you need to position yourself in the marketplace so you can attract high quality clients. And once you make your position, you need to maintain your position for a long time so that you always have a regular earning from upwork. Let's start with the first stage. That is how you can make your position in marketplace. This may take some time, but be steady and follow every steps I'm going to show you now. Okay? The first thing for making your position on upwork is to find an appropriate niche. Your first task will be, find a suitable niche for yourself or for your business. Now you may ask, what is a niche? Well, if you search Google, you will find that the definition of niche is like that. Niche in the market is a specific area of marketing which has its own particular requirements, customers and products. Niche marketing is the practice of dividing the market into specialized areas for which particular products are made. A niche market is one of these specialized areas. In short, it means a particular skill of the service provider or a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. In simple word, niche means a particular skill or area in which you are good at and you can make a business based on that skill or a segment of people to whom you want to sell your product or service. Makes sense? Okay, let me explain it in details. Let's consider niche as a segment of market, okay? For example, you produce me tax. So in that case, you will only target those people who do gym, right? You don't want to target all pupils, all men, women, everyone. You will not do it, right? So here you select only a segment of the market as your niche, okay? On the other hand, if you consider niche as your special skills, then people will hire you for your particular skills. For example, if you are say, good at writing, then your niche may be copyrighting or content writing or something that describes your writing skills. Now, if you are trying to sell people some graphic design involves also there is a maximum chance that your potential customers will get confused as a result. They probably keep your profile at very first site, Get my point. Your first task is to find the area of your specialty, your special skill set. Now you may ask, why don't we select the segment of the market? Yeah, that's a valid question. You cannot select the segment of the market because in up work, you cannot find clients by their demographics means, by their interest, age, or location. If you consider the first example, you are a gym track shoot producer, then there is no option on where you can track clients who love to go to gym. If you are using Facebook ads or Google ads, there are several options for that. But in up your hand is tight. You need to find your special skill set. But what if you are very new, you don't even know what your special skill sets are? Then you may not ready to choose an appropriate niche right now. But it's completely okay, I totally understand it. In that case, select a bigger area then a specific niche. Like you can say, I'm a graphic designer or I'm a web developer. If you are new or you don't have any specific skills, then only then select a vast area or wide area. It will help you get some clients initially and later you can select a niche based on your works. Okay, but if you know about your skill set very well, then definitely use it as your niche. For example, if you are saying that I'm a Tus developer rather than a Web developer, then you specify a skill which is Tus. Anyway. Remember, you can change your niche anytime you want, according to the market or according to the new skills you have developed recently. Here is a caution, people often very selective when they are finding their niche. They narrow down too much, that makes them almost invisible in the marketplace. This just backfires the whole idea of niche oriented business. I suggest you find a niche which is not very narrow. Let me explain. Suppose you are a presentation designer, now you choose your niche like presentation design for start up and corporates. This niche is good because it covers your particular skill set, which is presentation design, and also covers a big segment of the market, which is start up and corporates. But if you narrow your niche, like this presentation design for yoga start up, then you just kill the opportunity of getting jobs from a vast range of start up. And corporates makes sense. Well, now you may ask, okay, I understand what is a niche, but why should I need a niche or why should I start a niche oriented business? Well, let me explain why. Think of Google. You type a topic for searching, and Google will show you thousands of results just in a second. The question is, how many times you go to the second page to find whatever you are looking for? It is very rare, isn't it? The same thing happens on work also, whenever a client looking for a freelance. Suppose the client is searching for a content writer, or will show pages like Google, where each page shows only ten philancers at a time. Now think if a philancer only works on content writing, and a philancer who does content writing, graphic designing, developing, and many other things together. Who will come up first in the list, normally? Who does the content writing task on his job history, clients, feedback, everything related to content writing. That's why his name will come up top on the list. That's the point. More you position yourself at the top of the list. There are more chances that you will get noticed and you will get more invitations. Selecting a niche is going to stand out, your position from the crowd. Now you may think on work, every philancer has Ai. It's not a very big deal. You are totally wrong. In reality, most of the upwork philancers have not any niche at all. They fill up their profile with hundreds of specialties. By doing this, they're doing nothing but just ruining their upward career. Well, let me show you with some real example. See this profile here. The title says that the philancer is a YX designer, logo specialist, and Phd to HTML designer. Let's check the overview. It says, I'm a professional web designer with five plus years of experience in designing landing pages as well in platforms like unbounce sta pages, let pages cartra, or in any kind of CMS you want. I have a great hand in CMSs like Wordpress, rainmaker Space, Shopify, and Bootstrap, and have developed more than 150 projects for my clients with agency. I also have proficiency in PHPCss, estimate five, and Twitter, Bootstrap, the projects that I have made for my clients. And so now see the Felancers proficient in Wordplay, Square Space, Bootstrap, and so many things from his title. You also see he's good at logo design also. Does it make any sense to a high quality client? Tell me for which type of work the client will hire. The Felancers. That happens almost 90% 95% philancers do the same mistakes. These philancers with so many qualities are only $20 Right. Now, let me show you another profile. The title says, The Philancer is good in responsive web design, Phd to TML, Bootstrap, and Logo. Now, who logo is completely different thing is that going with the other skills the philaner mentioned here. Anyway, let's see the overview. It says, For the past few years I have been doing web designs. I've built many sites including web design, XSDML, five CSS, three Boots, step responsive web design, press Magneto, PHP, EIX layout design, logo design, business cards, letterheads. Brochure mobile, website, do almost everything. Brochure, letterhead, business card. There are a number of things he can do. Probably he can do everything. That's okay. But whenever you are putting everything in your profile, a good client will be definitely confused. Trust me, there are millions of people like these two examples, you can check it yourself. All these avarice fhilancers do the same wrong again and again and again. They try to cover every skills and it makes them less important to potential clients. On the other hand, having a solid niche is a great way to get quality invite. When a client searches for philancers, literally the client just overwhelmed with thousands of names and faces right away, it is very difficult to check out every profile in detail. Trust me, no clients want to do that. The client may take a maximum two to 3 seconds look on a single profile and then make a short list of candidates. What you get is just a two to 3 seconds window to capture clients attention. And you have to prove that you are good at what you are doing in that very short time. A niche oriented profile helps you to stand out from the crowd, isn't it? If you see the two profiles from the example, think if a client need a logo designer, the maximum chance is the client just skips the two profiles, even if the freelancers can design a good logo, maybe better than other expert logo designers, right? Well, the second benefit of a solid niche is it makes you special to the clients. Your profiles look like an authority to them and it will help you get tons of quality invites. Think of a high quality clients. I told earlier that quality clients are looking for values, not price. Now, who can give value to their business? Definitely an expert philancer. Not an average per philancer, right? Maybe an average philancer can give values, but why? A high quality clients waste their valuable time finding a needle in a hey stick. They don't have the time. That's why they're looking for a specialist. A niche oriented profile makes you a specialist and that's why you can increase your chances to get more jobs on upper right. Think about it from this perspective, suppose you have some mortgage tax issue to solve. There are hundreds of lawyers there. Now, if you know someone who works only on mortgage cases, then you will be happy to pay him double a triple. As not only solves your problem, but also saves you a lot of time. Your niche works like a degree or a nameplate on your profile. By getting this degree, you can able to charge 2x3x, or even ten x from a client. But the most important benefit of a niche oriented business is it will make you an outstanding performer in your areas. Rather than doing hundreds of different tasks, you are just doing one to two tasks again and again. Your focus is very pinpointed here. You can give maximum efforts in this one to two particular areas and you are cutting all destructions by left all other things but your special one to two areas. The result is obvious. You will be a master of what you are doing. What happens? It will gain your confidence. You can raise your hourly rate and get more earnings. Good clients will die for you. They literally request you to help you with their project. In that case, with money you will earn honor to. I'm showing you an example here. See this testimonial from one of my client. The testimonial said that, hi sag. I wanted to just check in to let you know that we have presented our report to the donor and it went very well. We will be moving forward to launching this new program. I cannot tell you how fantastic you are to work with from the bottom of my heart. Please accept our profound thanks for jumping in. On this and working very long hours to help us. We are grateful. You see, it is not just a regular testimonial clients give when a contract ends, it is a gratitude from my clients. And this is what I mean you by honor, this is what you can also earn if you are a master in your area. Well, now here is your task, and it is to find a suitable niche for your business. And you have to take four action steps to do that. The first action step for you is to take a paper and write down what are you specialties. If you cannot narrow it down to one or two, write as many as possible niches you are good at, don't worry, we will short it down. For example, if you are say, good at graphic design, write down which areas of graphic design you are very good at. Are you good at logo designing? Are you good at website design? Are you good at poster design? Whatever it is, make a full list. Okay. Then come the action. Step two. Now go back to your upwork profile and check your job history and answer the four questions. Question number one, from which jobs you get good feedback from clients, Okay? Question number two is, who jobs led more? Repeat works. Question number three, from who jobs you get good payment? And question number four, which jobs you personally enjoyed the most? Okay? Then comes the action. Step three, check out every job, what clients were asking, what you delivered, how good was the end result, et cetera. And then put all the answer in a table. As you see on the screen, it will help you get a solid picture of your expertise. Okay, and then go to the action. Step four. After fill the table with the data, I'll show you how to do it. Just hold with me. And once you have all data, just analyze the data. And finally choose two to three niches for your business. Maximum three Initially, remember, do not choose so many inches because it will again make your profile usual choose maximum three niches. Okay, now let's check how to fill the table. Well, here is your niche. Find a table and you have to fill it, right? Suppose you are a graphic designer, your first action step is to make a list of possible areas you love, right? You write all the areas in the table you love. And suppose they are say, logo design, package design, website design, landing page design, brochure design, poster design, business card design, et cetera. If you write it all down, then the table will look like this. Now the second step is go to your job history. Check every data like what was client's problem, what you delivered, everything. Suppose the first job was like that, the job title was like that. Need a logo designer for creating a new logo for my car washing company. And you completed the job. You find that you are very proud of the end result. And the client was also very happy. And the client gave you a five stating for the job. He also gave you a well written feedback. Later, the client gave you four more jobs, not all our logo designs but other jobs from the same client. The client also paid you dollar 20 extra as a bonus. If you fill out the table with the Te marks, the table will become like this. You see feedback? Good feedback. One we just put one telember Repeat work is four. We put four Telemark in the second column. Number of good payment from the projects. We put one Telemark in the third column, and number of work you enjoyed. Also put one Telemark on the last column. Okay? So do the same thing again and again for every job you already did on upwork, Okay? And repeat the process until your table is full. And when you're done, your table may look like this. Okay? When this is done, replace the tally with number. The table will look like this. Now if you analyze the table, you notice that logo design brochure design, poster design, and business card design. These are the four skills you can choose as your niche comes the action. Step four, select two or three niches you love the most. In your case, you may select two or three niches from the four points like logo design, brochure design, poster design, and business card. You will get the niche finder action sheet. With this video, just download the action sheet and use it and find your niche. Again, if you are very new and not sure what your special areas are, then whatever skills you love to practice more, use them as your initial niche. Okay? Later when you have some projects and some experiences, then you can find better niche for your business. Okay, here comes your homework. Make a list of all your skills. Check through your work job history and pull data as much as you can, download the niche, find a sheet, use it, then analyze the data, and finally, find two to three niche maximum. For your business, it may take two to three days to do your homework. But be patient because this is the core of your P business. Take your time, no rush until you shot it down. Please hold and do not go to the next lesson, because without practice and implementation, you will not get results at all. Your homework is very, very important. Please do it, that's it, in the next lesson. Thank you. 6. Find The Appropriate Keywords: Guys, welcome back. Did you do your homework? Did you find your two to three profitable niches? If yes, that's awesome, Just go ahead. If no, please stop here, do your homework first, and then play the video again. If you don't practice, you will not get results. Remember, well, let's start. Here comes another task for you that will help you get position in the marketplace. The task is to find some appropriate keywords related to your selected niches. Yes, if you haven't select your niches yet, it will be difficult for you to find some related keywords. But I believe you did your homework right Anyway. Now you may ask, why should I need keywords? Well, let me explain it. First of all, keywords will help you to make a position in this marketplace. Now what I mean by position, Well, think of Google. Just go to Google and type anything. Within seconds, you will get millions of results. Few results come on the very first page, and the rest comes next page, right? The results come on the first page. A, ranked top by Google algorithm. Okay? And normally what happens that people rarely go to the second or third or the next page of the Google search, right? Like Google Upwork has also its own search algorithm. When a client search for a filancer, Google Upwork also suggests a list of filancers. I already told you that suggestion page contains only ten filancers profile. Now a busy client doesn't have the time or energy to see through all pages. They check a maximum of five to ten pages. Or they can filter the search for, narrow down the list. But narrowing the list doesn't mean it shows the client only 20 filancers. Because there are millions of filencers on upwork and the number is growing day by day. Filtering the search will reduce the list, maybe reduce half of the pages. Now by making position, I mean you need to put yourself in the first five to ten pages. Means you should be within the first 50 or 100 felancs when any client searches for fellancs. Got my point for doing this. You need to select some keys, some keyers that are mostly used by clients. And the fact is, if you select some proper keywords, you can come up on the first page or up to first five to ten pages more. You come up on the top, you will get more visibility and your chance of getting invites will become more okay. Your target should be find some ears that are related to your service. And clients are searching filancers using those particular ears so that you can position yourself in the first five to ten pages. Get my point. Now you may feel little anxiety because this is sounds like doing some CO actually like Google, we don't really know how pork algorithm works. We don't have any particular set of rules for doing CO on por. What you need is just to use some common senses and I'm going to show you how you can use a little knowledge that will help you find some good keywords for your business. Okay, let me show you that. Well, when you open your upwork profile, you will find a search for job option here. Suppose you are a press expert. Now, if you type Wordpress, yes, you see there are some search suggestions given by upwork. Now the suggestions are very important. Makes the suggestion based on it's used by clients, mostly used. Keywords by clients are shown as the suggestions you need to consider this suggestion seriously. Now, if I type Wordpress here, you see there are so much suggestions. Now what do you need to do? You need to write it down one by one. Now, open a notepad here and write it down. What are the Wordpress website development? Then Wordpress developer, Wordpress web design, the Wordpress designers website, you see there are so many, I'm not going to write every keywords, but you should write, okay. And once a set of Q is written, then you need to search with another word, press designer. Once you use it, you see there are a new setup, suggestion, write it down. Also like words designer, then Wordpress designer, web design, then Wordpress designer, website development, Wordpress designer, website and so on. So you need to write all of the keys, okay. Then you should try different keywords for your expertise. Suppose you can try Wordpress Developer, and you see there are a new set of suggestions. Write it down. Wordpress developer, website development, press developer, website, and so on. Your task is to taste different keywords in this search box to get as much as possible se, suggestions from upward. Once you're done with them, then what do you need to do? You need to just select one keywords from your list, paste it here, and click on this search icon. You'll find that there are 15,278 jobs with this Wordpress keyword, okay? It means clients searching financers using the keyword Wordpress, and clients using this particular keyword Wordpress for 15,278 times. Write the number here, 15,278 and do the same for the rest of the keywords. Just copy it. Press it here, and click on this icon. And this is 10,590 Well, so right here, 10,590 Do the same thing again. It is nine to 51, and then this one 8582 9725, sorry. Then use this, 111684. Repeat the process for every keywords you put on your list. Get my point. Now, once you are done, then check how many keywords are mostly used for searching a press expert. You see this number 15,278 This number is mostly search keyword, but the search number for Wordpress developer is 9,251 and Wordpress web design is 8,582 Now this number shows that if you put these keywords in your title or in your profile, then the chance of getting noticed will hire. But there is a caution. If the number is greater, it means the competition is also greater. You need to find out some keywords that has good number of search results. Also it has less competition. For example, if I right here, suppose what? Press website for start up search here. You see there are only 201 jobs found. Now write it here. Well, now what will happen if you use this particular keyword? Press website for start up. You will probably rank at the very first page. Okay. But you see the number of search is very, very poor. It means clients usually don't use this keyword for searching freelancers. If you use this particular keyword, then even if you are at the top of the list, the chances are you will not get any invitation. My suggestion is find some keywords which has an average number of competition. Less competition will definitely help you position yourself at the top of work search list, but it will not going to help you get quality invites. Don't use this kind of keyword which is very low number of search result. Okay, okay, now let's find the number for the other Es here we already have the number for Wordpress designers, we delete it again. For Wordpress developer, we are also deleting this. Now copy it and paste it. Here it has 9972 jobs, 9972, then go there it has jobs found. This is a very bad keyword. You should not use this one because this has zero competition. Okay, Again, select this one and put it 9819 Job, again, select this one. 11,005 37. Finally this, 11085850. Now, once you have all the data you need to put it in ascending order. This is 15,278 Then the biggest number is 11,684 here. After that, then comes this number, put it here. Then this one, I guess. Yes, put it here. The 951997 to this should be nine to 51. Should be up to that should be up to that. We. Okay, so we have our keywords in order. Now, if you put the Wordpress for optimizing your profile, then the chance is you will not get position in the marketplace. Because this keyword has a high competition, you need to find some keyword which has low competition from this set of keys. I personally like to use this one because this has less competition but also has a good number of search result. This one is also a good on this one is also a good one, you can use this one is also with a good search results. You can use these four keywords as your primary, or you can use three from the list. Probably you can use the two primary. Your primary should be like this. Wordpress designer, Wordpress developer, or Wordpress web design. Okay, Now the two keyword Wordpress and Wordpress designer are very commonly used if you use this particular one, workplace web design. This is a keyword people don't usually use in their profile. But you see its search result is pretty much good and quite nearest to the two keywords, okay? So this keyword is a very good keyword for position yourself in the marketplace. So this is how you can set up your primary Ors. And once you have set up your primary Us, you need to make a list of secondary keywords which you can also use for positioning yourself in the marketplace. I'm going to show you how later in this course you can use the kind of keywords as your secondary. But remember one thing, I just applied this searching method for only 12345678, 910-11-1212 okay? But when you are doing research, do not do for only ten to 12 Es. Find as much as possible keywords for the research. I suggest you to try at least 60 to 70 and then find two to three as your primary and four to five as your secondary keyword. And remember, one thing that do not use some keyword which is very less competition is which has a very limited search result. For example, this one has a very limited search schedule. You see the search result is only 201. Don't use this kind of keyword, and also do not use some keys which has a very large search schedule like this one. Wordpress has 15,278 You should select some keys which are in between. Not very low. Not very high, okay? And try to find some keywords that are not usually used by freelancers like this Wordpress web design, this is a little bit different from common phrases like Wordpress designer or Wordpress developer. Okay, your task is to find some keywords for yourself. And I'm going to show you how you can use these keywords to optimize your profile so that you can get more invites on upwork. Okay, one more thing I want to mention. When someone is looking for a freelancers, or searching for a freelancers, suppose someone is searching for a pre developer. You see there is a list of ten peoples on each page who are workplace developer. Now the purpose of using good cures is to make your position in that list as top as possible. If you can put yourself in the first five to ten pages, then you are going to get noticed and will get more invites. Now has changed their policy since the beginning of 2023 and there are a few filancers with a batch called available now, for example this on this one. But if you look at this profile, you'll see there is no available badge for this particular Filancer. It doesn't mean the Filancer is not online. The Filancer may be online but upward. Just stop showing that the Fillancer is currently available online. Okay. To make yourself available online for 24 x seven, you need to use your connects to do that. And how you can do that, just go to your find work page. You see there is a option called Availability Badge. You can own the option currently it is off. So if you want to own it, just click here and you need to use seven connects per week to get this badge. It means you need to pay because con needs money, okay. So you can turn on your availability badge. In that case, the client who will, checking the list of financers will see that you are currently on line. But if you don't want to turn on that badge, that's completely okay. The client can still invite you for their job. Okay. That's it. Well, I hope you now understand how you can brinstrom some keywords for your business. Here comes your action step. First of all, follow the steps I have already shown you to Brinstroms for your business, find three to four primary Us from them and a couple of secondary us, maybe five to six Us. And download the Ker track sheet, write down your primary ears and secondary queres there and keep it handy for future use. Okay, one more thing. You should update your keywords time to time based on your new skills, based on your experiences. Also, upward changes the search suggestion for keywords, Time to time, you must update your keywords. Probably you can update your keywords once in a month or twice in a month. It's totally up to you guys. That's all. I hope you understand how to find appropriate keywords for your niche oriented business. See you in the next lesson. Thank you so much. 7. Key Elements For Profile Optimization: Hi, welcome back. We are now going to learn how to optimize your upwork profile so that you get noticed and can get quality invites. But before doing that, I want you to complete your task I mentioned in the last two lessons. So did you find your niche and your primary and secondary cars for your business? Yes, that's great. But if not, then you need to do your homework first. Because for optimizing your upper profile, you need your niche and niche related cues. Doing the homework is important. Okay, now let's start with profile optimization. But here is a caution. You cannot optimize your profile very, very quickly, like in a couple of hours or just in a single day. It will take a serious amount of time. Maybe you need to spend a couple of days or weeks to optimize your profile. Obviously, you will do mistakes in the beginning. What you need to do is to recheck your profile and update it time to time because by rechecking and updating your profile, whatever mistakes you made earlier will be resolved, okay? Profile optimization is not something you just did once and never look at it. It's not going to work that way. It's the fact that for the first time, you need to optimize your profile from scratch and it will take time. But once you are set, you need to keep updating your profile, maybe once in a month or once in three months, based on your new experiences, niches, skills, et cetera. Get my point. Now you may ask, okay, I understand I need to do profile optimization, but why should I optimize my profile? Well, let's think of a grocery store with a hell lot of products. Maybe there is everything you need in your daily life, but maximum products in that store are piled like garbage goods are here and they're like a total mace. Right? On the other hand, think about another departmental store with fewer products than the first one. But it is totally organized and everything is nicely decorated in racks and shelves. And also suppose both stores are nearby. Now tell me, in the first attempt in which store you will like to go to. Most of the people will choose the second one even though the first one is better for their needs. Have you seen the 2010 animated feature film Mega Mind? There was a sin where the villain Hell, who wanted to be like Mega Mind, captured Lady Scott when hell asked Mega Mine what's the difference? What Mega Mine said, he said presentation. Yes, This is what makes the difference. It's a bitter truth that whatever the quality you have is judged later by the clients. People judge you on the basis of how you look like. At first sight, presentation matters. Most of the upwork freelancers profile are like the first store. There are literally hundreds and thousands of quality freelancers with a very bad profile impression. Even they're very good at their work, they cannot even manage to get a single job. But you need to make yourself organized like the second departmental store, right? And you can do it by optimizing your profile. In short, profile optimization is nothing but making your profile presentable, right and right keywords are the tools you need to optimize your profile. That's why your first and second task was to find the niche and keywords respectively. Also, an optimized profile can rank easily and get noticed by the client. More, you get noticed by the clients, there are chances to get more invites. More invites. You can get more jobs, right? Profile optimization is vital for your Po business. Now let's take a tool inside the Apo profile and check what do you need to be optimized, okay? When clients are looking for freelancers searching for finances, what they see is a snippet of freelancers profile. This is a snippet. This is another one. This is another one in the list. There are multiple pages you see and each page contain ten filancers. Okay? Once a client click on any Filances profile like this, what they will see? They will see the profile. Okay. What you need to do, you need to optimize your profile in a way that the client get impressed and want to conduct with you. Okay? Now I'm going to show you what you need to optimize in your profile. To do that, let's open my personal profile. So I'm going to click on my profile and then click on Public View. It means how the profile looks like to the client. Okay, just click here and here comes the profile. And you see the profile has three section. This is the top section, this is the left panel and this is the main panel, okay? And in the top panel, there are few things. Few elements. I'll say. First one is profile image, then job success score, a verification badge, and a badge given by upwork. Okay, then in the left panel, specialized profile, this one presentation design, this is one of my specialized profile and this is the general profile. Then earning details, then hours per, it means how I want to work means am I open to work now, am I open to work for hourly basis? Am I open to work for fixed it, et cetera. And then comes the language option, then verification, which is also here. You can see by the little blue tick, and then the education, and then the talent clouds badge. In the main panel, there comes the most important things. First of all, the profile title, then the hourly rate, then profile overview, this is very important. Then a consultation option, then work history. Then comes the portfolio section, then skills section, and then project catalog, and finally, there are certificates, employment histories, other experiences. And that's all, this is all about your profile. And you need to make your profile presentable to the client so that when a client see your profile, they like to contact you, they like to send you invite. Okay. So what we get is there are 21 elements in total for optimizing your up profile. But don't worry, you don't need to work on all 21 elements. We will focus on things that matters the most. Okay, Now based on the priority, we can divide all 21 elements in four categories. The first one is the most important category, it contains six elements. And why these six elements are important? Because these are the elements clients notice the most. And these are the elements you can control by yourself. Let me show you. When a client searching for a philancer, what clients see is a snippet of the philancers profile. You see the snippet contains the following, First of all, this one, this is the portfolio. Then profile picture, profile title, then our date and earnings data, then job success score and badge. If any, two to three lines of profile overview and there is a consultation option. This is optional and there are skills. Okay, well we get ten elements here. Among the ten elements, you cannot control or edit this one. Earnings data, job success score, and this badge. Okay. Your hand is tied here and consult. This one is an optional element. Every financer doesn't provide consultation. You need to be very good at what you are doing before providing consultation service. Yes, this is an option initially, you don't need to worry about it. I will tell you how to use this element later in this course. Left only six elements, right? And the portfolio profile, image, title, profile overview and skills. Okay, let's check it once more time. We have six elements. Profile title, profile image, profile overview, portfolio, hourly rate, and skills. These are the most important six elements because the clients see them first. Okay, that's why these six elements must be optimized. First. At my point, just one thing to mention here. All freelancers profile such as a virtual assistant or financial planner, may not show portfolio item in the snippet human clients searching for a freelancer like you see on the screen. This particular freelancers have no portfolio item because the philancers is a VA. If you were a philancers like a VA or financial planner, then maybe there is no portfolio item in the snippet. Okay, let's go to the next category. In the second category, there are three elements. Specialized, profile, project catalog and consultation. And all of them are optional. You can optimize them or you can ignore them. It's up to you anyway. I will show you how to optimize these three elements later in this course. Okay. Now comes the third category here, again, six elements in total, employment history, other experiences, education, language hours per week, and certificates. You just need a very little effort to optimize all of them. Maybe 1 hour for them is good enough. I will show you how to do that later in the course. And finally, in the last category, which contains six elements, again, profile verification, job success score badge, work history, earnings data, and talent clouds. These are the elements you cannot control or edit with your work and experience. You can earn them, but you cannot manipulate them. Don't worry about the six elements. Optimize only those elements, what you can optimize. And when you get some jobs, make your clients happy, then you will automatically get good earnings badge, job success score, or work history, et cetera. So just ignore them for now and do worse in your control. Okay, so, well, from the next lesson, we will learn how to optimize the most important six elements for your profile, which are profile title, profile image, profile overview, portfolio, hourly rate and skills. Okay, so that's it for now. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 8. Craft A Killer Profile Title: Hi, welcome back. Let's start optimizing your profile together. As I in the last lesson, we are now going to nail the first priority of profile optimization. I also told that there are six elements in the first priority, which are profile title, profile image, profile overview, portfolio, hourly rate, and skills. In this lesson, we will start with profile title. Remember, your profile title represents your first impression in just a single line, and you only get 70 characters to make it impressive. Now by saying impressive, I do not mean something clever or fancy. People often use general or fancy title. Both are bad for your business. What should your title looks like? High quality clients like something that is direct to the point they don't have too much time. Be straightforward. Your title should tell the clients exactly what you do the best. For example, saying a graphic designer specialized in magazine design is more powerful title than saying only a graphic designer. Okay, because when you are saying I'm a graphic designer, it's a general statement. The client doesn't get any clear idea of what you are good at. But when you mention magazine design, now it gives the client a clear picture at my point. Now let's check four effective strategies you can use to create a noticeable title for your profile. The first strategy is you can put your specialization in the title. Like I said earlier, graphic designer specialized in print design is a more powerful title than simply graphic designer. It tells clearly about what you are good at. Similarly, modern social media graphics design is better than simply social media graphic design because it tells your style of work. Similarly, a Wordpress developer is better than simply a web developer because again, it shows your expertise in Wordpress. Again, click funnel designer is better than a funnel designer because you specify that you are good at click funnel, right? That's it. A simple but effective strategy. Just find out what you are very good at and mention it in your profile title. Okay, now comes the second strategy. You can add something in the title that benefits the client. For example, if you are a funnel designer, then think what benefits you can give as a filancer to the client. Does your design funnels give the client more conversion rate? If yes, then it's a benefit. If you write Design Funnel that converts, it will be a far better profile title than a simple funnel designer. It tells clearly to the client that your funnels can make a good conversion rate, so it can be a good choice for the client, isn't it? Think a little, what benefits can you provide to the client? Write one benefit in your title and the main benefit. Okay, here are some more examples, like sales copy that actually sells investor decks that help you to build your business. Or investor decks that help you get more funds. Or something like e mail marketing service that builds an e mail list faster. Think whatever benefits you can give to your client and write it in your profile title. Okay, now comes to the third strategy. You can specify your niche in your title. You can specify a particular type of client or a particular type of business. For example, if you are a website designer and suppose you only want to work with start ups, then you can write like this web design service for start up, rather than simply write web design service by telling this you are attracting clients who are setting up a new business. Okay, If your service is good for a particular niche, then this strategy works fine. But remember, if you don't have a particular niche, your business is not very niche oriented, then do not try this strategy, okay? One of my friends only works for women entrepreneurs. Her title is like that, virtual assistant for women entrepreneurs. She knows her niche very well, and that's why she mentioned her niche in her profile title. Okay, here is another example. Facebook at Surface, for health niche. Okay, so the strategy, and again, if you are not sure about your niche, you don't know what industry or what type of client you want to serve, then don't apply this strategy. But if you are certain about your niche, you can use this method. Now comes to the last strategy that can make your title outstanding. And this is to prove in your title that you are an authority. Okay? It doesn't mean you just write, I'm the best product designer, nobody cares. Do you have any proof of that? Mention it. If you have any certificates from renowned companies, like if you are a award winner product designer or something like that, then mention it. When you have an award or special achievement from a renowned organization, this means you are really good at your job. Get my point. But here is a caution. Do not use some local or any unfamiliar words to prove R authority. For example, Google Certified Ads Manager proves your authority, okay? But if you write certified Ads Manager from J college or school, who cares? Similarly, Adobe Certified Illustration Artist or ACb Developer are good examples to prove your authority. That's it. This is how you can write a killer title for ear profile. Now here some point I want to mention whatever strategy you're using to write your title. Make sure you use your primary keywords in your title. You already have selected three to four primary keys, right? If not, do it right now, because this is you need right now for your profile title. And once you get your keywords, then put those keywords in your title. I see people often forget to put their keywords in the profile title. If you do it, you will just be lost in the crowd. Because I said earlier that upwork has its own search engine, and search engines search based on keywords, right? You need to keep two things in mind. The first and most important thing is put the right keywords in your title. And the second is to follow the strategies I told you earlier. Now while you are putting the keyword, try to put it at the very beginning of the title. Let me ask why. Because if your keyword is in the beginning, your probability of getting found in the search result is more than if your QR is in the last or in the middle. So try to use your Q word as the first word. If not possible, try to make the Q word as your title. Second or third word. Okay, here is another advice for you. Millions of filancers use phrases like expert, professional, top notch guru, et cetera. Try to avoid such words in the first place. Not saying that you can't use those phrases, but as the phrases are already used thousands of times, Phrases like expert, professional guru, et cetera, are high volume keyword to upward search algorithm. A keyword with a high volume has always a high competition. By putting the common words, you are just decreasing your chance of getting noticed. Again, do not use any fancy, funny, or dramatic title, because titles like these may go over your client side and they can reject you at first site. Okay, we just finished profile title optimization from our first priority list. We will work on another element in the next lesson. Here comes your home work. Please create a noticeable title for your profile Applying the strategies I already told you. It may take some time, maybe one day, maybe a couple of hours, but you need to do it. Okay, that's all. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 9. Why Professional Profile Picture Matters v1: Hi, welcome back. Let's continue with our first priority list for profile optimization. In the last lesson, we learned how to optimize your profile title, right? Well, let's talk about another element that is highly important. And the truth is most filancers do not even know that fact. You may ask what it is. This is your profile picture. Yes, you heard me right. You may think why the client cares about my face. They want my service, not me. Right? Sorry. But you are totally wrong. Online financing isn't like the real world business. In the real world, the client can meet you personally, they can talk to you and watching closely how you work. And after these meetings and spending some time together, clients finally trust you and give you the project, right? But in an online world, there is no way for a client to check. You are really trustworthy or not. They have no control at all. And, you know, this makes people terrified. I'm not a science guy. The explanation may have missed many scientific points. But the overall fact is our right brain does the work of choice, then our left brain find some logic to make that choice, selection or rejection. Now, if any client's right brain doesn't think your face is trustworthy at first sight, you are already out. Your first impression is very important because the client's perception of your trustworthiness rarely altered once their first impression has been registered. Profile picture is the thing that can do the registration work in the client's mind. You have to make yourself presentable to the client and you get only a fraction of seconds to do it. Now, presentable doesn't mean you click some fancy selfies and upload it as your profile picture. No, it will not work. The clients are here for professionals, right? In their subconscious mind, they're looking for faces who seem trustworthy and professional. Once they found it, the left brain then analyses other metrics and makes a final decision. My point, that's why your profile image matters. Let me share with you some techniques that help you make a great upward profile picture. It may take some time and effort, but the fact is the little circular image can add some extra circular zeros to your upward earnings. Okay, here is my first tip. If you search in Google image with the word professional people, you find thousands of images within seconds. Have you noticed? Most of the images have one thing in common. Yes, you're right. Most of the professional picture shows people are smiling. This is the key to a good professional photo. People like people who smiles, try to smile broadly while clicking for your professional picture. Okay, if you're facing a problem with smile, then say, well, let's go to the second tip dress up like a professional. Try to avoid shorts and other designer dresses. I don't mean to avoid a coat or a tie. A white shirt or a black paint will do great. Maybe you can use one color shirt, shirt or other dress that looks sober. Actually, a very colorful dress can shift client's attention from your face to your dress. That's why use simple color or single color dress. Okay, secondly, you may use eyeglass. Also, research shows that people who wears eyeglasses seems more intelligent to other people. If you have one, wear it. If not, if you don't have one, you can buy it or borrow it from your friend or family member. But remember, if you think the eyeglass is totally against your personality, don't fake it, okay? Don't try it. You can hire some professional photographer and take your profile picture in a photo studio. If that is possible, then it's great in the studio. They have multiple lights, quality cameras, and finally they're professional. This is always a great option. But what if when you are on your own and you don't have the budget for a studio shoot, you must use natural light as much as possible. In that cases, daylight is the best option for. Taking a photo. If you have a good camera, use it if you don't. No problem at all. Because nowadays, a smartphone can take a great photo, like a DSLR. Right here is another tip. Try to keep your background simple. A quite busy background can force the client eyes to see the background, not you choose the background very carefully. An open area, a playground near the C, a lonely park, et cetera, will work. Great. One more point. Do you know what is the rule of thirds? If you can apply the law on your photo, it will be great. Actually, I'm not a professional photographer. But the thing is like that, in the rule of thirds, photos are divided into thirds with two imaginary lines vertically and two imaginary lines horizontally, making three columns and three rows and nine section. In the total images, important compositional elements are placed on or near the intersecting points of the imaginary lines. If you can imply this rule, it will be an extra boost for your profile picture. Okay, now comes another tip. Make your picture fully color. Do not use any fancy effects on it, and obviously don't lie in just one picture. Try to click as many as possible, maybe 2030 or even 50, and then find one picture from them. Keep in mind that your picture should show, at least from your head to your chest, not the Er. Chest, at least one fourth of your chest. Okay? You now get a clear idea of how should be your profile picture right now. It's time to take action, See your current upper profile and check if your profile picture meets all the criteria of a good profile picture or not. If yes, then just skip to the next lesson. If not, then make sure you're going out with your friend or family member for a real effective image. Because a friend can help you take a better photo than using some tripod and camera on your own. Okay, Now here is something you should not do when click for a profile picture. First of all, do not use self. This is too unprofessional for a professional platform. Like secondly, don't use fake images. Believe me, I see people use celebrity photos in their profile picture. I remember one of the Po Pilancers use a movie stars image from Bollywood. Probably it was Shihert Malhotra picture. Now fake image may look professional, but the truth is it is totally against upper policy. Anyone can flag your profile as inappropriate or any executive can notice that. In that case, your profile can be banned forever. Don't even try this. Finally, don't use any passport size photo here. Your photo over a blue or red background may help you get a regular job, but this type of photo makes you too formal to reject at first sight. Okay, well, with this, we just finish profile email optimization. From our first priority list, we will work on another element in the next lesson. Here comes your Homer. Take your smartphone or camera, Click multiple photos, not selfies. And pick one professional photos with the smile and confidence on your face. And upload it as upper profile pictures. Okay, that's all. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 10. 3 Effective Strategies For Designing Concrete Overview: Hi, welcome back. Let's continue with our first priority list for profile optimization. Now we already know what to do to make your first impression a real shot. How within a fraction of second you can establish yourself inside the client set. How your title and profile image can be used as a perfect persuasive tool. Right? When clients are emplaced at their first glace, what can they do but check on your profile? Now, here is the exact time to convert the client to a customer. You did hard work to lead the clients to your profile. Now it's time to show them you were worthy and useful to them. How can you do that? Better say what is the element that makes it happens? This is your profile overview. Also, your profile overview is the first sales page, or you can say sales letter from your end to engage your client emotionally. Yes, you heard me right. Your goal is to connect with your client or prospect emotionally. Now, why emotionally? We have you seen the James Cameron movie. Titanic, saw dozens of documentary on Titanic. How many of them you really remembered? Except for the historian and history lovers, most of the people forget almost everything about the incident. On the other hand, the 1997 Titanic is not only on millions of people's hurt, but maybe five years skid. Also know about Titanic in the courtesy of James Cameron's movie right now, Why on Earth? I'm telling the Titanic story. My point is emotion is something that more powerful than facts while you're trying to sell. Again, emotion is something that is more powerful than facts while you are trying to sell. Okay, And most of the upper philosophs fail to understand this psychology and fill their overview with a lot of facts which are literally boring and sometimes disgusting. I already told you in the earlier lesson that the clients are here to hire based on logic, right? But the first thing happens in their right brain and then comes to the logical part or to the left brain. Now, putting only fats doesn't pull the trigger to the client's right bread. This is not how the selling things happens. Suppose you are in a food park and they're telling you about the burger like this way sir, there is 500 kilo in every hundred gram. Protein, 64% fat, 24% and blah, blah, blah, blah. Will you really buy this burger? But if they tell you how the burger made with fresh chicken direct from the poultry, with the green vegetables direct from farmer's land and how it cooked inside a clean home like kitchen. Then it will attach you emotionally and maybe then you can verify it with the facts they're telling you. And finally bite. Actually, in most cases, if people get emotionally attached, they just keep the process of verifying facts. Okay, The same psychology happens here in upwork also. This is the truth behind every kind of cell, whatever it is from a pain to your service. Your overview means a lot. You need to write it based on emotion and then on logic. But most of the Piloca do it totally opposite. They start with logic and facts and end with emotion. In fact, most of them even miss the part of the emotion. Well now let me show you some real examples of how maximum freelancers start their overview. Let's see what's in this overview. It says, four plus years of experience in application development and maintenance, financial services, retail and logistic domain Angular five, Java J2ee Grove Grills. Then point number one defines sites objectives by analyzing user requirements, envisioning system features and functionality. Number two, designs and develops user interfaces to Internet intranet applications by setting expectations and features priorities throughout development life cycle. Determining design methodologies and tool sets, completing programming using languages and software products. Designing and conducting tests. Okay, I'm getting tired. See how the Filaser here starts with his experience and then a list of what he is capable of. That's it. A total misuse of this section is that really ringing a bell on the client's said that you are a four or ten plus years of experience. The only thing that matters to the client if you are experienced enough to help with their project or not. But I didn't see anything that tells how his experience is going to help the client. The entire overview is just full of facts. Facts don't connect, Emotion does here. I don't see any emotion in this overview, do you? Well, let's check another example. The overview says, I am highly skilled and I am an increasingly motivated young creative professional. I have been an aardining professional photographer for over eight years. My skills and strengths are in photography and digital photo manipulation, documentary and filmmaking, as well as graphic design. I am highly proficient in many creative software suites, including Arabic Creative Cloud Suite with major strengths in adapt Photoshop at Premiere and Arab Illustrator. Creative work is my passion and my fill it is what wakes me up in the mornings and it is what keeps me havoc at night. I communicate with the world around me through my camera and through my graphic card, Being able to conceptualize an idea to dream and find the path to make that dream a reality is why I live. I love working with people and I love finding individuals and organizations who need their story to be told. Some storytellers use a pen and paper. Some use spoken word or music. I use my camera and my passion for digital media to tell the stories that I care about. Do you have a passion for what you do day in and day out? Do you have a story to tell? Let's tell you a story together. Okay, so here the philancer tells everything about his passion. What his motivation, what he does, what he don't, blah, blah, blah. Is the client really care about what passions drive you to wake up in the morning makes sense? No point describes how his passion can help clients a lot. So this is a wrong approach of emotion application. Sorry, this overview is full of emotion, but this is a wrong approach. It is not going to work at all. Let's check another one. Well, this overview says, I have a BA in Visual Arts Photography and Graphic Design degree and then study digital photography. When it came out, I'm a professional photographer and graphic design along with web design and programming. I love taking and editing photographs and graphics has always been my life. I'm available at all time, day or night. Oh my god. Total stage of this bigger area, bigger place. Upwork allows 5,000 characters to write the overview, but the only barely covers 300 words. Right? What a misuse. Tell me how his so many degrees are going to help the client's problem. Have you seen any clear direction about that? At least I didn't see any. There are thousands of profile overviews like the three examples I just showed you. No clear direction to the client's problem or no intention to attach client emotionally. Most are full of facts. Some philancers tries to attach emotionally, but with a wrong approach, And the result is obvious. Clients start reading the overview and up to two to three lines, they just get bored and skip to the next profile. You've already pushed clients strategically, That's why they are inside your profile, right? It's your duty to make them engage with your overview content. Now, you may nod your head. No, no, no, no. I'm not a content writer. I don't know how to write. Please don't panic. I will show you some step by step formula that can make your profile so special that clients can stop reading your overview. Okay, you just need to understand these principles very carefully and apply them to your overview. It's not happening overnight, it will take time, but once you nail it, you are going to get invites. Now, you may not know the fact that upwork has two parallel economies. Once everyone can see and the other one is just hidden or invisible. Let me explain it a little deeper. What upwork does? They connect financers with clients. Right now, anyone can open a client account on upwork and post a job. All the job posted in upwork has two categories. One is public post which anyone can see. Like this, one you see on the screen or another is invite only post. These posts are only for some selected freelancers who are invited for this particular job. Okay, now Park has a different price plan for different types of clients. For normal clients, they only charge 3% of the total project cost from the client. Plus category clients, they charge $50 per month plus 3% of the project cost. For business category clients, it is $500 per month plus 3% of the project cost. And for enterprise clients, It, whereas they need to talk to Por. So those clients who are using free plans and who are paying $50 or $500 or more per month are definitely got different services or different treatment from Por. Right. Who pays a lot of fees every month must seek Felancershore Worthy. They don't pay per for working with average or below average felancers. Right. So most of their job posts are not even shown in public. It is invisible. Just think, how many job posts do you see in your job fit daily from an pork enterprise client? Probably it is rare. Maybe you see one post in a week or even in a month. Let's see an invite only job I got from an pork enterprise client in 2019. And you can see the client is up from August 2015. In those four years they spend 10 million plus USD. Can you imagine that $10,000,000 in four years. That is 250 K in every year, they are spent for financers. However, a normal client spend averagely 10,000 or 20,000 or maximum $50,000 in single year. But most of the job posts from these clients rarely seen in public feed. They are mostly invite only job. Do you now understand why I told you that upwork has an invisible parallel economy? If you can design your profile strategically, you can get many invites from this invisible economy. Get my point. Here is a screenshot of my invitations in a single month. You see, I got 22 invites this month. In some months, I even got 35 plus invites. Applying for a posted job or getting invites from clients are different thing. Clients invite you only if they're interested in you, so you can save a big chunk of time energy to prove that you are worthy. More invites mean more chances of getting jobs. You don't even have to negotiate with your rate if you get invitations because clients already like your profile and they're happy to pay you with your rate. So your profile must be able. I already show you how you can grab the attentions, I mean clients first impression with your title and profile picture. Now I will show you how you can make your profile liable with your profile overview and can open a door to get many invites. Okay, so you know, I understand that we need to focus on clients emotion first, and there are several ways to do so. I personally find three strategies that work best for me. When you write your overview, you should try these three strategies, all of them or at least one or two of them, to make your profile engaging. And what are the three strategies? Well, the first strategy is shift the focus from I to U. The second one is readability of your profile. And the third or last one is a call to action or a CTA. Well, let me explain them one by one. First, start with the first strategy, which is shifting focus from I to U. Let me ask you a question first. Do you know people love who the most? It's on self? I don't know about a depressed people, but every normal people become very happy if others talk about them. Most of the philancers start their overview where the philancers is the main character. You see almost all overview starts with I am ten plus years of experience. I love to do x, y, z. I can do faster work and blah blah, blah. All things are centric. This is a total wrong approach to attach with client emotionally. You need to replace with. Now, it doesn't mean you just literally replace with you, it means you need to rearrange your words differently. How can we do that? Well, for example, we suppose that You teach people a 15 days training program that reduces weight. You can tell about your program to people like that. Hi, I'm a diet specialist and I have created a 15 days program that reduces weight. In this program, I designed 15 days with different forces that are low curves, low fat, and can burn a lot of calories. It takes me 15 years to make this wonderful diet plan with this formula. Five to ten pounds fat can burn in 15 days. After this, you put a list of forces with their food value. You notice this is a fat end diet, which actually helps people a lot. But all the talks start with I, you are the hero here, not your customer. So the possibility of getting emotionally connected to your customers tends to zero here. The same thing can be told in another way, a centric way like this. Are you tensed with your overweight? It hurts when you see your best friend wearing a skin tied T shirt and you are searching for double Xl size in your wardrobe. Well, here is a solution for no, you don't need either to go to the gym or to abandon all the food you love. And you don't even work hard for a long one year. Only 15 days can lose your extra ten pounds. Yes, you heard me right, I spent 15 years to make this diet. But you need to spend only 15 days with these foods, most of which you eat almost every day. Then you put the entire list of food with their food values. Have you seen the difference? Everything you put in the first statement is also here. In the second statement, the only difference is shifting of y with U. It makes your customer the hero of the story. In the second approach, right? Not yourself. This is what I mean by eucentric approach. You need to keep in your mind that your clients should be the hero of the story. So you need to rearrange your overview with you so your clients can stop reading the overview. Okay, the more they read, the more they engaged. The more they engaged, the more they attest emotionally. The more they attest emotionally, the more likely they will hire you. Here are some protips that help you shift the focus from eye to tip number one, Start with something that pushes clients to say yes mentally, okay? And tip number two, try to be a human, not a robot. Tip number three, right? Benefits client get from your service. Let me explain them one by one. First, start with something that pushes clients to say yes, not loudly, but mentally. In the previous example, I started with the sentence, are you taste with your overweight? Now, notice if the customer has a weight issue, he must mentally nod, Yes, I have a problem with overhead in their mind, right? When he reads the sentence, each time the customer or each time the customer says yes in his mind, automatically, he goes for the next slide, Yes factor. You can put in your overview, More likely the client is going to hire you. Get my point. Now comes to the tip number two, which is, try to be human, not a robot. Let me tell you a story. I have bought a financial scheme for my kids education when she was one year old. The scheme is a monthly plan. I have to pay a fixed amount on 12th Op every month. Now I get a phone call, fifth or sixth top, every month from that company. This is a reminder call to pay the premium. But the fact is, each time they call, they told me the same thing as a recorded machine. It's hilarious. You know, they don't even breathe while talking. Maybe they fear. I can interrupt in the middle. Have you experienced the same from any customer care executive or from any services? If no, you are too lucky. Anyway, I told you this story because I want you to say that we don't like to hear from people who talk like a machine. A client needs to read tons of overview daily. Now, if each one of them sounds like the same, how it feels, it feels pathetic. Most of the filers talk formally in their overview. They think they're going for a job interview. Their overview reflects a candidate for a job. This is not what a good client always wants. They want something different. If you want to make a difference, you need to talk like a friend. Your overview. Shoot like a personal mess to the client. You can do it easily. Stop thinking yourself as a job candidate, start thinking yourself as a consultant While you write your overview. Imagine you are talking with your client face to face, and you are helping the client to solve their problem. What words can inspire your client? What words can give the client confidence, hope, excitement, or relief? Try to imagine those words and put them in your overview. This little imagination makes your overview more friendly and makes you stand out from the crowd. Okay, now comes to the tip number three. The third tip is to mention things that benefits the client. Try to think about what kind of benefits client get from your service. Now it is difficult to pin down particular benefits for all clients because each client has some different needs. Even the same client has different needs for different projects, right? Without analyzing the project details, it is difficult to say what kind of benefits you can give to the client. But here comes the magic of niche oriented business. You already have some selected niche, right? That means you have some targeted clients who need the same type of services, right? Maybe it varies, project to project, but most of them have some common problems. When you are thinking about the benefits, think it on the ground of the common needs of your targeted clients. It may not cover every point and you should not write down everything, because too many benefits can sound like a marketing gimmick or like a robot. The best practice is to find out maximum three benefits and put it into your overview. Okay, let's see how you can write benefits for the clients. It is a little tricky. Rather than writing, I can do X, Y, T for you. It is best practice if you can write the whole thing centric as I told earlier. For example, suppose you are a Youtube U expert, then you can write a benefit for your clients like this. You may wonder why your high value content video don't get views, whereas there are several low value content videos on the same topic get millions of views. The fact is, this is not about the content at all, It is all about reaching people. If you fail to reach maximum number of the audience, your content, how good it is, will be lost in the crowd. An SEO optimized video can boost your views and you can gain thousands of views daily without even experience a single penny in ads. This is what I can do for you. I can research the right keywords for your videos and optimize them based on those keywords. Have you noticed how I write the benefit? The entire thing is centering here. The client is the hero again. Now, a benefit must have three particular sections. The first one is the problem, the second one is the solution. And the third one is your action to solve the problem. In this example, the problem is not getting views. The solution is reaching out to maximum people and your action is video. If you can put something in the benefit that earns a mental yes from the client, the client must continue to read. That's why I suggest you put the problem at the top. Because in most of the cases, when you talk with others about the problem, they feel related with you. They feel that you are understanding them. That makes an emotional bond with you. Don't come with what you can do at first. Come up with their problem first and then the solution and finally what you can do for them, okay? Now if your benefit hits inside the client's right brain and make them feel emotionally attached to you, the lab Ban tries to find some proof. Telling a list of awards and achievements is good as proof, but not the best way. If you're telling someone that you are the richest man in your city, probably he will not believe you. But if other people tell him the same thing, he believes you. Apply this logic here while you want to eve clients some proof, you can use some special achievement, like an award from a renowned institution for your outstanding job. The fact is not everyone can achieve ours, right? If you're like me, with no special achievement, then you can use other clients testimonials In your overview, it works far better from a list of degrees. So if you don't have any testimonial yet, then try to find out your social network. Find out what your friends and colleagues are talking about you does anything. Among them are useful. One of my colleagues once wrote a few lines in my Linked in profile as a recommendation. The lines are like this. As I know Shaver, he is very hardworking and loyal with his work. He believes in none but himself for sure. Simple living with high thinking really sorts on him. Apart from working with him, I really find him as a nice person. My good wishes are always with him. I personally use this testimonial many times at the beginning of my freelancing career. Later, when I got a lot of testimonials from various clients, I replaced that with the new one. Find out something like this kind of testimonial in your network, still no result. You can request any of your friends or colleagues to write two lines for you. Okay, and one last warning. Don't flood your overview with testimonials. It will bounce back for sure. A single descriptive testimonial is good enough for an entire overview. You can always use more than one testimonials, but try to bind it within three only. Okay, well you probably get an idea how you can apply the first strategy to write your overview. Now let's talk about the second strategy, which is make the overview readable. Clients need to read a lot of overview daily. We know that, right? It is obvious that they feel tired. You can mentally attach with them with your overview. If you shift your focus from I to the attachment can be more refreshing. If your overview is easy to read and very easy to understand. If you already a passionate writer, then you know many ways of persuasive writing. You may think, oh, now I have to write literature. No, you don't need to be Dan Brown. What if you are as simple as me who doesn't know English very well, or English is not his first language. Well, if I can do, you can do it also. You don't need to be a genius writer. You need to follow some simple but effective steps. Okay? The first one is to keep your sentence short. Short sentences are easy to read. You can easily break a compound sentence into two to three sentences. Sometimes you may have to write compound sentences, but still try to keep it within two lines. Here is an example of how you can break a long sentences into short sentences. The long sentence is, if you want to make your website a selling machine, you must have to make your landing page effective. The breakdown sentences are, do you want to make your website a selling machine? Then you have to make your landing page effective. You see how the same thing becomes easier to read. Apply this technique when you're writing your overview. Okay, now comes the tip number two. This is design your overview visually. Nice Now, pork overview is not a place where you can design your entire text professionally. You can see how resume writing converts to resume design today, but pork still follows the older way. Here they give you space of writing resume or overview, not to design it. This is, no doubt, a drawback, but still, there are some ways to make it look like a design. You can do it by breaking all the text in small paragraphs. Also, you can use bullet points or number list like in the image. You see how a bulleted list makes the surfaces more easy to read. You can do the same whatever the benefits you are giving right, using bullet points, or you can use it for your services or your technical expertise and so on. You can also use lots of dashes to separate one section from another. Maybe you can separate testimonial from other text. Okay, that's it. You just need to be a little creative. Okay, another professional tip for you. Install the app grammarly on your PC. You don't need to buy the subscription. The free version works very well. Just use it. It will help you correct your grammar spelling and sentences. What do we expect more for writing, right? Also you can use I like Cha Jeopardy for correct your grammar and spelling. And the base part is Cha Jeopardy can also help you rewrite your overview more professionally in a friendly manner, okay? So use them if you have the chance, okay? Well, here comes the third and most important tip, that is, using the keywords you've already selected in your overview. Yes, your overview. How persuasive it is, will not found in the search engine. If it has missed the keywords, use the keywords you already selected in your overview. Here are some protips about using keywords in the overview. As you see on the first two to three lines of your overview are shown in the search result or snip. The first two to three lines are very important to the search engine. You put your keywords in the first very two to three lines, okay? Now Philancsts sometimes take this matter linearly. They just put all the keywords at the top like you see on the screen. It may help you come first in the search engine. But mostly this will fail to grab the attention of the clients because this type of thing makes your overview formal or robotic. So you need to put the keyword with a different approach. Here is an example of the approach. Do you need a visually compelling pitch deck with an effective story for your business? A visually appealing story engages people emotionally and drives them to take action. Thus, an effective presentation is very important to your business. You see how the keyword pitch deck is inserted in the very first line. This is the right way. Whatever you are telling, make sure that the keywords is the part of your story. It should not be different from your entire overview. Once you put the keywords in the first two to three lines of your overview, then use them in other sections too. But as I said, don't make it sound like a machine. When you're making a list of your services, you may put the keywords there or try to put those testimonials which contain your selected keywords. Maybe you can add keywords in the benefit section 21 Warning. Don't use the keywords too much time, it will outrank your position. Now, there is no specific rule for the keyword ratio in up, but if we go with standard SEO policy, one to 1.5% keyword is count as a healthy practice means if you're using 1,000 words in your overview, try to use keyword maximum 15 times in the entire overview. Okay, finally, the last and very impactful strategy for your overview is to end it with a call to action, or a CTA. Now, what is a call to action? This is a way to tell your client exactly what to do next. Clients may like your title profile overview, but what next? Be friendly with them. Tell them exactly how they can contact you. Like you see in many Tu videos, people shows how to click on the red button to subscribe to their channel. Right? The same thing you can apply here on Up. Tell them how they can contact you, it's easy to do. When a client sees a Philances profile app, shows them two buttons on the profile. One is called Invite To Job, and another is called Higher Pilanceers Button. You have two great options to tell the client exactly what to do. You can tell them to invite you by clicking Invite to Job button. Or you can tell them, hire you by clicking on the Higher Pilanceer button. Or you can simply tell them to send you a message on upper for contacting you whatever it is. Tell the client what to do. It shows client that you are friendly to them. Many clients need to upwork and they are not very familiar with the platform. It will help them to navigate to. By helping clients, you also can make your chances, beg to win a job ahead of your competitors. Get my point. This is all about the overview still. There are some points I want to mention. You might have thought, where are my qualifications and experiences in the strategy? Now I'm coming with these facts. Suppose you are a content writer, then your overview itself is a great proof of your qualification. But what if you are a developer or a graphic designer? Earlier Pox allows to input external links to the overview, like you can use your website link or portfolio link in your overview. But from the middle of 2018, Pox stops allowing external links inside the overview. If you are a designer or other professional, you may need to add facts about your qualifications or the tools you are could add. But try to keep it as small as possible. If you can punch your qualification within a benefit, it will. Be great, right? Most of the philancers write phrases like, I'm hard working, I'm trust, I'm honest, my work is my passion, et cetera. These are definitely facts, but do not use these common phrases. You may ask why, Because every client expects honesty, or trustworthiness, or punctuality from the felancers. These are obvious qualifications for any type of work. It's not only for felancing business, but it is also obvious for a nine to five job. So why on earth you are wasting your limited words by writing some obvious phrases? If you are honest or if you are hard worker, your testimonial can prove that for you. You don't need to say I am honest to prove yourself that you are honest, right? Finally, your overview gets a structure like that. First the head section or the opening message, then the body section which comes with your story. And at the end, there is a CTA or call to action, where the opening message should be maximum. Two to three sentences with keywords in it. You must put keywords in the first two to three sentences. Another tip. Try to start with a question, because in my experience, I see an overview or any sales letter start with a question. Works better than an overview or a sales letter without a question. Okay, In the body section, you have to write your story. But making your client the hero of it, it means you need to shift the focus from I to try to get maximum mental S from your clients. Write that benefits clients are going to get. Write down testimonials to prove your authority. You can use your special achievements, like big errors, but always use short paragraphs, small sentences to make it easy to understand and use keywords inside it wisely. Also, you can add your qualification, work history, and your experiences. But try to make it as short as possible. Remember, people don't like facts, don't make it. Also avoid some common phrases like trustworthy, punctual. That's the body section. And finally, in the CTS section, tell the client what to do next so they can find an exact direction and can contact you immediately. That's all about the overview. Okay, here is another part I want to mention. From 2017 onwards, Po allows freelancers to put a video overview along with their normal retain overview. Research says about 90% of the total information transmitted to one's brain is visual. On top of that, the brain can process these visuals 60,000 times faster than the takes. A video overview is a great tool to seek attention to do it, you just simply click on the Place Video button you see on the screen. Then select a category of what type of video you are going to input. From the drop down list, you can create a video where you are talking about your skill. You can create a video that shows your visual samples or your portfolio, or you can use something else. Finally, add the Youtube link of your video and click Submit. Make sure you disable monetization via Youtube before submitting the link, which means there should be no ads on your video while clients are seeing your video. And how to disable the monetization options. You can find thousands of videos on this topic, on Youtube. I'm not going to tell you that uploading a video, that's pretty simple. But honestly, making engaging video is crucial. A wrong video can ruin your entire effort, just in a second. Clients will just skip to the next filancer. If you can't make a great video, don't write ten. Overview is good enough, but if you can make it, obviously do it. Here are a few tips I want to share with you that can make your video better. First of all, follow the same principle of your reten overview here. Additionally, you have to keep in mind that the video should be professional and very small. Ideally, 45 seconds to 1 minute is the best practice. You only get five to 10 seconds maximum to get the client's attention. The first ten second is vital. First of all, write a script for the video and then start shooting the video. A good quality video camera or a good quality smartphone both works great. If you are not a good video maker, get some help from your friends, or you can hire someone for doing the work. It may cost you some money, but the RY, or return on investment, tax three X or even ten X. If you can make a good overview video when you are writing the script, make sure your video contains what benefits you can provide to the clients. This is important, and I already told you earlier in the overview section. I mean, in the return overview section, your best works. Uh, maybe two to three sample portfolio works. What others are saying about you means some testimonials don't. Hundreds of testimonial use one to two testimonials. And your experience. And finally, a call to action. This is important to put a call to action. You can break the entire video, like this introduction video, five to ten second. The most important 10 seconds actually start with the benefits you can provide or what services are you offering. Why should the client work with you? Okay? And try to start by asking a question. The business highlights Next ten to 20 seconds, it will tell you what are your best works? What are your portfolio? What professional experiences showcase the best of your expertise? What clients and others are saying about. It means some testimonials and then put some expertise in the next ten to 20 seconds. It means what types of projects are looking for? How long have you been do, and what do you do exactly? You know, many financers gain massive experiences before they start a finance business, right? So don't limit yourself to your most recent projects. What is your specialties are, okay? You can use your past experiences, even your job experiences here, but make it short. And then the conclusion section last five to 10 seconds. What actions should the client take after watching the video? How the client can contact with you? Have you told them exactly what to do? This is the main motto of this section. So keeping those points in mind and with the principle of a concrete overview, you can make a solid video overview for your profile. Most of the freelancers don't take advantage of this part if you have the time resources and budget. Also, I suggest you make a video though this is not mandatory. Okay, that's it. With this, we just finished profile overview optimization from our first priority list. We will work on another element in the next lesson. Well, and here comes your homework. Write down your concrete overview that is engaging and can attract your prospects take time, because this is not just going to happen within an hour. With the help of AI tool like Chair GPT or Google Bird, you can make it faster than before. But still, you may have to change the overview several times to make it perfect. I personally wrote more than 20 times my own overview. I know you are smarter than me. Maybe you can make it at your second or third attempt for your help. I'm giving you a concrete overview checklist with the lesson. Just download it and you are covering every point in that checklist while writing your overview. I also suggest you check overviews 11. BONUS LESSON Boost Your Upwork Profile With Online Presence: Hi, welcome back. This is a bonus lesson for you. You already know how to establish your authority in your work overview and how you can make the clients impressed who are reading your profile overview. In most cases they're likely to contact you, but in some cases they try to find out some more proofs of your authority. There is a chance that they search you on Google. Then if they find something about you that match with your Up overview, the chance of getting higher increases. Get my point. Actually the clients are already impressed by your profile, the online existence of you. Just convert their impression to an action. Find out some time and make your online presence. No, I'm not saying to create a fancy website or a Youtube channel, don't take it that hard. You can do it without spending a single penny. And how? Well, I'm going to share four tips that can make your online presence and can boost your upper profile as well. Okay, so let's start. The first tip is create a linked in profile. Now you may ask, what is linked in? Well, linked in is a social network site like Facebook, but not completely like Facebook. Here you can showcase your professional expertise. Companies are searching for people here. A good linked in profile can help you to get good job offers also. Okay, do you have a linked in profile? It's great if no, make one anyway. The main thing is to match your linked in profile with your upper profile. For example, if you write in your upwork profile that you worked with some X, Y, Z companies for two years, then make sure this is also in your Linden profile. Okay? It should not be like that. You worked with the ABC company for three years. Get my point. This too should be identical Up overview and your Linden profile. Get my point. Here comes tips. Number two, if a designer create a Behance or Dribble or deviant art profile, the sites are great to showcase your portfolio. If you are a designer, you can find hundreds of Youtube videos on how to create a Ban or deviant art portfolio. It will take a few hours, but it will help you get great projects outside work also, okay? Again, your ultimate goal should create an online financing business. Work is just a tool. But it is not the ultimatum. Anyway, I created a bench portfolio and from there I got some great clients. Also, if you are a designer, you can try bench also. Anyway, if you are a programmer, you can use Github or Stack Overflow for creating your portfolio. Okay, now comes the third tip. If possible, create a single page website for your service. I don't say to create a fancy website with multiple pages. No, just a one page website works very well. Suppose you are not a designer, developer, and you don't have the option to create portfolio on Behance or Github. What if you are in another profession like a writer or a text consultant? In that case, you can create a website for free. Weeks.com or B.com can help you do that. There are thousands of free templates. You can use any of them to create your website. It's only dragon drop process and you are all done with your website. How can you create a website in weeks? Again, Youtube can help you a lot with creating your website using Li or Weeks. There are hundreds of free tutorials on this topic. I insist you to check them if you are interested to create your own website. Okay, finally, here comes the tip number four. Link your upper profile with your social accounts, okay? Allow some social platforms to link with your profile, like Github Stack, Overflow, Dribble, Fen Out, et cetera. Previously, they allowed Bhanche to link with your profile, but now you can't link with your upper profile with Bhanche portfolio. The list changes time to time or change the list whatever option is available, use it. If it is not possible for you, then you can skip this point. The fact is your linked social accounts are not shown to the clients. Why on earth you will do that? According to up, linking your other accounts to your upwork profile will provide upwork information that helps you to show you the right jobs and therefore can help you get hired faster. This will if your linked account gives similar information you provided in work. Okay, so how can you do that? To do it, click on the setting icon. You will find it by clicking on the drop down menu on the right corner of your home page. Then from the left panel, select Profile Settings, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. And you will find linked accounts at the bottom of the page. Just click on any account on you want to link with your upwork profile, then follow the instruction and you are all set. Okay. You can remove the link anytime by clicking on the sign or cross sign. Just write your linked account anyway. I'm not saying your online presence is necessary, you can skip it. But it helps in many ways, Not only for creating an impression for the upper clients, but also help you to get jobs outside if you have the chance, If you have the time. I insist to at least create a profile on linked in. Okay, here are some examples of offers I get from my Linden profile and hand ship profile. You can also get offers from these platforms. Probably it can give you a chance to make a parallel income alongside upper. Sound Nice. Right? Okay, so that's it. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 12. How To Create Portfolio Even If You Have No Experience At All: Hi, welcome back. Let's continue with our first priority list for profile optimization. We already learned how to optimize profile title, profile image, and profile overview. Now there comes a very important factor and that is the portfolio. Now if you already did some projects or have some portfolio to show, then it's great. What you need is just know how to organize them in the right way on upwork, okay? But what if you don't have any experience and don't have a single portfolio item? Many new freelancers fear that they haven't the experience of making a portfolio. But the truth is, a portfolio doesn't showcase your experience at first glance. It tells the people about your working style and ability. I remember when I was in school, I often go into art exhibitions. Sometimes the artwork of a new artist was sold at a price more than an experienced one. The price they got was not because of their experience, this was because of their quality of work. If you are very new, don't get nervous. You just need to make some portfolio items and present them correctly on por. There are two parts of a portfolio for pork. The first one is make some portfolio items and the second one is to present it on upwork in a correct manner. First, let's see how could you make a portfolio even if you don't have any experience or didn't do any projects before? Okay, here is a very easy way to make your portfolio ready, and that is to copy from others. Now, copy doesn't mean a zerox copy, it means getting ideas from others. Suppose you are a designer, then go to the websites like Bhanche, Dribble, Graphic Theme Forests, et cetera. You can see there are thousands of projects. Just pick one of them you like and start to copy it for practice purpose only you can start copying it word to word, line to line, shape to shape. Once you gain some experience, some confidence, then start copy the idea. Suppose you select a landing page, then copy the style guide, spacing, et cetera. But you can change the name, color, theme, image icons. You can use dummy text as you don't have the content. Also, you can make it better by inputting your own creativity When you're uploading this in upwork, don't forget to mention that you did it only for practice purpose. This is not a real life project. You know why? Because honesty is always the best policy. Anyway, the same for the other professionals. If you are a code writer, you can write your code in Githab or Stack Overflow. Then take a screenshot of that written code and it's results. You can use it as your upper portfolio item if you are a writer. Clippings dot me is a great website for getting ideas. Websites like Shutterstock stocks are great help for a photographer. Whatever your niche is, there are websites to get ideas and inspiration. If you don't know any website, just Google it or you can ask chat GPT or Google. But okay. Here is another tip. If you did some projects earlier in your school or any other classes, use it without hesitation. Just make sure this project is relevant to your niche and the Ers you selected. Okay? I suggest you make at least three items for your portfolio. Now, why three? Because when clients check your profile, they see three portfolio items on the first page. That's why try to make at least three portfolio items. If you have many portfolio items already, make sure the first three are the best. Previously a client could see four items of your portfolio in the first page. Por now changes it to three means this number can vary time to time. The point is you should create minimum those number of portfolio items which are shown in the first page. Okay, in the beginning when I was new in freelancing, I also copied from other works to create my portfolio and uploaded it to Por later. When I have enough projects, I replaced them with my own projects. You can do it also for yourself. Okay. Now comes the second part, which is how to upload your portfolio item on upwork correctly. Let's check it. Well, to add portfolio items, just click on your profile. First, scroll down to your portfolio section. If you want to rearrange your portfolio items. If you have already many portfolio items, you should put the three based portfolio items in the first place. How can you do that? Just click on the icon. You can rearrange them as you need. Okay, when you're done, just click on Save. I'm not saving it. Okay, To add a new portfolio item, just click on the plus sign. You need to put a project title here. Suppose this is brochure design for X, Y company. And make sure you put your primary, or at least any keyword in the project title. There comes the related specialized profile. I'll talk about specialized profile later in this course. For now, just select no specialized profile. It means this portfolio will be added. In general profile, you can add a job related job. You created this project for a particular client on upper. Then you can select this particular job. You can put a date from here and then go to select template option. There are three template option, the first one is classic. If you upload your portfolio item and it's just your practice, it's not real project, then you can select this one. Just select it, go to add details. Then you need to put your project description means what is about the project, how did it, what software you use, Et. Make sure you put some viewers inside this. Then you can select File, Image File. From here, just click here. This field is quid, I'm writing here, this is test. Just click here, Select File. Make sure the file should be 4,000 x in any dimension 4,000 by 4,000 x. Then put a caption for the image. Suppose brochure design for pain sensation. You see I also put the keyword here in the caption section. You can also add a video link, obviously from your Youtube or Vimeo video. Then you can put some scale in what software you used. Brochure design, this is a skill at a Illustrator, probably at a Photoshop and so on. Project URL. If your project is already on Rob site, or portfolio site like Bian Dribble, et cetera, then you can put the URL here and then click on Go to Preview. It will look like this. And when it is done, just click on Publish. I'm not going to publish this. Okay, that's the one section, now let's check the other two option. Again, go to Profile. I'm leaving this site. And click on this plus icon and then put a project title. Again, brochure design for X, Y. I'm selecting no specialized profile as usual, I'm not selecting this two. Go to select the template and select the gallery option adds. No gallery option is good when you want to display your images or videos one at a time, It looking like carousal, just go to Add details And you can put three files here. Okay. It will show like a causal. Again, you keep in mind that the file size should be 4,000 x by 4,000 x in any dimension. Okay, You should put a cation here, like brochure design for x, y. See this is the keyword, you should put your primary or secondary keywords, which is related to this particular project here. You should put a caption for this section. This is the front page, front page of this, this is inside page of brochure X, Y and so on. You can put a caption here or you can put a video link and you can put skills. You can put project URL likert link or Anchorble Portfolio link and you can put the project Descriptions and when, just go to Preview and click on Publish. That's it. Well, I'm going back. Now comes the third option which is case study. This is very important when you are. Okay. Let's just go back to one step. When you are selected any related upwork job. Suppose presentation, let me okay this one. Like select, this is a random job. It will automatically take the time. Now go to select template. When you select a job you already did for any upward client, then I always insist you to select this case study template. But it doesn't mean you cannot select study template when you are using a project that you create for practice purpose, okay? I actually insist you to select, study them for whatever portfolio items you want to upload in up. This is the best template and you select this one, okay? Uh, previously on upwork, there was only one theme, classic. Now, later upwork added this theme and this theme is actually very good one. Just select it. Whatever your project is, if it is a practice or it is a real project you did for your client. Okay, Now go to add details and in the role section, write your role on this particular project like you see here. I was the lead key way engineer who wrote the test pen, whatever your role was right here. And try to put your primary keyword here. I'm writing here for test in the project challenge section. Write what are the actual problems clients were facing. This is very important and you can wisely use some keyword in this project challenge section. My suggestion is to put bullet point here to write the challenges. Don't write a paragraph, just write points number one, X problem, number two, ABC problem. And so then you can select your image or you can add your video link. One point to mention here, whenever you select a image, make sure your image has enough white space or blank space in every side. Otherwise, your image may cut from each side, which will look very ugly. Okay? Then put a caption, test caption, put word here also. And then project solution means what you did exactly, okay? Again, you can write it in a numbered list or in a bulleted list like xyz did ABC and so on. And then you need to put some more images related to the project or you can put more video link related to the image. Suppose the two, this should be your cover image and these are some supported image, okay? You can also put captions for these particular images, this one and this one. These are optional though. You can also put keywords wisely, okay? And then you can put skills. Then click on Go to Preview. This will look like this. This is pretty much better than a classic or gallery template. I insist you to use this particular template, and when you're done, just click Publish. This is how you can upload your portfolio item to work. Okay, well, let's recap the entire thing. First of all, your portfolio should be visually appealing. Use mock ups and blank space to create a portfolio cover image. Let me show you an example. Here is an example of a bad or good cover image. You see in the left image how the content from both sides is cropped and how this looks so ugly. On the other hand, the blank space of the right image emphasizes the main content. You should be very careful while making a portfolio cover. A little extra space can give a great visual appeal. Here is another tip. Rather than showing your work as a screenshot or a flat image, you can use a free mockup template. You can find free from sites like Moapa dot Go, free, Peak.com et cetera. There are thousands of Moca files for free to use Peak as per your need and just give some time. This effort will make your portfolio more beautiful. Okay. Secondly, make at least three portfolio items. If you are new, use different websites I mentioned earlier or you can Google it, or you can ask a PT or Google. But for references. Number three, replace your dummy portfolio projects when you have enough real projects, your own projects. Number four, if you have a lot of portfolio projects already, make sure the first three are the best of them. Number five, try to use the case study theme for uploading a portfolio project. Finally, use keywords in the project title, project description, and image caption, but do not overuse them. Okay, well, with this, we just finished portfolio optimization from the first priority list. We will work on another element in the next Listen, here comes your home or create at least three portfolio items for your profile. If you are new copy idea from others to make your own portfolio and once they're done, upload them on upwork. As I showed you, if you have already many portfolio items, just put the base three on the very first page. It will take time, but it is necessary. Do not skip your homework. Okay? Well, that's all. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 13. How To Set & Raise Your Hourly Rate High Without Fear: Hi, welcome back. Let's continue with our first priority list for profile optimization. We are almost done with our first priority list, right? How can I set the best hourly rate? Probably. This is the mostly asked question asked by upwork felancers. In this lesson, you will learn how you can set and raise your hourly rate on upwork. Now, many felancers have an urgency to raise the hourly rate as quickly as possible, but this is not a proper way. Setting a proper hourly rate is crucial. You arrange your profile in the best way and start getting invites. Sometimes people are flooded with this achievement and just double or triple the hourly rate without a plan. Actually, this is a bad practice and it goes bad in maximum cases. What to do? Should you wait for a long time to raise your rate? As people do normally in a regular job, in my corporate career, I started with an hourly rate of dollar one. And when I left my job after three years, it was dollar 2.2/hour And I was lucky enough that I got an average 30% days in a year. But most of the people stick to ten to 15% on average. When I took upper seriously, my hourly rate was $18 within a year, it becomes $50 This is 175% As to do this, I didn't take 20 years, it took only one year. How I managed to do it? Mainly most of the financers compare their rates with normal nine to five jobs. They act that way. They fear to raise their rates. When you are thinking like a worker, you always feel fear to raise your rate. Possibly you will stick to 810 to 15% raise. Maybe you can take it to maximum 40% But freelancing is not a job. Most of the freelancers think this is a job without a boss. But actually this is a business where you are the boss. You can, whenever you think you are capable of, you may think your clients are the ones who are giving you money from their pocket. It is true, but still you come to them with a price. What you can hear from them, a yes or no, as will add money to your pocket. But if they say no, what will happen? You are not losing your job, right? Don't fear no, means you have to go to the next client. That's it. Simple business doesn't mean 100% deal. No business can do that, even Apple or Microsoft can't do it. Okay. So is it possible that raising your rates too high may increase the chance of it may, if you raise your rate in the wrong way. Raising the rate can be more tactical and more fun if you follow my method, what I call the two sides balancing method. To apply this method, first of all, start with a rate that you are happy with and you think this is a fair rate, you are not charging too high. When it's come to the quality of work you provide in maximum cases, philancers underestimate their ability and set an hourly rate that is far below the worth. Maybe you will do the same. No problem. Keep it that way. It actually fears that hold you back. If you are not confident enough or if you are very new, no problem. Just set a rate that you think is a good one, even it is a bit low, it's okay. You can check some of your competitors hourly rate for reference. This may give you an idea. Finally, take a decision on your own. Just don't make the rate low IC finances with an hourly rate of dollar five, even in today. Don't make yourself that cheap. I start with at least ten to $15 per hour rate. If you are very new and you have no experience, you now get an initial hourly rate, right? Then try to get some jobs. In the next lesson, I will tell you how to bid and how you can get repeat business from your clients. That is another part. Anyway, when you get some jobs and start getting repeat business from your existing clients, then the time comes. Raising the hourly rate is always about when, not how, Okay? See, getting repeat business grows your confidence and it also makes a secure stream of earning. You now know that whether you are bidding or not, you are getting an amount from your existing clients. This particular moment gives you the chance to push yourself higher. On one side, you have a regular income stream from your existing clients, and for the new clients, you now can raise your rate up to 25% to 75% or even more. That depends on how much repeat business you're getting from your existing clients and how you evolve yourself in the sense of your quality. Okay more. You can secure this part more, you can raise your rate, see how it works. First, you keep balance on one side by getting repeat business, and then risk yourself to get more. Do the same process for the next rate when you get some jobs on new rates and create a repeat business stream from the new clients. Then raise your rate again, like the wall climbing of spider man pushing one side on the body up when he is sure that his grip is stable enough to hold the other side of the body. Get my point. Now, it may take weeks or even a few months to make your one side stable. But once you feel comfortable and confident with the regular business, then push yourself up. No fear, no tension of getting rejected. Correct. By applying this method, I raised my rate up to 175% in a single year. I already have many repeated clients from upwork and a good number of clients outside pork. You can do the same thing, and I know you can raise your rate more than me, but less than a year. Okay? Now, here comes a problem with this method. Let me explain it. Suppose you started your rate at dollar 20/hour and get two regular clients who give you dollar 20/hour One side is balanced. Now you then raise your rate and make it say dollar 35. Within weeks you are getting jobs with this new rate. The conflicts come here. Within a period of time, you may feel that you're working with a low rate. For the client who pays you dollar 20, right? It's the fact that your experience and quality of work grow. You need a raise from the old client too. But if you want to raise the amount to dollar 35, the chance of losing the business from the existing client becomes high because they may feel that they're overpaying. Nobody wants to be overpaid. You need to handle this tactfully. You need to tell the client that you need a raise. But don't say anything that makes the client feel bad about the price they're currently paying. You are working together for a period of time, so the relationship is important. Keep the relationship on the top money after that. And finally, be soft and gentle. Tell them why should you need a raise? And don't demand it. Just represent your problems to them and see what they decide. In most cases, they will raise your rate. Maybe not what you expected, but still it is good for a long term business flow. Here is an example of how I told one of my clients for a raise. Let's read it. Hi. If you have a moment, I want to discuss with you about the hourly rate we agreed. Once I have been working with you for the last six months with a rate of dollar 30, you may notice I can produce twice files now than before this happens. Because of your coordination, without your help and great feedback, I could not make myself faster. So I'm grateful and I actually love to work with you as long as possible. But honestly, it's been difficult for me to make enough money at dollar 30/hour You see in my profile that I have been getting consistent work for a while now at a 25% higher rate. Could we figure something out together? If yes, I'd be glad. But at the end of the topic, I want to say that I always love to help you with your projects. You are amazing to work with. Please let me know what you're thinking. Best wishes. And after a conversation with the client, I got a 15% from her. Not what I expected, but it was still very good. You can use this letter as a reference and can negotiate with your clients, but please do not copy it word to word. Try to be unique and use your own language. Okay, well, with this, we just finished hourly rate from our first priority list. Now let's check the skill section. Upwork allows you to add up to 15 skills this time, but this may vary. Upper can change the number anytime anyway. Let's see how to add or update skills on your upper profile. Hi, let's check how to add or edit skills. Go to your profile and scroll down to the end of your portfolio section. There is the skill section. Just click on this Editicon. See there are skills are already added here. You can add maximum 15 skills. If you want to add new skills here, you need to delete one skill from here. Just delete it. You can search skill here like say word press. Okay, let's write info graphics, whatever it is. Just select it and you are done. But remember one thing, whenever you are adding skill or you are editing skill, make sure skills are pretty much similar, the key words you already selected for your niche. Get my point. That's it. When you're done, click on Save. I'm not going to save it, just canceling it. Well, with this, we just finish the entire first priority list of profile optimization. Don't just watch and skip, you have a lot of work to do. You need to work on your profile title, profile image, profile overview portfolio, all rate and skills. And it will take a quite amount of time. I insist you to spend that time so that you can make good business from upper. That's all for this lesson. See in the next lesson. Thank you so much. 14. Make Your Business Strong By Creating Specialized Profiles: Hi, welcome back. We already finished the major part of profile optimization. That means you now know how to create a killer title, how to click a professional pictures for your profile, how to craft a persuasive profile overview. How to build a portfolio, even if you have no experience, how to set your all in it and how to increase it and how to choose skills that are relevant to your niche. Right, well now we are going to optimize our second category list. You know there are three elements, specialized profile, project catalog, and consultation. These three elements are not mandatory. They will help you boost your profile. Yes, either you can optimize them or you can ignore them. It's up to you anyway. I will show you how to optimize these three elements one by one. Let's start with the specialized profile. Okay? Now, what is a specialized profile? As per upwork, specialized profiles allow you to tailor your profile to your audience and to create variations of your profile that showcase your experience within specific categories. For example, you can separate the work you have done as a mobile game developer from your work as a translator or a graphic designer. This means if you have multiple niches or if you are very good at multiple skills, you can create specialized profiles. And remember, you can only create two specialized profiles, not more than that. For example, suppose you are a graphic designer and you design logo print materials, I presentation, et cetera. Suppose you are very good at UI design. Then you can separate your UI design skill with a specialized profile. Suppose you are also very good at Powerpoint. Then you can create another specialized profile that only shocks your skills, experience, and expertise in Powerpoint presentation design. In other words, your design or Powerpoint specialized profile makes you more special to the okay. And when you are applying for a job, for any I design job or for any presentation design job, then you can select your specialized profile for this particular job. Get my point. This is why the specialized profile is important. Por introduced specialized profile a couple of years ago, probably on 2018 or 2019. At that time, they only invited selected felancers for creating specialized profiles. But now any felancer can create two specialized profile and that can become a great advantage for their business. Well, let me show you how it works. Okay, Well, here is my profile and you see there are two profile here. One is called all work, this is my general profile. And another is a specialized profile which is presentation design. Now you see all work is marked with a green type. It means you are seeing my general profile. Now if I click on presentation design, this is different from my general profile. You see the title Effective Powerpoint Presentations and Graphic Design Services For My general profile for presentation design, it is Powerpoint Presentation Designer de training slides. This is different, also the overview, different from my general profile. Anyway, whenever you are applying for a job, suppose you are applying for any Pach design job like pache. Well, suppose you are applying for this particular job, then click on it and apply. Now when you are applying for a job, here is a option proposed with a specialized profile. As you see, I have a specialized profile on presentation design. I can select presentation design as this is a p de part presentation project. This is how you can select your specialized profile while you are applying for a job. Whenever client are seeing your application, they will see specialized profile, not the general profile for this particular job. That's how specialized profile can help you. Many of the filancers do not even try this specialized profile and many of them use this. Totally wrong what they're doing. They just create a specialized profile. And in the overview section of that specialized one, they just copy paste their general profile overview. Now think for a moment, Suppose you have a restaurant with various types of dishes, but you created special cabin for your momo dishes as you are very good at memo making. Now when the customers are going to the cabin directly and you give them the general menu instead of the special momo menu, what will happen? Probably they will order some shop and snacks. And if you're lucky, maybe some memos. Tell me, who is the loser here? You or the customer. You had the chance to earn more money by selling you special memos, but you present them with the wrong menu, and by doing this, probably you are selling less. The same thing happens here in the specialized profile section. Yes, many freelancers make their special profile, but they did not make a special overview for it. While you are making a specialized profile, don't do that. Same mistake, write your overview different from your general profile. May be some common facts like your client's name, testimonials, the software use, et cetera. But the ultimate overview must represent your authority on that particular area you selected. Okay, well now let's see how to create a specialized profile. Okay, go back to my profile. You see there is a icon in the profile section. Now, if I already have to specialized profile here, I cannot see this plus icon here. In that case, I edit or delete my specialized profile or I can switch my specialized profile anyway. Let's see how to create one. To create one, just click on the plus sign. You see there comes option, create a specialized profile. Now from here, you can select a specialty. There is a suggestion, graphic design, you can select all suggestions from here. Suppose we are selecting web design. Here is web design and then click on Continue. Then from the list, select the deliverables. Skills Softer. You want to use website builders and MS platforms languages you want to skill, want to use. Let's select landing pages, Custom design cells, funnel. Okay. You can select only three landing page, website and customer design. That's okay. From design skill, we can select design, landing page optimization, responsive design, X design software. You can select X, D, Figma, and Figma, Jam, website builders, and MS Platform. You can select square space, flow, et cetera. Whatever skills you have, you have to select from the list. And you can select up to three skills anyway. From what? Plus plugins and tools. You can select say, Uc element, get response plugins, design language, you can select Java Script, Sss three, stem five, et cetera. You can also put some other skills if you have any. Suppose you are good at think. If you can select you're good at say Ab. Then you can select it and then click on Set and Continue. Then put your title whenever you are. Putting your title here, make sure this title is different from your general profile title. Okay, and you already know how to create a good title. Use the same method to create a title killer title for this specialized profile. I'm just typing any title here. For now, this is like we design serves for women, for coaches, and consult. That's it. Then click Save and continue. Now you see by default or give you the general profile overview inside this profile overview. But I don't suggest you to use the same profile overview for your specialized profile. Please don't do that. Create your own profile overview for this particular specialized profile. You already know how to create a profile overview that can attract your client's attention. Okay, But for now I'm just keep it as it is. I'm not going to write the overview now. But remember, don't do this for yourself. You need to write your overview for your particular skill set, okay? And then click on Seven, Continue. Then from here, you can select the job you think they're related to your particular skill set. For example, I need to find out if there is any job that is related to web design. Probably I don't have any because I just randomly write web design. I just select this one for example, and then click on Set. Again, you can select portfolio items which are relevant to web design section. There is actually none, but I'm selecting this one just for showing you how to select it. And then click on Seven, Continue, and then click Review Specialized Profile. Okay, this is the draft you see? This is the title. This is overview. This is work history. Here comes another section which is consultation. I'm going to tell you about this part later in this course. There are portfolio items and skills. We already selected Figma jam at a XD, Figma etcetera. Project catalog is another thing I'm going to tell you. Later on this course, you see the testimonial section which I'm going to talk about, certifications, employment history, other experience. These are things that you cannot change for your general profile and for your specialized profile. These things like certifications, employment history, other experience will be the same. Just ignore them. Okay? And when you're done, just click on Publish. But I'm not going to publish it. Let's keep it this way. Obviously, you can change your hourly rate for your specialized profile. For example, if I go to my general profiles, the hourly rate is $85 I can change it to say $100 Okay, So that's it. This is how you can create your specialized profile. It will take very little time, but remember, do not just copy paste the general profiles overview in your specialized profile. You need to write it from scratch, okay? You can edit your specialized profile anytime. You can delete your specialized profile anytime. And you can switch the skill set anytime, like you can change your skill set from web design to say UX design letter. Okay, And how can you do that? To do it, just go to the setting section and go to Profile Settings. You see there are specialized profile, there are two profiles, one is published, one is draft, which I just created from here. You can edit, you can switch specialty, you can delete this published one, You can view it, you can edit, switch the specialty, and can delete it. Okay, that's all. Now let's check what to remember when you're creating your specialized profile. First of all, you can only create two specialized profiles on upwork. Secondly, when you're creating specialized profile, then please don't just copy paste your general profile overview to your specialized profile. Many filancers make this mistake. If you don't want to make a specialized profile, it's completely okay. But if you create one, make sure your specialized profile is different from your generous profile, especially the title and the overview. Okay? And use relevant keywords in the title, Overview, Skills, and Portfolio in your specialized profile. And one more thing, Certifications, education, employment history, and other experience sections remain the same as your general profile, so you can ignore these sections. Okay, so with this, we just finished with specialized profile and here comes your homework. Please create one or two specialized profile for your business. But again, this is optional. If you think you are not ready yet, you can keep this part for now. Whenever you are ready, whenever you have some special skill, then you can create your specialized profile. Okay, so that's all. Thank you so much. See you in the next lesson. 15. Create Pre Package Service & Consultation Service On Upwork: Hi, welcome back. We are learning our second priority list for profile optimization. Right, In the last lesson, we learned how to create specialized profiles that can help you showcase your special skills to the client. Now we are going to learn about project catalog and consultation. Upwork introduced the project catalog in January 2020, and consultation was introduced in, I guess, 2022. Anyway, in the project catalog, a freelancer can create a prepaid service pack for the client. Clients can browse thousands of catalogs from different filancers. If they like your catalog, they will buy your catalog first. And after that you have to do the work here. You get paid first and then you provide the service. It's very similar to the concept of the gig on fiber. If you're familiar with fiber, then the idea of project catalog seems very easy to you. Consultation is for you if you are very good at what you are doing and you have a good communication skill for talking about your expertise others for at least an hour continuously when it's coming to consultation only your expertise will not work. Your ability to teach people about your expertise in an easy to digest way plays the most important role here. Get my point. Well, let's check both on the project catalogue and consultation on upwork and let's see how you can create your own project catalogue and consultation service on upwork. Okay, here is my client profile. I can post a job and can hire felancers with this client profile and see when I search for a freelancer, there are options for me. I can search freelancers that talent and I can search projects or project catalog if I click on here. If I type anything like say presentation, say photographer, there are some prepaid package service from different felancers like this one. Beautiful juicy food photography images for your blog site, et cetera from dollar 60. Now if I click on it, this is a prepaid service where the felancers offer $60 for one photography for three photos per product for one revision for dollar 150. The number of product is the number of photos per product is 515 photos in total. Number of division is 1.2 $50.05 products and six photos per product. That is 30 photos and one revision. And there are few examples of this photographer. Okay. And there are some project details. What they, what the freelancer will provide me, okay, if I buy this catalog and there are more details about the pricing. Okay? So this is what is a project catalog? You can create your prepackaged service for your client. What happened here? Your prepackaged services will be listed on upwards pages. Now if you can put your keyword on the project title, project description wisely, then you can also be listed top on that page. And whenever you are on the top of the page, the chances of getting sale is higher, right? If any client like your product catalog, then they can hire, you see client can filter the catalog by price. There are a different price range. Client can filter by category. Photoshop editing, video editing, category plays a very important role. I'm going to show you how you can select the category when you're creating your own product catalog. And client can also filter it by delivery time, like extra first less than seven days, less than 21 days, and so soon, et cetera. And by talent details, it means if the client only want to buy from say, top rated filancers or from top credit plus filancers, the client can also select this. Okay? That's it. Now I'm going to show you how you can create your own pro catalogue. Okay? So. I'm going to go to my freelancer profile and find Work option and click on my project dial board. Okay? You see these are some catalog I already created, but all are now in off mode. It, the client cannot see my project catalog on the list because I keep it off. If I click here, then it will be live and client can see this. Anyway, let me keep it off because I don't have the time to work on my gigs anyway, that's why I turn it off. Here comes the consultation sections. You can create also a consultation from this option, my project board. Okay, let's start with creating a project, then we will create a consultation. Okay, let's open this project. How can you open it? Just click here and click on Review. Okay, I'm just opening it because I want to copy the text from here. I don't want to write everything. That's why I just keep it open here. Anyway, to create a project, just click on Create a Project Section. First of all, you have to put a title. And the title should be very specific. What you want to serve, what is your service exactly? Write it here. You have only 75 characters. Keep it short. Very specific. And obviously you should put your keyword, okay. Now I copy this and put it here. Okay, done. And it shows the client will get a modern corporate style poster design. Here is my design style, and here is my niche I already mentioned in this title. Okay, be specific. Put your keyword. You can put niche also. And then comes the category section. This is very important. You see a client can filter their catalogs by category, select the category very wisely. Now, here are some categories. Apo suggest you, you can select it from here if that fits. Not just click on Browse, All categories, okay? And there are different categories. So this is from design. And you can narrow down your category, what kind of design it is. It's a poster design. All right. It poster design. Okay, done. You have your category. Now you can select the project attributes for which purpose. This poster will be used for my case, it is for corporate businesses, okay? I select corporate, okay? And file format. What kind of file you are going to give to the client. You can select up to 12 options as this is a poster. You can send a JP file. You can send a file or PSD file or PDF file. Maybe a EPS file or PNG file, or maybe a file, whatever it is selected. Then comes the search tech. It is an optional thing. Client will not see this, but it will help the upper search algorithm. Whenever a client looking for a poster design, you can put some texts that are related to your poster design. Like print design, you can write it here. Modern style design, graphic design and so on. You can put up to five additional texts. When it is done, click on seven. Continue. Okay. Then comes the pricing. Now here you can price your product in one tire. Or you can price your product in three tires. On tires, just one product. One price and three T, One product, but three different prices. By default, three tires is on. You can put it off if you want to put on pricing, but I recommend you to put three tires. Now comes the title section. By default, it is Starter Standard Advance. You can put your name here, fancy name, but I'm just putting it here. Just copy it and paste it Here. You need to put a title for this starter, like modern poster design, with say, five days for your corporate business within five days like this, okay, you can put up to 80 characters and you see I put the keyword poster design my niche in this description. Put your keyword wisely in this description. Just copy it and paste it here. And make it three days and make it one day done. Then delivery days, I already write it here. The delivery day is five, Make it five, make it three, Make it one number of revision for starter, I put it one for standard, I put it two for advance, I put it five. Okay. And what you want to provide to the client? Select here for standard. Suppose I want to provide the client print defile and custom graphics. For standard, I want to provide printed defile, photo editing and custom graphics. And for advance, I want to provide everything mentioned here. Okay. And then need to put the price for standard. I put 150. This is 150 and this is 400. Done. You can choose some add on like for first delivery for Starter. If someone you buy Starter Project, then I can also deliver within one days for extra $75 Similar for the standard part. I can do it for extra $50 for one day delivery. Okay. You can do the same thing for additional division. For an extra, say $10 you can do an additional revision. Okay? You can also add photo editing, social media design, source file, et cetera, as your errors. Okay. Anyway, when it is done, click on seven, Continue. Now it comes about the project image. You can upload up to 20 images or you can upload project video. But remember, whenever you're uploading a video, the video should be less than 90 seconds. It's better if you can make it 45 to 50 seconds. Okay, also upload sample documents. Suppose you are a writer, then there is no photos, videos. Then you can upload your writing document as a PDF. Okay. And you can upload up to two PDF files and each pedophile should be two MB or less in site. Okay. Anyway, so just I'm browsing some photos here. I select this one. Okay, you can adjust it and click on Upload. Make sure the photo syze should be 4,000 by 4,000 pixel. Not more than that anyway. I can upload more images, up to 20 images, but I'm not going to do that just when it is done, click on Continue, then tell the client what you need to get started. Okay, right here like I want the project details in a, in a written word documents. Then make it mandatory requirement, because without the project details you can start work. So make it mandatory. And then click on another requirement. Then your company logo, preferably high quality. Png file or file. This is also mandatory option add let me edit this project details in edit in and okay your company logo. Okay. Then add requirement some samples you like. Now this is something client can provide or client don't make it mandatory requirement, just add. This is how you can tell the client what you need to get started. Okay, Then click on Seven Continued option. Now you need to put the project description. This is very important. This is actually the cells letter to the client. So this should be very important part. Now what I'm going to do, I'm just copy and paste it from here, okay? And you see, make it short, put your keyword and point the main things in bulleted list or numbered list, okay? And here I option 100% money back guarantee if not satisfied but do not write such things because P will not approve your project. If you write such things, don't write it. Whenever I created this catalogue, Apo just introduced the project catalogue that time, so they approved whatever I wrote there. But today, if you want to write something there are possibilities that app will not approve your project catalogue. Don't write such a thing. Anyway, when it is done, then put some list steps, how you want to complete the work. Put those steps here. Step here are some steps. Discussion step name, okay? And then just copy and pasting it. First step is discussion with the client. In the discussion section, what you are going to do, write it very clearly, like I said. In this step, we will have a 30 minute discovery call or chat to understand what you need. What you need is I will collect every possible data from you to find the base design solution for your poster. We'll clarify all our queries from for smooth output. Okay, this is the first step of my work. Then edit, then click another step. Step number two, first, Dft revision and approval. You see I put those staff in bulleted list, it easy to read. In this step, I will send you the first D of the poster to understand the look and fill you. Then check the draft and give your feedback. I will then edit the poster and submit with revisions for final approval. This is how you can put your steps okay, and then you can put your final steps or whatever steps you want to add. Add here. But remember, do not make the steps too many longer. Maximum three to five steps is good enough because if you put a list of steps like ten steps, client will hesitate, client will get board, and probably the client will skip. The best option is put your steps as less as possible, maybe three to five, okay? Three is the best option. One more thing, you can put keywords wisely, this section also, okay? For example, I put poster in the first step, I put poster in the second step. And so when it is done, then click on seven, continue, then finalize maximum number of simultaneous projects. It means how many projects you can take simultaneously. Three clients or five clients see this project and they want to buy this. Can you handle three projects or five projects together at the same time? If you cannot handle multiple projects together, then make it one, okay, I can put it three. And then you have to select this and then click on Submit for Review. I'm not going to do it. Once it is Submit for Review, what it will happen? Okay, let's go to the project dashboard. Your project will appear here and it will shown in the under review section, okay? And once it is reviewed by upper, it will shown in the approved section and it will in turn on mode. Off it whenever you don't have the time to do any geek projects. Okay. Whenever someone buy your project, you will see the orders here. Number up orders from here. This is how you can create your project and you can create multiple projects for your business. But I suggest you to start with one to two projects and see how it works, and then you can add more projects as you want. Okay, one more thing, you can edit your project anytime To do it, just click here. Click on Edit section. You can edit it. You can delete it. And you can also share it on social media or on your website. To do it, just click on Share and you can share Facebook, Linked, or you can just click the link and you can put the link anywhere you want to place. Okay? And there are different projector. You can select which projector you want to see. If you just select it like this, copy it. And you can send it via whatsapp. You can mail it to clients and what happened? The client will click on the link and see your projects like this one. Okay, that's all about projects. Now we are talking about consultation. And to create a consultation service, you should be an expert in your field. You should be good enough to teach other people about your expertise in a easy to digest way. Because if you can't teach people how to do the work, then the consultation doesn't make any sense. In a consultation, what you will do will just tell client how to do the work. You will not do the work for the client. The client will do the work by himself or herself. You just show them how to do it. You need to know very expert and be communicative. Okay. Now, to make a consultation, just click Create a Consultation. Well, let me open it so that I can copy and paste it. Okay. And then click Create a Consultation. Okay. First of all, select the category, which kind of consultation you want to do? Suppose you want to do a design consultation. Select it and then select areas of expertise. What kind of design consultation you want to provide? You can select up to five, like brand style guide, design may click control, Presentation design may be poster design, and so on. But I suggest you to select one or two options, not five options. Because if you want to teach people how to do a presentation and if you want to teach people how to do a poster in the same time it will be a little confusing. Select such options that are relevant. With presentation design, you can show the people how to create infographic. They're pretty much related. Okay, with presentation design. If you go to product design, that will be a different area, Don't select it anyway. Whenever it is done, then you can put custom topics, this is not showing to the client, but this will help the search algorithm to list your consultation. And you can select a five pack design pitch correction. Media pitch like business presentation, like sees peach sales presentation, okay? Okay. And when it is done, you can click on Seven. Continue. Then the pricing. For example, for 30 minutes your date is $60 Now I suggest you to put your consultation price a little higher than your usual hourly rate, okay? Then you need to describe what kind of guidance you can provide to that client. I'm just going to copy it from here. Again, this is very important because this is the sales letter to the client. You see? I started with a question. Will you manage to design your presentation in Powerpoint as you wanted? If not, it's okay. You are not a Powerpoint expert. Right. Here comes my consultation service. In our one on one zoom call. Then I put what I provide to the client in bulleted list presentation. This is the key word at the top and Powerpoint, this is also the keyword at the top. You need to put your keyword also in this description very widely. Okay, Then comes documents for the clients. You need to select one of the document at T. This is a policy of upper payment protection. You can give the client a meeting summary, okay? You can give the client a time and cost estimate in a document. Or you can give the client project plan. Whatever you want to give. At least select one, okay? And put the delivery days for the document you want to send the client. Suppose after the consultation, you want to give the client the meeting summary. So you need to write the meeting summary somewhere, right? For writing and delivering this meeting summary, you need two days. Put the delivery days two here, okay? And when it is done, just click on seven. Continue, then select your available hours. You can add your Google Calendar. With this, use your Google Calendar or your Microsoft Calendar. You can just link it, but I don't want to do it right now. Or you can put the available hours here. Just click here and you can select the date and times say you are available for Tuesday and Friday from 09:00 A.M. to 05:00 P.M. Then click on Seven Exit, Sorry, you can select the time. June? Form here. Okay. And there are other settings. Minimum booking notice, it means the client can book your consultation service after one day when the client is trying to booking. You suppose today is second January. Okay. And the client is trying to book your consultation. The client can book your consultation from third January and so far. Okay. And if you put it five, so the client can book your consultation from two plus five, that is from seven January onwards. And the client can book your consultation for four weeks, means seven January to seven February. But if you put it one week, then the client can book your consultation from seven January to 14 January. Okay? So this is up to you. You can set your availability like this. And when it is done, click on Se, then click on Seven. Continue. Then come the requirements you want to need from the clients. Okay, let me copy it from here. Okay, Just put it here. What you need from the client. And you see I put the keyword in this requirement also. Okay? If you need anything, right, Everything here, one by one, you can also put another requirement. If you don't have any, just cancel it and then click on. And then you can put some project images. This will help the client, okay, You can convert the client's project to this. Just click on Browse. I'm just selecting these images for showing you. Upload it. Upload up to 20 images. Same as project upload a video. The best practice is to upload a video less than 90 seconds, but I suggest you to put it 40 to 50 seconds maximum. And you can also upload PDA file or document. Okay. When it is done, click continue. Then you need to agree with the policy and consultation Thompson Services Privacy Notice, and then click on Submit. When it is done, your consultation will be live, okay? And this will be seen on this project catalog dashboard. Go to Project Dashboard, you will find your consultation here. You can also turn off the consultation whenever you want to. Okay? That's it. This is how you can create your gigs or project and you can create consultation services for your client. Okay, so with this we have finished second priority list for profile optimization. And here comes your home work. Please create one or two project catalog for your business. Also create a consultation service for your business. But again, these are optional. If you think you are not ready yet, it's okay. You can skip this part for now. You can do it later whenever you think you are confident. Okay, well that's all, seeing the next lesson. Thank you. 16. Finalize Profile Optimization A Few More Tips: Hi guys, Welcome back. We learned almost everything important for your profile optimization on upwork. A few things are left in this lesson. We are going to finish them all. Okay, let's start with our third priority list or third category list. And here are six elements in total employment history, other experiences, education languages, hours per week, certificates. Let's start them one by one. Okay. Well, here is my upper profile. Now let's start with the first element of third priority list, which is employment history. To see the employment history, just scroll down and you will find it here. This is the employment history section. Many people doesn't start financing from scratch. They already have work experience and later they decided to start financing sometimes for some extra money, sometimes for making a different career. Now, if you already have a long work experience and you are doing similar kind of work on per what you did actually on your 95 job or somewhere else, Then you must put your experiences in this employment history section. One of my friend once work as a developer in a company. Later he shifted it to financing and become a Tok created upwork Wordpress developer. If you are like my friend, you should mention your experience here. But what if your current work on upwork is totally different from what you used to do earlier? Don't throw it in the trash box thinking it is irrelevant. You can explain why you left that irrelevant job for doing what you love the most. Now, whoever is reading your profile can be impressed by your honesty, right? For example, if I was a sales executive and team leader in a life insurance company, this is completely irrelevant with my design career, right? But I put it here also. If you are like a recent passout, use this new experience as your positive side. You can tell that you are a recent passout's why you have the knowledge of recent technology and also the passion to do something great. If you did any school project, mention your role and tell them how eager you are to prove yourself. And don't forget to input one or two keywords if possible. Let me show you my example, like this one, Freelancing graphic Designer. You see graphic design is a keyword, marketing material is a, infographic is a word, and so on. For example, this one presentation design is a Word, Pch, De is a. Whenever you're writing your employment history, make sure you put some cords on it. Okay. You can delete any employment history by clicking on the bin icon. You can edit it by clicking on this icon. You can add it by clicking on the plus con you need to write your company, your city. This is optional. Country optional. This title is important. Put a keyword in this title. From which month to which month you do the work, write it here. If you currently work here, just check this box and you can put a description. In this description section, you can write what you did, what your role was, what your achievement was, and wisely put some keywords in the description box. Okay, this is the first thing, Employment history. Now comes the other experiences section. Just scroll down the mouse, you see the other experiences section is here to add different experiences, you can use the same process. Just click on the plus sign. You can put the subject and description like the employment history. Use some keywords in the description and in the subject obviously, you can later edit it. You can delete it. Okay. Now you might think you don't have any special experiences to share with, but the fact is we sometimes don't know what we know. There are people with different interests and who knows your interest is not going to match with someone else. So it's always better to put something here rather than keeping it blank. Here are some ideas you may try. First mention, if you did some project, except your routine job, like helping a local store with their interior decoration or cataloging the books of your local library, try to keep it relevant, but this is not mandatory. If you already have enough experience, then you can skip this. Okay? Secondly, you may mention the courses you have taken that are relevant to your profile. Like I put here a Illustrator course from Linda.com Okay. If you have any certificate or courses like this, you can mention it here. Also, you can put your hobbies. And if you achieve something like some awards or some prize, then put it here. Now you may think, why on art should I put my hobbies? Because people want to work with them, who they like. Including some personal information here can make you more liable and increase the possibility of getting more invites. Yes, you can use it in your favor anyway. If possible, don't forget to put some key words also. But again, don't act like a machine. Act like a human. Now comes the education section. Scroll up your mouse, and here comes the education section. Okay, like the others to, you can add education by clicking on the plus. Sign. Your school name from which date to which date you complete your course. Your degree name, area of study and description. Now, description and area of study and degree. The optional things previously. Upper shows this section to the client. Now upper doesn't show this information. You can put this section area of study and description if you want to. But if you don't want to, you can skip this. But if you want to write a description, make sure you put some words there because it will help the upper search algorithm. Again, this is optional, you can easily skip this part. Okay, now comes the language section. Here it is. You can add languages by clicking the plus sign. I just put one language here. You can select different language and you see there are four proficiency level, basic, conversational fluent, and native or bilingual. Now, as a fhilancer on upper one language you must need to add is English, right? Many fhilancers fear that their lack of English knowledge can fail them in upper career. Communication is one of the vital things for a business. But this is not everything. As your mother tongue is not English, it doesn't mean your English skill is too poor. Most of the non US freelancers undervalue their English speaking ability. I'm not saying to exaggerate your abilities, but also do not undersell yourself. Now you see when you add language, there are four options you were given. Number one, Basic, it shows I'm only able to communicate in this language through written communication. Then conversional, I know this language well enough to verbally discuss project details with a client. Fluent. I have complete command of this language with perfect dummar and native or bilingual. I have complete command of this language, including breadth of vocabulary, idioms, you see fluent and native. These two options are almost same. If you think your English level is fluent, it means probably you speak English very well. You see the difference between fluent or native is almost nil. In that case, please rate yourself accordingly and you can use native instead of fluid. If you think you are good enough, you can upgrade yourself from seal to native also. But if you think your skill is at the very basic level, you should take a second opinion from someone else, like a friend who is good at English, or you can upgrade your skill anytime. If you know some foreign languages except English, please add them. Sometimes clients are looking for a different language. An extra language may boost your profile. Now comes the hours per week section. You can edit it. Just click here, you see this is just your availability. Here are a few options. You can currently work more than 30 hours per week if you just select it, less than 30 hours per week. If you selected as needed, open to operation, it means you are available when clients need you. And I recommend you to select this if possible. If you are very busy, then probably this is not for you, and you can select none. And then comes the contract to hire option. It means you can start a work with a client and then you can do work for that particular client for full time. It's like a job. Okay? Whatever it is, you can select from this section. This is actually the availability section. Okay. I'm just canceling it. And finally comes the certification section to see. Just. Scroll down your mouse and here comes the certification section. You can add certificates by clicking this section. Just click here and click Add Manually first. And there are a list of certificates. You can select it from here. If you have any certificate from any of this listed area like Oracle Certified Professional Fs. Okay. I'm just canceling it again. Add manually or if you don't have any of certificates from the list, then what you can do, you can add a custom certificate. Just click here and then write the certificate, name, certificates, provider, the description and the issue date, expiry date if any, and certificate ID. Many certificate have some ID, put it here and certificate URL. If it is from a online platform, then you can put an URL here. These are optional things, but whenever you're writing a description, try to put some Cs if possible. If possible, don't try it, okay? This is how you can add a custom certification here. And here comes another option. This is called Import from Cradle. Now worse, Cradle. Cradle is a digital credentials platform that specializes in issuing and managing digital badges and certifications. If philancers can benefit from cradle by leveraging the platform to showcase and validate their skills through digital credentials, philancers can use Cred for skill recognition, best creation, online portfolio creation, linked in integration verification for clients and job opportunities, and continuous learning. In summary, freelancer can utilize cradle as a powerful tool to build a credible online presence, showcase their skills through digital badges, and enhance their chances of securing new projects or collaborations in the competitive marketplace. But this is not a free platform. You need to talk to their sales for the pricing. You can know more from Cradle.com The actual URL is HTTPs info.crady.com If you go there, you can talk to cells if you want to add some cradley badges. Okay? Anyway, there is another certification options. This is called Up Skills certification. This is a invite only certification for now. If upwork fails, you are eligible enough, then upper will invite you for this certification. Then you need to give a test, and if you pass the test, you'll get a batch from upwork. Okay. That's it, that's the certification section. With this, we just finished the third list, and finally, the last list is left in this list. There are also six elements which are profile verification, job success score badge, work history, earnings data, and talent flowers. Let me show you one by one very quickly. Okay, Now let's start with the profile verification, which is the first element from the fourth priority list. You see there is a little blue tick. If you hover your mouse here, it shows this freelancers identity has been verified through a government ID check and a visual verification. Well, this is called a profile verification. This is something you cannot control when por fails. They need to verify your profile, then they will notify you. And they will usually make a video call and ask for some government issues, ID's or Passport to verify your identity. Initially, it's not important. Sometimes fiance, fake name or nickname, or guardian's name. It may make a big problem later if Por wants to verify your identity later. If you need to Por, please do not use any fake name that mismatch with your passport or government issued ID. Also, make sure the name you are using is exactly the same with your bank account or Paypal account. Otherwise you cannot withdraw your heard on money. Okay, Then comes the job success score. This is the job success score, and in my case, it is 100% This is another thing you cannot control upper. Make this score based on many things like your response rate, your service quality, feedback from your clients, et cetera, even after getting all five star ratings from all of your clients. Your job success score may drop down. Actually, a client can give you two reviews. One is public review, which you can see on your profile. Another is hidden or private review only given to upwork. Sometimes client may give you a five star rating publicly, but can give you lower rating in private. Yes. In that case, your job success score may drop down. Also, there are many other factors which no one knows exactly know their algorithm. This is the thing you cannot directly control. Just do your job honestly and make great relationship with your clients. Job success score will be intact. I'm holding my 100% job success score for a very long time, even. I'm not very active on upwork now. Okay, then comes the best section. Actually there are four badges given by upper. Previously, it was only two. Now there are four. The first one is the Rising Talent badge. This badge is awarded to individuals showing early success with criteria such as a complete profile on time, project completion, and adhere to upper terms. In short, this badge is for new freelancers who are performing better than others. Okay, then comes the top rated badge. It's indicating the top 10% of felancers in this marketplace. And it requires 90% of job success score and $1,000 earnings in last 12 months and consistency in performance. Okay. And Felancers can then get the top Ted badge showcasing experience in larger projects with $10,000 earnings in last 12 months. Okay. Another badge is called Expert Ted, and this is reserved for only top 1% felancer. This badge is only given to those felancers from the three fields right now. A mobile and software development design and credit sales and marketing, maybe upper can expand the field letters. Anyway, it's in fight only for now, the process to become expert Ted Freelancer starts with an invitation from the upper team. If you accept the invitation, they will move through a pre screening process that consists hard skill analysis with a professional talent manager who can access technical competence. Then they will take test to check expertise in a specified service area. Then comes the So skill assessments including communication skills and reliability. And finally, there will be some personal interviews. And after all of those process, finally you get the badge okay. For now, don't worry about the badges. Do your work honestly, you will get the results on time. Okay. Then comes the work history. This is the work history section. Again, this is the section you cannot manage by yourself. Because this section shows the projects you already did for your clients with your client feedback. More projects with more good feedbacks. This, this section automatically. If you are honest with your projects and deliver good work all the time, it will grow automatically. You don't have to worry about it. And then comes the data. This data will update with your earnings. Obviously, it is something you cannot change or edit. Finally, there are some Talent Clouds. Whenever you work with any enterprise client on upwork, you will automatically join a talent cloud. What happens if that particular client post any jobs? You will get notified and you can submit your proposal for free. Means you don't need any connects to submit your proposal. That's the best benefits of a talent cloud. You see there are one to 345 talent clouds here. It means I already work with five enterprise clients on upper. There is another section that is called Associate With if you're working with some agency on upper. And if the agency treat you as a team member, then you will see associated with this agency. Okay, well that's it. We finally covered all the techniques and strategies to make your profile shine. These techniques of profile optimization, you not only make yourself visible in the crowded marketplace, but also can get quality invites for your business. Before going to the next section, here comes your homework. Please make sure you help optimize your profile completely. It may take a long time, maybe a week or two weeks, but it is something you must do to make your career on upward. Don't keep your homework with this, we finished this section. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 17. What is winning proposals & why most proposals get rejected: Welcome guys. We are going to talk about writing winning proposals on upward. The ability to writing a winning proposal is one of the most important skills you must know as an upward felancer. It is obvious that you write proposals when you're bidding for a job, every freelancer does. But all of the proposals you're writing are not winning proposals. You need to know what is a winning proposals. In this lesson, we are going to this topic. Actually, we will cover four topics. The first one is, what is a winning proposal? Second, why most proposals get rejected? Third, why the word proposal is a trap itself. Finally, what to avoid when sending a proposal? Let's get started now. What is a winning proposal? A winning proposal is something that clients love to answer. It doesn't mean a sure job. It means a doorway to start a conversation with the client. Once you can start a conversation, you have a chance to convince the client how good you are for their job, isn't it? Most felancers write their proposals in the wrong way, and that's why most of them get rejected at the first site. Okay, let me explain it with an example. As an up client, once I have posted a job for a video editor, I got 22 proposals and I rejected 16 proposals. At the first glance, I didn't even read a single line of their proposals. Why? Because their profile titles were irrelevant. Let me show you, as you see on the screen, the profile title of one philancer is Data Entry Admission Support Transcription, Bengal Translation Web Research, and another title is Translator. Now you tell me what did I do with a data entry operator or translator for editing my videos? Is there any point at all This happens many times. Most of the freelancers don't even read the job post carefully. They consistently send proposals for random jobs and hope when the next job comes, but this doesn't work that way. If you are sending proposals for random jobs, you are going to be disappointed very soon and want to leave this marketplace. Here are a few points you must keep in mind before sending your next proposal, right? Let's check them one by one. The first point is you have to be a good fit for the job and your profile title must reflect your ability. Otherwise, there is no point to send a proposal, right. As I mentioned earlier why I rejected 16 proposals without even read a single line. So make sure you are a good fit for the job and you have the required skill set to finish it. Okay. Secondly, read the job post very carefully. Most of the philancers don't even read the post. And many plans send a generic proposal. Don't do it without reading the post. How could you be so sure that you can get the job? Clients are not fools. They're familiar with this behavior. Many clients in their job post write some phrases and instruct felancers to follow them. It is a way to ensure that you read the job post carefully from top to bottom. For example, the client may mention type flower at the top of your application. Now if you miss the point and don't start your proposal with the word flower, you are out of the game, right? Reading the job post carefully is a must do, okay? Finally, you need to send the right proposals and you need to do it first. The quicker you send your proposals, your chance of getting noticed will grow. You need to practice how to write quality proposals very quickly. It's not that difficult though. With good practice, you can craft a winning proposals within just five to 10 minutes. These are the three main points you should do when you are sending your proposals. Now we are going to check the word proposal in a different perspective. Okay. Think for a second that you are applying for a nine to five job. Do you think they will hire you based on your application without even interviewing you? No. Right. The application is a doorway to confirm a seat for the interview. The word application and the word proposal create different impacts on our heads. When you are applying for a job, your mind hopes for an interview call or a rejection, isn't it? But when it is the question of proposing someone or prospecting someone, people get desperate. They're pushing hard to close the deal. For example, in love people they don't apply, right? My point is pork uses the word proposal deliberately to give you a feel that you are going to close the deal. Most freelancers fail into this trap and they desperately try to sell them. And to do this they either undersell them by offering a very low price, or they push clients to hire them. It makes them either a random Panymaker freelancer or they don't get any job at all. So be sure you are not in the same trap. Remember, Por proposal is not actually a proposal, this is an application. Okay, let's go back to the nine to five job application. What will you write in your application? Is that like something, I will work 2 hours extra daily, Please give me the job. Or I will take $1,000 less salary for this post. Does that make any sense to you? Not at all. Right. Nobody writes an application in this manner. They write something that tells why they're a good field or how they can help the company to grow or how their quality or skill sets become a great help for their business. Same thing for the upwork proposals too. If you think your proposal is an application, you are not going to undersell or you don't need to push the client to hire you. Instead, you will focus more on client's problem and we'll write how we can solve them. Now think this from the client's shoes. They got tons of proposals. I mean, literally they got a lot of proposals where there are very few applications. Eventually it is 20% 30% application. Most of the, most of the Philos are desperately try to sell theirselves. If you can shift your perspective, you can easily outshine 70 to 80% of freelancers who are bidding for the same job. Makes sense. Here are some does you need to keep in mind while sending a proposal? First, upper proposal is actually an application, not a proposal at all. Your goal is to open a conversation with the client, okay? Secondly, do not focus on closing the deal. First, focusing on the end result at the beginning, we'll just ruin your proposal, okay? Thirdly, don't undersell yourself or do not push the client to hire you. Finally, don't get desperate by thinking you are closing a deal. Remember, client can smell your desperation from far, far away. Your goal here is to open space for a conversation. That's it. You now understand what to do and what not to do when sending a proposal. In the next lesson, I will show you how you can write your application or proposal, whatever you say in a persuasive way. I hope you have enjoyed it. See you in the next lesson. Thank you. 18. 3 steps winning proposal writing method Part 1: Welcome back. In the previous lesson, we talked about how the word proposal traps most freelancers and how to skip it. We also saw how a shifting of perspective from proposal to application can outshine most of the freelancers. Right now, it's time to write some winning proposals. In this lesson, I will tell you my three step rules to write a persuasive proposals. These rules, I called it LSD method, where L stands for liable, S stands for solver, and B stands for doable action. I want to remind you that writing a proposal for only getting hard is not our initial goal. We are not trying to close the deal on the first contact with the client. The hiring decision is a big deal. We are not going to push the client for the commitment at the very first attempt. What should we do? We should create a very small action for the client that is easy and doable. What is that? Small action is something that help us get a response back from the client. That's it. How can we do that? Okay, We will come to this point very shortly. Let's start with the LSD method and let's start with the first rule, which is the L, or liable. Now to get a response, the client must have to read the entire proposal again. Clients proposal to check, all they can see is only one or two lines from your proposal at first sight. As you see on the screen, make sure your first line maximum first two lines of that proposal are stunning, okay? Now, it doesn't mean something poetic, just something easy to read and attach clients emotionally, They keep going. Okay. Note that I said it, emotional attachment, not logical. In the very first line, you need to prove that you care for the clients. Failing to do it means clients dislike you. They will probably skip. The client must like you. First, you are the man who has to make it possible. Sounds difficult. Don't worry. There are several ways to do it and I'm going to show you how the most effective way is to start with the name of the client. Most philancers start with hi, hey, dear hello. And phrases like that. But they don't take the benefits of addressing the client by their name. Now you may ask, how do I know the client's name, right? Well, with a little research, you can find it if the clients didn't say their name in the job post. Actually, most clients don't bother to do that. Check the client, recent history and you find philancers feedback there. Many philancers use the name while they giving feedback to the client. You can find the name from there. For example, if you see on the screen, you see how a philancer's feedback reveals the client's name. In this case, you can write High Jeremy instead of only a high. Okay, This is the first rule. Start addressing your client by their name. But what if if the clients are new to up work and doesn't get any feedback yet? Then you can check the job post carefully. For a name, many job post clients mention their company name or website. In that case you can address by the company, like dear World Bank client, dear agent client. If the job post doesn't have that information too, then check about the client's section, just right side of the job post. See it shows where the clients live. As you see in the image, the clients live in London. Now you don't have client's name, right? You can say Hi London client. At least it works far better than is simple high. Once I posted a job for some of my work, I didn't mention my name or company info in that post. One of the felancers started with here Mumbai client. This word Mumbai. I don't know why Click on my head and I started reading her proposals finally hired her. You see how a simple treck of her make me emotionally attached and later helped her to win the job. This is the starting. Rather than saying just a simple hi or hello address the client by the name. If the name is not available, then by the company name or even by the location. Is it clear? Okay? The second approach is to get a mental ES from the client and you need to get it from your first line or first two line of your proposal, okay? I always recommend binding this in the very first line, not the second or the third line. What you need is a trial line about the solution that clients are looking for, right? If you read the job post carefully, you see clients give some information about what they need. You need to pull out one vital information from there and use it at the very first line. That's it. Let me explain this with an example. You see there is a job post and it says, let me read it. Need a brochure finished. Have content from previous brochure website and designs that already started, but need to be completed in a timely manner with content just up. Brochure is for healthcare company. I can provide logo images, blah, blah, blah. Okay, This is my proposal. In my proposal, I started with the name of the client. One extra minute to find her name, but it worked better than other competitors. Rather than writing a long proposal, I kept it short. The reason behind it was she needed it very urgently. Miss she was eager to hire someone very first. And I found this information from her job post. You need design done in 8 hours, right? She said it in the job post. I'm going back to the job post and you see it shows need design done in 8 hours. At the last line in my proposal, I started like that. I can help you finish the brochure design within less than 8 hours. That's the vital point I put in the very first line. That's it. Okay. And as a result, I own the job which was $200 job. That's the method, it is to use a figure line at the first line or maximum in the first two line of your proposal. Here is another example. You can see how even with my incapability, I still managed to win the job by using the right trigger line. The job post was like that. Let me read it. We are looking to hire an experienced and extremely talented editorial designer to create workbooks and Powerpoint presentations for an online course called the School of Freedom. The workbooks will be both for online download but also for print. As for the Powerpoint presentation, they will simply be the same as the workbook pages but in pot point form. Here is the first of all eight workbooks and the client gives some links. This is an old version that we are looking to update and modernize. You can see the new logo for inspiration. Okay, that's it. Now, here is my proposal. Now let's read this proposal. Hello, Alexander. I have seen your first 52 pages workbook and don't understand the language. It is mandatory. Is it mandatory to know the language you used in the workbook? If I'm quoting right now, but if no, I can help you finish the project, Then I put some work link of my previous project and then I put a testimonial from one of my previous client. I said the testimonial is taken directly from one of my Po clients. I did a 270 pages long workbook that helps people to fight stress. You can see the work by clicking at the link. There is another 88 pages workbook I create for an event management class. You may want to see in both cases. I used Arab in design. By the way, have you talked to a printer yet? What are the print specifications for your workbook? Haram, Powerpoint works. I'm interested to hear more about your work. The design style you are looking for, and other small details in your mind. Brief discussion of the project would be very helpful. Are you available for a 5 minutes po chat? That's it. Now you see in the very first line, I again, use the client's name and wrote first 52 pages workbook. The client never said how many pages in the workbook. She only gave a link. I checked the link and counted the pages. This trap told the client that I cared for her job and the words don't understand the language told that. I was honest with my work. That's how even the lack of that language knowledge I outshined 22 50 filancers and own the job. That's simple. You need to find out a piece of information which is very important and which you need to use as a trigger. In maximum cases, you can find it in the job post. Okay, now here comes some post where it is very difficult to find some important information. In that case, you can repeat the client's word as a trigger line. Let me explain it with an example. Here is a job post. It says, hi. We need an indesign catalog, template, graphics elements, colors and phone should reflect the company website. Very basic, light and white. Five pages cover, company profile, index, produce, product page and back cover. To apply, please point to your print portfolio. We could have plenty of opportunities like that in the near future. My proposal was like that, Hi Luka, I see you're looking for a five pages catalog design. Nice and clean. I'll be happy to help you with the project. Can you please share me the link to your website so that I can get a general idea of what type of look and feel you already have and how can I use this. In the catalog, I have posted two of my past projects which are most relevant and my behi portfolio link. Anyway, do you have 10 minutes for a quick discussion via Thanks. You see how I repeat the client's need in a single line. All he needed was a five pages in design catalog, right? And this is what I wrote. I see you are looking for a five pages catalog design nice and clean. In the very first line, I just simply repeat the client word by word. That's pretty simple. This is the easiest way if you cannot pull some very important information out from the job post. In that case, just repeat the client's word, just to mention I own that job dollar 105. Another effective way to create a trigger line is to ask a question very related to the problem or relevant to the job post. Now, asking a question is a little freaky. Do not ask something that requires too much time to answer. Like if you're asking for the client's opinion or how they want to start, it will be difficult for them to answer. They need to think before answering it. Chances are they just keep you and check out the next filancer in the room. Keep your questions simple and make sure clients don't have to think hard to answer your question. A question with the answer yes or no is always the best question to ask. Let me show you an example. You can see how a good question can win a job even if the job description is not that clear. Here is the job post. It says, I'm looking for someone who can help me finalize design and print a custom marketing project. It would require having printing capacity to print out the collateral in small batches and do some die cutting type work. I'll provide the graphic design, you can provide suggestions for changing it or improving it and then get it printed. Okay. My proposal was Hi Gillian. What do you need exactly? Is it a multipage booklet type material or a single pace flyer or brochure? I'm interested to know the detail about the project as I'm not sure about the industry or business, or the design style you're looking for. Rather than showing you one or two relevant projects, I just put my beach portfolio link for you and then I put the link. If you come up with more details, I can show you relevant projects I did earlier and can give you my best suggestions to make your existing design more beautiful. However, when is a good time to talk to you? Best wishes. You see, the job post was not that clear and it seemed the client didn't have a clear vision about what she wanted. That's why I started with the question, what do you need exactly? But that was not a question easy to answer, right? She was thinking, what does the hell mean exactly? Needed to think, right. That's why I put the second line with some option. Is it a multipage booklet type material or a single page flyer or brochure? Now you say this is a question that can be easily answered is a multiple type of questions, Client can say yes, it is a multipage booklet or It is a flyer, right? So whenever she viewed the second line, she saw something that should be mentioned in the job post. It somehow made me liable because I was pointing the client to a particular direction and she hired me for 1 hour consultation at $50 per hour. This is how a simple question can be trigger one client and can drive the client to start a conversation. Okay, now here is another effective technique to write a trigger line. You can do this by appreciating the client. Now, appreciating clients doesn't mean licking their boards. No, I don't mean that people don't like adulator. If you don't find anything really appreciable, don't try this approach. It will surely back and you just means some money along with your time. Let me show you an example how a real appreciation can make you liable to the client job post. Let me read it. So I have a mock up, two pace flyers that I would like to be professionally designed. I have attached the mockup for your review, the mock up is done in Arab in design and some of the assets were created in Arab Illustrator. I will provide the Arab files for you to work form. I would like two versions of the final design. One that includes the placeholders on page one for self executive pictures and contact information. The second design should be redesigned to exclude the information on page one. Everything else should remain constant. You can change the layout, assets, color scheme, forms, and messaging as you see fit. If you'd like to recommend different assets for me to purchase, please feel free to do so. The only thing you can't change is the company lower itself. We just put the original file together to help get you started. From a work product perspective, I would like you to work in Arab, in design, so that I can get the working files back. I need those files so I can update for new sales executives as we bring them on board. Unfortunately, I have a tight timeline on this project. I will need it to be completed by 12:00 P.M. SD on Monday, July 13. Accordingly, I will select some to do the work by 05:00 P.M. SD on July 26. Thank you for considering this project. Okay, and here is my proposal. It says High Corey out, obtain your post. I rarely see an organized post like you are too clear about your needs. I appreciate it. I've seen the PDF. As a designer, I think there should be more space to breathe. It is a good design, but pretty congested. More spaces can make it more beautiful. For example, we can make the steps and the important note section more prominent. Again, in design is a good choice for the print related task. By the way, the top link is a brochure I have created for Health Lucid. Though your project is unique, it is, I think, pretty similar in the sense of design. Here is the testimonial from the satisfied client of Health Lucid. And then I put the testimonial and then I wrote, again, hope to hear you, hope to hear from you by five MSD on July 26. Best figures. Now you see in the job post how the client expressed everything he needed. Honestly, many of the job posts are incomplete and don't have a clear direction to follow. But this post was not like others. That's why I appreciated the client and told in my proposal why I appreciate him. It was not like something to pump him or lift him. Sky, it was a real emotion that I expressed in the proposal. Okay, I own the quick job and earned $115 within just 2 hours. The client was so happy, he gave me $15 extra as a bonus. That's the L of my LSD method. Let's check it just one more time, from top to bottom. Okay. In this L part, your goal is to become liable to the client. And you can do it approaching two methods, okay? The first method is address the client properly. May be their name, their company name or where they live. Check the client, recent history or about the client section to get this information. It will take just 1 minute extra. Okay. The second method is to write a single line that can attach your client emotionally and drive them keep reading. To make the first line a trig line, you may use some technique. The first one is, use the most important information from the job post and write it in your first line. The second one is repeat the client's word as a trigger line if there is not much information or you can ask an easy question to the client that is relevant to the job and very easy to answer simply a yes or no. Finally, you can appreciate the clients for their words in the first line, here are four methods. Number one, just find a piece of important information and write it in your first line. Number two, repeat what the client says. Number three, ask question that is relevant and easy to answer. And number four, appreciate the client in your very first line. That's it, that's all about L, or liable. I hope you now understand how to be liable to the client so that your proposal can be answered. In the next lesson, I will show you how you can make an impression to the client as a solver, which is the second part of my LSD method in the next lesson. 19. 3 steps winning proposal writing method Part 2: Hey guys, welcome back. In the previous lesson, we learned how to attract clients by addressing them by the name or writing a trigger line at the beginning of your proposal. In short, you learned how to be liable to the clients, right? Well, now we are talking about the of my LSD method. Where stands for solver? It means you have to prove to the client that you are a solver. Simply put, you have to prove your authority now. Now, what do I mean by this? Well, this means you understand the client's problems and you are capable of solving their problems. You have the right skill set to make their project more than successful, okay? Means you need to prove yourself as an authority. It doesn't mean to show clients your certificates or rewards, et cetera. Focus on their problem first and suggest them a solution. Remember, suggest them a solution. I'm not saying that you will give a solution. Obviously, we'll give you a solution when they hire you, not before that you can suggest a solution to the client. And after that, go with your academic skills, awards, certificate and experience, and whatever other staffs you have. The question is, how can you prove your authority? Well, let's talk all the approaches one by one. I'm going to show you six approaches you can use to show yourself as an authority or a solver. Okay, let's get started. The first approach is my favorite approach, and it is to give the clients some room. Now, think of a departmental store and a local grocery shop. They both sells products, right? But in the local grocery shop, you only see what the shopkeeper shows you. In the departmental store, you have a space to think, choose, and peek, right. In the first case, you may feel a little uncomfortable because you have to ask the shopkeeper, please give me that, this, et cetera, and the shopkeeper will gave you that. But in a departmental store, there are a lot of things in front of your eyes. You can choose. You can pick, okay. In the grocery shop, you may a little hesitate to ask the shopkeeper for showing many products once at a time, right? But in the second case, you are free to do that, isn't it? It makes you more comfortable. The same approach you can use in up to prove that you are a good fit for the job. How can you do that? Well, it is pretty simple. Just give some relevant samples of your works at the beginning of your proposal. And if you are from a creative area, like if you are a designer, then it is a very good approach. I personally use this approach for a long time anyway. So put your samples of work at the top of your proposal so that they can check them first and then can proceed to read your inter proposal. Okay. This approach gives clients some room and some space to think about. It's better to see your work first rather than reading 1,000 words about you, isn't it? If they like your work, they obviously read your proposal. Now, it is very important how you are going to show your works to the client. The oldest way is to attach your work and tell the client to see the attachment. But remember, upwork has a limit. Attachment files, limit, probably it is 25 MB. If you have a file bigger than 25 MB, you can't attach it. Now you can solve this issue by creating a G file or a raw file. But many clients don't have the software to open the jeep or the raw file, it will not work either. Also, downloading a file and, and checking them is time taking and a little bit boring. It may difficult for some cases, like when a client is using a mobile device and it hasn't enough space to save your attachment, I advise not to use attachment. What the right way? Just use a link. If you have a website or a blog, or whatever platform like Dribble or Github or Behance, you can use a direct link. But what if you don't have any of them? Well, in that case, you can use Google Drive. Google Drive gives every user 15 B space for free. All you need is just a Gmail account to get the free space. Upload your works in the Google Drive and send the clients a direct link. I'm not going to show you how to do that. It is a pretty basic thing. You can learn it from Youtube also. Anyway, I suggest you to upload all or some of your works in your laser time and make a note, notepad or Excel or whatever the space with the work name and its link. When you send a proposal, you can check out the notepad or Excel sheet and just copy the link and paste it directly to your proposal. It will save some time of uploading files in Google Drip while you're applying for a job. Get my point. When you're applying for a job, upload the file to the Google Ripe and then send the link because it will take your time and you don't have much time for sending a proposal, right? You need to upload all your files sometimes and you need to keep Excel sheet or any other sheet to maintain the link or to track the links. One more point. While you are using Google Ripe, you must upload your works in an organized manner. Now you can create folders inside Google Ripe to get things organized. Now, why should you need it organized? Well, let me explain this. Because when you are applying for a job, you cannot put your entire Google Drive link with your proposal. It will confuse your clients. Giving them the entire portfolio is somehow boring, will get confused, they don't have the time or intention to check every single piece of your portfolio items. Be like a librarian, you should have a clear idea what you are going to show to your clients. And finally, select only the relevant items and give it to them. Here is a caution. Do not overflood the client with relevant portfolio items, like don't put ten portfolio links for a single proposal. One single piece of your best work is more than enough. But if you want to show more, try to keep it within maximum three links. Here comes the confusion. That is, what should I do? May I put my work links first or may I put my trigger line? What you have learned in the first method, that is L method at the top of your proposal. Well, you can do both. You may put the trigger line at the first or you may put the work link at the first. For my case, the work links work better. Because I am a presentation designer, my works talks more about Coverletor. I normally give the clients room to see my works at first, but if you're from a different area, like a marketer or a copywriter, or a web developer, whatever, maybe you should start with the trigger line. It's an experimental thing to try to do it by yourself. Try five to six proposals and you can figure out which works for you best. Okay, well that's the first approach. Now we're going to talk about another approach to prove your authority to the client. And this approach is to use testimonial from other clients. If you're telling the client that you are the best, the client will not care. But if others are saying the same, they definitely do. So if you have some relevant testimonials, use it. Choosing random testimonials or relevant testimonials is a different thing. A relevant testimonial impacts a lot for decision making. Suppose you are a digital marketer, you do Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, and Googles. You did three types of works for different clients and got many different testimonials from your clients. Some about your skill on Facebook marketing, some about your skills on Google ad campaign, and some about your Instagram skill. Now, if you're going to send a proposal for a Youtube ad campaign, which testimonial will you use? It is obviously the Google ads testimonial, not the Facebook campaign or the Instagram skill testimonial. Right. Because this is more relevant, Pick your testimonials wisely and like work links do not overflood the client. With so many testimonials, use only one. That's enough. But If you were very new and didn't get any feedback from any clients yet, then what to do? Well, in that case, you can skip the testimonial part. Obviously, a testimonial is a good approach to prove yourself, but it is not the least. Here is a professional tip for you while you are using a testimonial and link both try to put that particular work link for which you received the testimonial and mention clearly that you received this testimonial for this particular work on your proposal. Let me explain it with an example. Okay, here is a job post. Let me read it first. I'm looking for a graphic designer to redesign a slide show that will be looked on TV screens at a charity golf tournament. I'll provide branding guidelines and additional information to be included in the slide show throughout the extent of the project timeline, completion of the slide show must be done on or before June 4. Well, my proposal was like that. Dear client. Do you have the written content ready for the slide show? How many slides are you planning for this slide show? Then I put a testimonial and wrote the testimonial is taken directly from one of my happy client, the Mckinstitute. I did ten slides PT from, for them to present it to their donors. You can see the work by clicking the blow link. Also, there are three more works I did for you may want to see. And then I put the work links. I have seen the Big Hearted mavericks brand book. And I can produce a slideshow that goes with the brand guideline. Anyway, a brief discussion of the project would be very helpful. Are you available for a 5 minutes poc chat? Okay, you see I mentioned the testimonial I received from Institute and also put the link of the work I did for Institute with other links Here I did a mistake though. I should have told that you can see the work by clicking on the third link, rather than saying you can see the work by clicking on the Billow links. Anyway, everyone do mistakes, but it didn't make a problem to win the $200 job. I hope you will not do the same mistakes. Okay, Now let's see another approach to show you a problem solver or N authority to your clients and that is giving clients some suggestions that can help to solve their problems. Remember, your goal is to help the clients try to be helpful. Don't try to close the deal here, okay? Well, giving a suggestion is not an easy thing to do. Actually, nobody wants you to lecture on their work. If you are not very good at your work, you cannot give the right suggestion right now. Here are two things you need to keep in mind while giving suggestions. First of all, be polite. Don't say your suggestion is a must do. Just say, as a professional, you did similar types of jobs before and your suggestion may help to solve the client's problem. And secondly, don't give a long list of suggestions. Keep it short, and rather than using a long paragraph, use a short paragraph. Or you can use number list or bullet points. The list should have maximum three to four points. Here is an example of how I win a job by giving the client a proper suggestion. Let me show you the job post is like that. I'm working on a logo and need to find two icons or maybe slightly larger than an icon that are in a watercolor style. I want them to look similar to the test I sent the proposal like this. Hi, I have seen the attachment you gave, and I think the best approach for getting best result is to draw the icon on a drawing paper, then watercolor it and take photograph and make it digitalized using Photoshop. This is what I'm going to do, it will give you the perfect result. Perio did, what do you think? Thanks. Obviously, I win the job. See how a right suggestions can help you win a job. Check the testimonial from the client here, he also mentioned how the suggestion went great and produce a result beyond his expectations. Okay, this is the third approach, relevant suggestion. Anyway, here is a pro type for you. What should you do while suggesting clients for a rework type of job? Sometimes clients need some upgradation to their existing work like a. Upgrade to their presentation, or upgrade to their logo, or upgrade to their website. Now as a professional, you may see that the existing work is just a disaster. It's looking very bad. Don't tell directly how bad is their current work is. Even if it is bad, clients don't want to hear it from a third party. Actually, it doesn't matter how bad the work is, the clients still love their business, right? That's why they want to renovate it. So you should point out how you can improve it, but never tell how bad it is or how ugly it is. Okay, let me explain it with a real example. Here is a job post, and the job was just cleaning of a very unorganized file. The job post was like that. We are in need of a creative wizard that can help put together graphical images and theme for an investor deck. And one per, we have already raised numerous rounds. But the next is a biggie and need it all to look sharp and neat. Happy to send photos, et cetera and past examples. Please get in touch as we need it for tomorrow, our current one page. Okay. My proposal was like that. Uh, first of all, I put some work links and then I wrote, Hi, by when do you need it completed? In tomorrow. I just want to estimate the exact time left for the project. I see your one pager. It is no doubt good and unique. It can be more attractive by changing small details like number one milestone part, by using a divided between each line. Number two for each section we can use an icon like for fac problem solution, et cetera. Number three, the alignment of the text background gray and image three cars not in line. We can change it to and we can look after many small details like that. If you are interested, we can discuss the project. At the top, I have posted to three of my past projects you may like to see. Are you available for a quick chat now? Well, I own the job too and earned dollar 850 from that job. You see how a good suggestions can help you win a job. Okay, here comes my next approach. This is asking some relevant questions to the client. Again, the questions you are asking must be relevant to the project. Like the suggestions, keep the questions short and to the point. If you have more than one question, then use number list or bullet points. Again, I do not overflood with so many questions. Three questions are good enough. Here is an example of how I own a job by asking the right questions. Here is the job post. And the job post says, this is a short term project and we'll need to have the first revision done by Odt Time in the US on Sunday for the final product to be completed by OD Monday ST in the US. The deliverable is a PDF handout designed from a Word document with some facts and figures that need to be designed. There are a few notes in the dock that will help. And some example documents also in the note section of the doc that should give ideas. There are a bunch of US Federal Government Department logos that you will have to be sourced and implemented by the designer at the end of the document and arranged in a professional and visually appealing manner. This document is to be presented to Amazon AWS Executive. So it needs to be creative, yet slick and professional. Okay, and my proposal was like that. Hi, as time is very sensitive here. So let's get to the point number one, what is the paper size of your handout? Number two, do you need it for print then? What should be the print specification Number three, do you mind if I create a front cover for the handout number four, Do you want to keep the PDA two pages only or may I extend it? If needed. Here are three works I did for the World Bank Institute and some other clients you may want to see and then put the links. Are you available now for a quick chat and you see the right questions? Help me to win the job too. This is another approach, ask the right questions in your proposal. Now comes another approach. Well, the fifth approach is to be confident. Most of the filancers send their proposals in a wrong manner, many are literally begging for the job. This is a very bad approach. People who don't have self respect can't get respect from others. Right? So do not under judge your quality. Ask yourself, am I good enough with my work? If S show this confidence in your proposal. Now, this doesn't mean to be overconfident or to be rude. Despect yourself as well as the client. Confidently. Stick to your point and express your reason clear and loud. I want to share a job that I own applying this approach well, the job post was like that. Create a simple, clean looking template and format 70 slides. Colors will have to follow specific branding guidelines. And they put the color code must receive back by 11:00 P.M. ET this evening. Extra bonus of $50 If provided by 08:00 P.M. T, then font hex color code is given. Well, my proposal was like that high. What is the exact time on your watch? Now this is very challenging and I dare to take your challenge, but with a single condition you need to communicate with 1 hour max. Because in my experience, I have seen many job posts with very argentx and the clients never bother to interview a single freelancer. Hope you are an exception as you asked, I have posted some links to my best works below, When can we talk and then I put some links. As a result, I just not only own the job but also got $1.50 bonus. But remember one thing, this approach is not appropriate for every time it is a little uncomfortable and the client may think you are arrogant. Use it properly. And only use this approach when you are super confident about your skill. Not before that, Okay, we are coming to the final and last approach that is mentioning your awards or certificates or experience, whatever you have or academic qualification to your proposals though, this is not a very favorite approach of mine. People really don't care about your academic qualification until unless this is something really big, authorized by some renowned institute like Google or Microsoft or something like that. Anyway, you can use it, but keep it very short. I guess two lines are good enough. That's all about or solver part. I'm not saying to use all those approach, all those six approaches together. It will make your cover letter unnecessary. Very big. Using one approach or a punch up two to three approaches can produce an outstanding result. So you need to be creative how you can mix mass those approaches to get best results. Anyway, let's check the part one time more from top to bottom. Okay. Let's recap it in the, as part of the LSD method, your goal is to prove your authority by becoming a problem solver. And to do it, you can apply one or more of the six approaches I have mentioned. Let's check out the six approaches real quick. The first one is to give the clients some room, give relevant samples, or work links at the very beginning of your proposals. Don't use attachments. Use links from your website, Behance or Dribble or other portfolio or simply you can use Google Drive, okay, approach to use testimonial from other clients. This is one of the best approach for proving your authority. And then approach three, give the client some suggestion, but be very careful about that. Be polite, maximum of three suggestions and make the suggestions relevant to their problems. Use short paragraphs or better use a number list or bullet points. Number four, approach number four is ask relevant questions, okay? You can ask maximum of three to four questions, keep your questions short to the point, and you can use number list or bullet points. Approach five, show confidence in your cover later. Again, this method may backfire you if you are not very skilled. And don't be arrogant when you are showing confidence in your proposal. Okay. And the last approach is mention special awards, certifications, your experience, whatever you have. That's it. That's the second rule of my the L method and it is completed. Now, I'm going to talk about the final rule of the LD method, which is D or doable action. Now, this is You need to do. It is an easy, doable action for the client. You just ask them to do it. Now what I mean by it, it means you should end your proposal with a CTA. A CTA, or call to action means a clear instruction to the client what to do next. Suppose the client loves your proposal then, okay? Ask the client exactly what to do next. Now, what you should ask a little freaky. Your goal is to make things simple for the client. We do not ask the client for a long discussion or do not ask for a list of their needs. Ask something that can be answered very easily. Literally by a simple yes or a no. If you are asking like, what is your thought about my suggestions? Now, this is something clients can't answer very quickly, right? The clients need to think about that unless until your suggestion is very impressive, the client will not bother to answer your questions. In general, these types of questions makes them pause because they need to think before answering your questions. Your goal is to open a room for conversation, More client pause. It becomes more difficult for you to get response. Be tricky, and try to figure out a question that can be answered without even thinking. Let's check out some examples here. Are you interested for a 5 minutes chat? Now you see the answer can be simply yes or no. Can you show me your current piece deck? Yes. Again, the answer can be yes or no. Have you run at camp before? The answer can be a simple yes or no. Do you notice all of them can be answered by simple yes or no? This is what your goal, just to get the answer to your questions so that you can start talking with your client. Here is a screenshot from my Apoc message. You see how the clients responded to my questions. The client said yes, she can talk. You see, again, there is another screenshot. In this case, the client went one step further. He provided his Skype for talking. That's our goal, to start a conversation, and once you start a conversation, you can lead it to a win. That's it. That's how the LSD method works. Hope that helps you craft your winning proposal faster and better. Now before ending, I want to give you two more tips that will help you a lot. Number one, when you're finished writing your proposals, don't press the Submit button. Immediately revise it, or read it loudly so that you can hear it. It will help you to find out if there is any mistakes in your proposal. Okay, Tip number two. Use the grammarly app as a browser extension, or you can download the softer and use it or install it on your PC. This app will help you correct your spelling and grammatical mistakes. Also, you can use chat GPT to correct your spelling or grammatical mistakes. That's it. Now you get an entire picture of how to write winning proposals, right? For your help, I am attaching a proposal checklist. She, with this lesson, just download it and make sure you're applying all those methods properly. Now as your proposals connects and need money for practice purpose, select three to four job post daily. And select those job posts which you think you are a good fit. You don't have to submit the proposals, right? You just need to write the proposals. Just write them and set them in a Word Doc or Google Doc or other notes for practice purpose. The very next day, check the previous day's work and find out what mistakes you did and how they can be improved. You'll be surprised that you can make them better today. Initially, it will take time and actually this is a little boring in the beginning. It will take hours to write winning proposals, and checking them is also time taking. But doing this for one or two weeks or a month will make you so faster you can ever imagine. Trust me, it works for me and for many of my students. So you can do it too. Guys, go download the checklist and start writing your own winning proposals. I hope you find these lessons extremely helpful. See you in the next lesson. Thank you so much. Bye bye. 20. All about invitations with 2 more winning case studies: Hi guys, welcome back. In the previous lesson, we covered how to write winning proposals. In this lesson, we will talk about invitations and how to answer them. Invitation is a little different from a regular job post. If you get an invitation from a client, you don't need any connects to send a proposal. That's obviously a big plus. Secondly, people who invites you are more likely to work with you. That's why they invite you, right? In case of invitations are one step ahead from a regular job post proposal sending, get my point. Okay. Anyway, in this lesson we will cover four topics. Actually, we will answer four questions all about invitation. Okay? The first question is, does every invite you receive a quality invite? Number two, what to check when receiving an invitation or applying for a job? Number three, how to answer an invitation. And finally, why decline invitations? A must do. Okay, Let's check one by one. Let's start with the first question, which is, does every invitation you receive a quality invitation. Okay? Once a client post a job upper, send the client a list of filancer's name that upper thinks a good fit for the client's job. Okay? Client can invite randomly from that list. Okay, or can search philancers on their own. Many clients send invitation based on the upper referral. Okay? Means upper list. They don't have the time or energy to search philancers according to their needs. In those cases, the invitations you receive just a random invitation. Also, in many cases, upwork helps clients to find pilancwers for their job. They send invitations on behalf of the clients. My experience, many of the invitation, which upper sense on behalf of the clients are totally irrelevant, no matches with your skill. Let me show you an example. You see here, I got an invitation from an upper talent specialist. Now an Up Talent Specialist is someone who works for upper and send invitations on behalf of a client's job post. Okay, now the job post was like that. Let me read it, Shower. I am a talent specialist from upper who helps freelancers and clients use Po to connect. I thought you might be interested in the job post administrator. Since your background and skills appear to match these jobs requirements, I encourage you to submit a proposal If you think it's a good fit for your finance business. It's up to you to determine whether you are interested in and qualified for this job. No connects are needed. When you accept a job invitation, you can find project details within the job post administrator. The client will ultimately decide who to hire. Please direct any message about this job posts to the client through Apoc message. Best Apoc Talent Specialist. Well, nice to hear, right. The truth is totally opposite. Let me show you the actual job post. Well, you see the job post was like that. Looking for a highly motivated and start up minded senior geo Python engineer. And see, I got an invitation for doing some geo Python developing work. While I didn't know a single thing about Python programming, this happens, each invitation you receive is not a good fit for you. You need to check out what actually is for you and should act accordingly. Our first question, does every invitation you receive a quality invitation? The answer is no. You need to check it before submit, accept the invitation. Let's jump to the next question, which is what to check when receiving an invitation or applying for a job? Okay, When you get an invitation or when applying for a job, click on the view job posting. Link, it will give you the Er details about the job post. When you click on that, you need to check few things. First of all, read the job post. Carefully check the job matches with your expertise and quality. If not, you have to stop here right now. Otherwise, check the right side of the page and you will find details about the client here. First, if there is any badge like Upwork Plus Client, or Upwork Enterprise Client. If there is a badge like that, it means the client purchased or special plan as a client, which means they are willing to work on this platform. You can consider a job post or an invitation as a good one. Which job post has a tag like upwork enterprise client or upper client like that. Okay. But hold, don't make your decision so fast. You have more things to check. Next thing you need to check the payment method. Is it verified? If yes, that's great. If no, then there is a chance that the client post a job and never come back that platform. So be careful if there is no verified payment method. Okay. Sometimes many new clients post a job on upper without verifying their payment method. That's okay. They think they can add it later, but they really want to hire someone. I once got an invitation from a client without a verified payment method, but later I earn $1,800 or more than $1,800 from that particular project. But how could you guess the client intention? Well, you can get an idea from their job post. Is it a really descriptive one? Is it clearly talks about the client's need. People sometimes post a job from a mobile device with a full of typos. Avoid this kind of job, especially if they have not a verified payment method. Okay, so this is the second thing you need to check. Well, here comes another technique of cross checking. If the client without a verified payment method is a good client or not. If you see the client is new, like the client joined up work last week or a few days ago. It means maybe the client doesn't even know how to verify a payment method. You can accept the invitation or can send a proposal if the client very new and the job post is clear and loud. Okay, Now comes the most important thing and that is the higher rate for an imputation. Higher rate doesn't matter so much because you are not losing any connects means any money, right? But when you are applying for a public job post, check this section very, very carefully. A client with a very low high rate means probably the client will not going to hire anyone. Applying for a job where the client has a very low high rate can simply cost you connect means your money. Ic clients with a 10% high rate too, means the client posts ten jobs and hire for only one job. Isn't it weird, it will be wise to avoid such clients. Now, there is no exact rule to figure out what percent is is good, but in my opinion, you should avoid clients whose high rate is less than, at least 62, 65% Okay. Now check the client is easy to work with or not. And how can we check that? Okay? It is easy by checking the ratings. The filancers also give ratings to the clients. Now, if a clients have a four star plus ratings, it means the client is great to work with, okay? But what if you see the ratings below four stars in that case, Check the client's recent history, just below the job description, find out why the rating is very low. If you see most filancers give the client great ratings except one or two filancers, it means the client is okay to work with. Sometimes a good client received an unfair rating from one or two filancers, this makes their entire rating score bad. That's why you need to check out at least three to four reviews and then make your decision. Is that clear? We finally check the client's strength. Now what I mean by strength, strength means, is the client a high ticket client does. The client has the capacity to pay. You can calculate this from the client's total spent, the average hourly rate paid, and the number of job post. Also check the client recent history. Find out how much they're paying for each recent project. What's the hourly rate they're paying for the last few projects? You will get a rough idea from there, okay? Now let's break down about the client section. See in the example, and you see the client has pain, $10,000 More than $10,000 with an average 13.06 And the client post only eight jobs and has a 75% hire rate. This means the client for six job right. The client joined up work just six months ago for six jobs. The client paid $10,000 which means for each job, the client average Spain $1,600 which means the client can provide big projects, right? Secondly, the client Spain $10,000 in six months. Most upper clients spin an average $10,000 or less in a single year. The client is far better than other clients. That's the process. In this example, you see how we find or how we calculate the client is or not. That's the process, simple process. This is how you can check a job post or an imputation and then you can apply or you can accept. One last thing I want to mention, while you get an invitation, that is to check how many invitations are sent by the client. If you see the client send so many invitations, try to avoid the invitation. In my experiences, the client who really want to hire someone send fewer invitation to some selected freelancers. Maybe ten or maybe 15. But I see people sending 50 plus invitations and never ever interview a single freelancer. In most cases, they are spammers and you should avoid the spammers. But before doing that, please cross check with the other six criteria I mentioned just now. Many new clients don't understand what they need. And that's why sometimes good clients also send too many invitations. Cross checking is a necessary part whenever you are applying for a job or accept an invitation. Is that clear? That's it. Let's jump into the next question. The question is how to answer an invitation? Well, you already know the answer. Use the same LSD method for answering the invitation. But remember, an invitation is always better than a regular job post. Because whoever invites you in general interested in you. That's why they invite you. They check your profile and then decide to send you an invitation. So in the case of an invitation, you are one step ahead of sending the proposal for public job post, right? The client is already interested to work with you. What you need is to close the deal. Now most philos start with the phases, like thank you for your invitation. I personally try to avoid this sound like some copy paste template to the client. Just apply the LSD method and it will give you a better result than a simple thank you at the very beginning. Still, if you want to thank the client, that's okay, no problem. You can do it. My advice is, write things that are relevant to the job at first and then say thanks to the client at the last. Let me show you some example. Here is an invitation I got. And it says, we have Avada WP. Then there is a link. Want to fix, add, and change few things. In addition to redesign some pages, please see the attached dog. Okay, here is my answer. Hello Dr. Kimo. I have been checking your website and I want to thank you from my heart because you are doing really a great job by helping people to quit smoking. One of my relatives got cancer for this dangerous habit. Thumbs up. Let's stock business. You need a Wordpress website now. It has two meaning that you are using any Wordpress template and modify it. Or you can create design for each individual page and then create the Wordpress site accordingly. The question is, what do you want to do? Well, if you have some time to discuss the project, it will be great. Can you please message me a suitable time for a quick apo chat? Thanks for the invitation. Okay. You see I started with addressing the client by his name. Okay. And appreciate him for his work that is becoming liable, the L. Then ask him a very relative questions, means becoming a problem solver or S, and finally end with a CTA that with a doable action. That is the D part, right? At the very least, I thanked him for the invitation. That's simple. And I own the job. Even Wordpress was not my special area at that time. Now if this was a public job post, I never applied for the job because the job title clearly told that the job was not fit the line of my work. But as it was an invitation. So I took the chance, I had little knowledge of Wordpress then, and I thought I can do it. So I accepted it. But if I knew nothing about Wordpress, I surely declined it. If you have little experience, you can take your chance to. But again, be honest if you feel you cannot make it, just declined the invitation. Okay, here is another example of an invitation. You see, this is again an invite only job. And it says, let me read it, Logo design and branding. The logo on there is a link is graphically confused. The logo needs to stand free of the blue ribbon behind it and it doesn't. Someone thought the blue background panel wave through the frame on the logo would be interesting, but it isn't. The logo needs to be lifted graphically above the background, which involves adding some defining lines to the whole system. Then we have two more with the same problem. My answer was like that, Hello, Pat. This is because the logo has a PNG format or SVG format. There is blank space between the blue border and the white area. What I will do that I will fill the space with water color and then the logo will be over the background. It will take a little time to do it. Are you interested? Please feel free to contact me back. Thanks. You see I just pointed out the problem and told exactly what to do to solve it, right? Simple, short and to the point even. No formal thanks for inviting me. Yes, I own the short time job with the $50 per hour rate. That's it. Now you understand how to answer an invitation, right? Let's check out the last questions. Why decline invitation a must do? I already told you that many invitations are random and sometimes irrelevant. Just decline them to keep your responsiveness better. Now, what is responsiveness? It is a metric calculated by upwork. And it defines how quickly you do response while a client sends even invitation. Okay? Faster you do, your responsiveness will perform better. Suppose you get ten invitations, and four of them are irrelevant. You didn't accept the invitations or didn't even decline them. Now, what happens in that case, the upwork will consider this as a lack of your responsiveness and your response rate will go down Pork stops showing these metrics on your public profile from the beginning of 2020. But it doesn't mean park, stop calculating this metric, okay? They monitor your responsiveness and it goes bad. Your rank will go down to. In a nutshell, a bad response rate makes your impression bad to the park search algorithm. That's why decline invitation is a must do. Well, one prote for you, whatever you do accept or decline the invitation, do it within 24 hours. It will keep your response rate high. Okay. There is another reason for which you should decline the irrelevant invitations. While you decline an invitation, normally ask you for a reason. You see a pop up with a list of reasons like job is not fit for my scale, not interested in work type, you just need to select anyone from the list. Or you can select other and type your own reason. Now, while you are doing this, you are giving up the information why you declined the invitation, right? With this information, the upwork search algorithm can find more suitable invitation for you. That's why if you see an invitation that is irrelevant, just decline it. Okay, that's all about invitation. We have finished all the queries about invitation. I hope you find this lesson extremely helpful. See you in the next lesson. Thank you so much. 21. How to deal with screening questions fearlessly: Hi, welcome back. We are almost done about how to write winning proposals, But before ending, a few things we will cover in this lesson. The topics we'll cover in this lesson is actually three questions. Number one is a screening question. Number two, how to answer screening questions. And number three, I beat more than the budget set by the client. Okay, let's answer the question one by one. First question is, what is a screening question? In many job posts, you might notice that some questions asked by the client. These questions are called screening questions. When clients post a job, they see a list of selected questions suggested by P or client can ask their own questions. In most cases, clients select questions randomly from the list. And times the questions are out of the list, they made their own questions. But still, these questions have played an important role in the selection process. Why? Because this is the first thing client sees when opening your proposal. Yes, not the proposal you write. The question comes first as you see on the screen, okay? This is how the client see. When you send a proposal to the client, you need to gain the attention of the client in the very first screening question. Again, you can apply the same LSD method to answer the question. Let me show you an example. Here is a job post. Let me read it. Hello. We are producing two products for our organization in which we need professional level graphic design. And formatting that creatively and compelling displays the results of mostly qualitative research. We envision both being handouts of dips that are quickly and easily digestible to the reader product. One summary of research, a two page bulleted summary of our research findings in countering violent extremism over the last year and a half. The content will already be copy edited and ready for layout and product to summary of who we are as a research organization. This will include number of respondents interviewed, where we have done research, what our added value and capacities are, where are our strengths, Team configuration, approach to research. Okay? As you see, the job was to design a report on violent extremism in Africa. Okay? With the job post, the client ask a question, actually, not a single question, it was a combination of three questions, randomly peaked from upper list. And the question is like that, what past projects or job have you had that is most like this one? And why? Why do you think you are a good fit for this particular project? Three, what challenging part of this job are you most experienced in? Okay, I answered the questions like this. Dear UK client, I noticed you are looking for help designing two of your products, a visually appealing way countering violent extremism over the last year and a half. It seems to me that your projects are completely realized based and will be a great help for the humanity. I appreciate your effort. Indeed, a few days back, I designed a one page layout for a non profit company that helps kids all over the world. Below is the testimonial of that satisfied client. I attach the outcome PDF for you with the application. Please see the attachment, then I put the testimonial. If you are looking for another style of work, I can show you an annual report I did for some client. Please see the attachment, still need more. Feel free to message me. I will be happy to send you some more examples. I did more than 15 plus designs like yours over the last six months and my expertise in Indesign and Illustrator helped me to make stands out. Thanks. Actually, this is like a cover letter I put as answer of the screening questions. You see, I didn't go through the common path as all other filancers do. Rather than giving some of my past projects or my qualification list, I just persuade the client from the beginning. The UK client was the first step. Asking the client by the location right then, I appreciate their work which made me liable. That is the L part of the LD method. And then I give them some relevant projects with a testimonial of that particular project that established my authority. That is the part. Finally, I asked the client to Mrs. me if they need different examples, that is the D or doable action from the L method. This is how I focused on the question first and then the Coverletor. As I mentioned, almost every relevant part in the screening question, I made my Coverletor very small. It was like this. Hi, I see your job post carefully and it seems very interesting to me. I'd love to work with such projects. You have stated I have some questions about the design part number one, are the designs going to be used on the web or there for print? Number two, can you tell me the paper size? Number three, Do you have any logo of your organizations? However, if I can answer any questions for you, please click on the send message button for a brief discussion for your time to read my proposal. Mr. see in the cover letter, I also applied some approaches from the SD method. I asked three relevant questions. Okay. That's it. And as a result, I earned $1,153 That's the technique you need to apply while you are answering screening questions. Now, some screening questions are not from the list. It means clients know very well what they're asking. In that case, answer to the point. Okay, don't try to get out of the text. Let me explain it with an example. Here is another job post. And the job post was like that. We need graphic designer to clean up my Dak that I created in Pott. Add graphics photos, illustrations break up the text, make it look engaging. We have a brands and color guide. Look at the page, then there is a link. If this project is successful, we have more work down the road. We are a training company constantly developing training and workbooks. Our trusted graphic designer has taken a full time position after working with me for over eight years timeline. Immediately you elegant and time less are not afraid of color. You are an experienced professional graphic designer for at least three years and have a portfolio you can show that clearly outlines what you can do. You are able to follow direction, but not afraid to make suggestions when what you do looks way better than what I envision. You will find that I like that a lot. You have good communication skills and respond during work hours within a reasonable time frame. You are professional then you are not an agency but an individual provider. You speak fluent English. Thank you. If you see the job was to redesign some Powerpoint file, but you see the client also post a question. And the question was different, not from the upwork list. And the question was, what makes your design different? Okay, My answer was consistency. This is the most important difference. You can see my works, and you will find that every slide is consistent according to the design aesthetics, like the margin color space, fonts and other design elements. Here are some works you may want to see. Then I put work lings. You see the answer was short. And to the point, I put some work links to the answer. Now there are two reasons for putting work links inside the answer. The first reason is I want to show the client that whatever I am telling in the answer is true. If the client see the works, the client will see that my work is really consistent according to the design aesthetic, as I said in the answer. The second reason is I want to prove my authority in the screening questions. What if the client never goes and check my proposal, where I put my work link right? I didn't give her that chance. Also, I didn't make it robotic either. I put the work links as it was the part of the answer. Be honest with your answer. Keep it short to the point. No extra talks and try to apply at least one to two approaches from LSD method to prove that you are capable to do the job. This $120 job later expanded to 1,300 plus dollar job. This client worked with me for more than four years later outside per That's all about screening questions. I hope you now understand how to answer screening questions without fear. Why should you focus on the question first and then you should focus on the proposal? You can download the mostly asked screening questions list attached to this video. Now comes the last question, which is, can I beat more than the budget set by the client? The answer is yes. Many quality clients don't know the exact cost of a particular project. They just put a random figure in their budget. First, you need to check the client's quality history, feedback, et cetera, as I told earlier. And if you fail, the client is a great client and you are good enough to complete the client job. Then you can bid more than the budget set by the client. Remember to get the extra money you need to give some extra service than other freelancers. Think out of the box and find out what you can give extra and mention it in your cover letter. For example, a client needs a word dog to be designed nicely. You can offer an extra cover page for the dog. Okay, This extra offer gives clients a real satisfaction and they will be happy to pay you more than their said budget. Remember, great clients always seek quality, worse quality comes first to them and then the money. If you had a solid proposal, the client will respond, even if your proposed budget is high, you can convince the client, or at least you can negotiate. Here is an example for you. From the screenshot, you see the client's budget was $300 and my bid was $400 See, client responded and clearly told that my bid was out of his budget. I didn't say just no, I cannot do your work or your budget is too much cheap like that. Rather than use these common phrases, I gave him a solid reason and still I managed to earn $60 extra then his budget. Okay, that's all guys. I hope you have enjoyed the entire course and found it extremely helpful for building your upper career. I encourage you to share your winning proposals in the discussion board or comment section so that other can get help from you. After all, this is our duty to make this world a better place and what can be the best way rather than sharing and caring for each other. Right, so thank you so much for being with me for this long time. Have a good day. Bye bye. 22. 22 A to Z of Client Management From Onboarding To Ending Contracts: Hi, welcome back. We are at the very end of this course. You now know how you can get quality invite by strategically positioning yourself. Also, you know how to win jobs from public post by writing winning proposals using the LSD method. Right now, I want to tell you something that probably no one will tell who teach you financing on upwork. But still, I think you should know that the fact is, do not completely rely on upwork only when it is the question of your financing business. Why? Because financing marketplaces has their own rules and you have to play by their rules. But when you have your own clients, you have the complete freedom. You don't need to worry about the terms and conditions. You don't need to worry about the competition. And you don't need to leave with the fear that upper can ban your profile anytime for any reason. Yes, work may be the first step toward the freedom you seek from financing. But it's not the ultimatum. Your main goal should be create a sustainable business and getting regular projects from your existing clients on upwork and outside work. Because a client with regular business makes your life easy, you have a regular income source, you don't have to worry about sending proposals one after another. I always suggest you to build your own client base, outside work also, or outside any financing marketplace. Okay? Anyway, in this lesson, I will tell you everything about client management on upwork. Let's start getting repeat. Business depends on mainly two things. The first thing is your communication and another is the work you provide to the client. The quality work with great communication, built trust. Once client trust you, they never bother to find another philancer. You can improve your work quality. Anytime it's completely up to you more, you study more, you practice. You will be more skilled, don't you? I'm not focusing on quality work. In this lesson, we will talk about communication mainly. Okay, believe me, a great fhilancer has tremendous communication skills. It doesn't mean they have great English skill or any other language skills. Even people like me who have not a very clear idea of English can also be a good communicator. Communication skills means the ability to share your ideas and feelings effectively. Let me show you some examples. Suppose you are not available after 04:00 P.M. And how can you tell this to your client? Normally people will say like this. I will not available after 04:00 P.M. But a good communicator tells the same thing differently. He or she will say, I'm available till 04:00 P.M. See the difference? Well, there are so many examples like this that was not included in the price we set. This is a common phrase, but a good communicator will say this like this. This will cost you an additional x, y, z dollar. The thing is good. Communication never means language skills. It means to express your thoughts positively if, if the subject is negative. Anyway, we will discuss how to communicate with clients. From getting a job to ending the contract. Right? Let's jump first thing first. What should you do when you receive a job offer? Now, when you get a job offer, first, thanks to the client for this offer. Express your passion and enthusiasm by saying them a warm thanks and then check the offer carefully. Is there anything missing? In very few cases, clients asked you to do a particular job and add additional work and don't want to pay for this extra work. When you are accepting an offer, make sure you clearly state what the conditions are. It can be used later as a written proof if anything goes wrong. Okay, here is a sample script you can use as a reference. Hi, then put your client name. Thanks for the offer. I'm really excited to work with you and your team. Before we start working together, I just want to recall the project details we have agreed on. Final deliverable 18 slides. Powerpoint presentation including three rounds of revisions also need the original PPT file. A printed PDF budget is dollar 360 deadline 21st April, breakdown milestone $1 71st draft with five slides to ensure look and feel on. 13th April. Milestone $2.30 revisions on first draft on 15th April. 3 rounds of revisions, Milestone $3 200 final draft with all 18 slides on 18th April and Milestone $4.60 revisions on final draft on 20 April. 3 rounds of divisions please give me the necessary files before 12th April in order to meet the deadline. If this project requires any additional slides, I'll be happy to do it for you at dollar 20 per slide or we can discuss a budget on that later. Thanks again. Hope to work with you for a long time, then put your name. If this is an hourly job, you can break down the deadline and give the client a rough idea about how many hours it takes to finish the project, okay? For example, suppose the project is to design a three page website design and you have 14 days to do so. Then you can break down the project like this. Lst one home page design seven working days, around 50 hours. Lst two edits and finalize three working days, around 25 hours, malt three about us and contact a space design two working days around 15 hours. Fourth milestone about us and contact us, Pay edits and finalize one working day around 7 hours and fifth milestone. Any last minute edits and fixing errors. If there is any one working day around 5 hours, this is how you can break down a project. If it's a hourly job. Here is a T for you. Try to wrap up the project less than your quoted hours. Like if you tell the client it will take 25 hours, try to end it within 23 hours. This will make your clients happy and make you more liable to the client. This save some money from their estimated budget. Okay. There comes a caution with this step also to make the client happy. Do not undercoat the hours. Suppose the project needs a solid 25 hours or a maximum of 30 hours. Then tell the client the estimated hours are 30 hours. While you finished it within 26 hours, the client is still happy. But what if you tell the client the estimated time is 22 hours and you took 26 hours? The client may be happy then, but do you don't undersell your service and also promise both are bad for the business. The right way is to be honest. Okay? Anyway, let's enter into the second part, and that is how you should communicate during a project. You need to give a regular update to the client during a project. Now, giving regular updates doesn't mean annoying them after every correction you made. It's a better way to break up the entire project into parts before starting the work. Like the previous example I told you, it clearly tells the clients when they have to expect an update. If you do the breakdown first, you need to just follow up the timeline. Like in the previous example, you just give clients update only for five times, right? You can use this sample script as a reference while giving the client an update. Let me read it high, Client Name. My thought behind using the icons is to ensure the relationship between your company and the oil companies. You see, I used totally custom icons rather than the icons already used on your website. I can change them anytime, just very excited to know your thoughts on it. Diggers, you see in the draft I have mentioned what I did and why I did it. You can give an explanation as well as some great suggestions. But remember, if the client had very clear instructions and set up rules, whatever idea you want to input, make sure they are bound by the client's rule. Sometimes the client may not like your idea. If it is very unique, it hurts. I know, but you are a good communicator, right? Just keep it, find another idea or ask the clients relevant questions to understand their needs, Then do your revisions accordingly, and again, send an update. Honestly, if you are organized from the very beginning, break down the work schedule, give a regular update with proper suggestions, then you are likely to open a door of getting more business from the same client. But in the host case scenario, there are a few clients who you can never make happy. Then what, what to do with such inappropriate clients. Now by saying inappropriate, I mean the client is dishonest and cheap. The client needs $1 100 quality but wants to spend only dollar five. What should you do with such clients? I already told you how to identify these types of clients by reviewing the client's history, feedback, et cetera. Okay. But still, if you understand in the middle of the project that the client is in the worst category, then stop wasting your time by redoing work again and again and end the contract at once. From your end, it will be better, but not mandatory that you refund the milestone paid by the client. I know it hurts, but by doing this you can keep your profile clean. A very negative review on top of your profile just slows you down. While defund the money, the job will not be seen in your public profile, and whatever the review clients give you doesn't matter at all. Okay? Once I refunded $300 to an unfair client after doing five days of work, it was a pathetic experience. The client's recent history was full of negative reviews. I don't know why I accepted the invitation. I lost $300.05 days and a lot of mental energy. But still I learned from that mistakes too. Anyway, this rarely happens. I told you this so that you can keep track of everything like deadline milestones, cost messages, and files from the beginning and can use them later if there happens something wrong, okay? You can flag such clients as inappropriate and send up work, all messages and screenshots maybe por, suspends the client's accounts forever. Okay? Finally, what should you do when the job is done? I'm not saying of ending the contract. What should you do when you understand that the job is nearly finished and the client will go to end the contract soon? There is a very simple but effective trick to make your business relationship better with the client. Many filancers don't even know it literally. This simple trick can bring you more work and what it is, just ask the client if there is any other project you can help with. But do not say it like a greedy or needy one. Keep it polite and simple. Is there anything I can help you with today? That's it. Pretty simple question. Many cases, client may say, yes, I have Xyz project. Do you do this work? If it is something you are good at, you are going to get another project, right? But you are not fit for the project client asked for. What if the client say, oh no, I don't have any project right now, but we may have similar projects in the future. In that case, take this answer as a breach of business relationship and inform them what else, services you can provide. And ask the client when should you follow up with the client. Okay, here is a script for your reference. Is there anything I can help you with today client for asking? But currently we have no such projects matching your skills. But we need your help near future for a similar type of works. Thanks. I'll be happy to work with you again, by the way, except for Wordpress developing, I'm also good at HP and Shoppe developing. If you need help with these types of jobs, you can contact me anytime here at up. It will be my pleasure to help you. Should I follow up with you on X T? The client will answer your question based on that answer, mark some date on your calendar or your to do list for following up with the client. Trust me, I get many projects even after a full year by following up with my existing clients. But remember one thing, Do not make things spare me respect their time and privacy and follow up without annoying your clients. Okay, with this very simple technique, you are not only showing your gratitude and professionalism, but also create some opportunity to get further jobs from the client. Believe me, most filancers miss the magic of the powerful trick. They just finish with a simple thank you. Like thousands of common felancwers, clients just forget about them. This simple question gives clients a reason to remember you. They understand that you are interested to work with them. This passion, along with your quality work, helps them to remember you, okay? Give the client a reason to remember you. They will give you more works for sure, Okay? Finally, ask the client to end the contract and give you a great public feedback. Ask it just one time and ask it politely, remember. High ticket clients are really busy people. So many times they haven't time to end the contract or give you feedback even after asking them to do so. In that case, keep your contract open for a while and wait for the response. My suggestion is to keep the contract open for at least one to two weeks, okay? And then send them a message again to remind them of ending the contract. Our goal is not to annoy them by asking for feedback again and again. You can send one or maximum of two reminders after a certain period of gaps, like maybe one week or two weeks. If they don't respond even after you reminder, just end the contract on your end. Because an open but inactive contract just makes your job success go down. If the client is unresponsive, wait for a few weeks, maybe two to six weeks, depending on the project size and the relationship with the client, then end the contract. Here is a real example of how I asked and send reminders to a client for ending the contract and got a great review. Let me show you, well this is the reminder I sent to the client. Hi Sam, Here are all files along with the fonts and images I have used for the report. There are two indesign files. One is a print ready file, Another is for web or digital use. Anyway, are you able to leave me a quick review before ending the contract? If you want to end it now so that others can see the type of work I do. I know how busy you are, so if you are not able to, I completely understand. Thanks again. The client respond? Yes, of course. But can you please remind me to do so next week? I am swamped this week. It will be my pleasure, but please make sure of the confidentiality of the outputs please. I will access the drive later today. And I send a reminder after one week it was like that, Hi Sam, I don't really want to disturb you but as you said, I just give you a humble reminder about the review and closing the contract. Hope you don't mind it. Thanks. The client replied, Dear Shag, I ended the contract and tried to also include the following feedback. Then he write a feedback. Sager has been a very effective and responsive consultant. He clearly understood the task immediately and did not require any supervision. He laid the task and completed it in a very professional manner. I would highly recommend Hagar for any work that is short for him. If it does not show up, please let me know and I will conduct work. I noticed that it gave me an error while I submitted the review, so please check it if it is uploaded or not. I replied. Thanks for your great review. I have got it. I'll be happy to work with you again. You can message whenever you need. Thanks again. This is how you can ask for a feedback and remind your client for feedback later after one year this client hired me for their company outside work. And literally, I earned thousands of dollars from this particular client. Well, this is another story. Let me back to the topic. Here is another effective tip to be connected with the client even after the work is done. But before telling you the tip, let me tell you a story. First. Once I had to repair one of my furniture, it was a wooden one, and I was looking for a carpenter. I found one. He did great. I was happy and took his phone number for further needs. After a few months, again, I needed some carpentery work to do. I called him, but he was on a vacation, so I hired someone else. This new one was also very good, so I took his number and saved it. A few days later, on the day of first January, I got a what's up message from the second carpenter saying, wish you and your family a happy new, you know, it was really amazing. I was really impressed. And next time I called the second carpenter later, he informed that he also decorated the kitchen, can set up windownates for protecting rooms from birds. However, anything related to carpentery or service like that, I now ask for his suggestion. Any of my friend ask for the same type of support. I always recommend him see the difference. A simple wish made him more liable than the first one and I'd become a regular client for him. This is the power of communication and trust. Do you have a proper list of clients you have already worked with? If yes, then it is great. If no, just make a simple list. You can use Microsoft Excel or you can use Google Sheet. To do a list and once you made it, find out the occasions. You can send them a wish, but don't get too personal. Find some common events like New Year, Christmas, dual Ramadan, et cetera. One more thing to remember, make sure you send the right wish to the right person. Like dually doesn't ring a bell to a Christian client living in the US. Make your list according to your clients and every month check if there is anything you can send your clients this month. Again, make your wish card relevant. Do not annoy your clients unnecessarily. You know, yearly one to two cards are good enough, Okay? And here is a professional tip. Just do not send an image picked from Google randomly, add your name and your service list on the image, or you can create an e mail signature which describes your service. I personally use email signature for sending cards. One more thing. If you are sending mail via mail, do not attach the image. Drag out, drop the image in the message box. When clients open the mail, they can see the image directly. Don't need to download the attachment. That's it. We are done. But before ending the course, here are the milestones you need to achieve. As an upper filancers, the first milestone is to get the first job. This is going to be really tough. Getting the first job is always difficult. I personally get my first job after 1.5 month, I guess. But don't lose your hope in this phase, you have to go through many try and Tate, Okay, so keep going. And then comes the second milestone. Try to get three to five jobs within the next three months of your first job, okay? And it will help you to earn the Rising Talent Badge, which is your third milestone. Then you need to earn $1,000 and try to make sure your earning in last 12 months remains $1,000 or more. Also, you need to maintain your job success score, 90% or more to achieve the fifth milestone, which is the top rated badge. Okay, and then comes your six milestone, which is to earn $10,000 or more from upper. This will help you to get invitations from upwork enterprise clients, which leads you to get talent Clouds badges also, okay? And then you have a lot of windows and opportunities probably. You will then get direct offers as I get now, even without sending a proposal or getting an invitation, okay? And finally, try to make sure your earning in the last 12 months remains $10,000 or more. And your job success score is 90% plus to achieve the seventh milestone. And that is earning top rated plus badge. After that, maybe you can get an expert weighted badge from upper. But as it is invite only for now, so I don't want to put it in this milestone. So that's all your milestone for upper. I already achieved my six milestones and now I have enough clients outside up. I don't have the time to check up regularly. If I, from a non English country can achieve this, I know you can do it also, right? So, check out the milestone thoroughly and mark where you are now. Make your action plan, achieve the next milestone. And note down how much time it takes. And don't forget to share your experience with me and others. Sharing and caring for each other can make it better world. And it can start with you, isn't it? Well, that's all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to me for this very, very long time. Please share your feedback and suggestions. All my efforts will be meaningful if you get some real values from this course. Well, thanks again for your precious time. Wish you all the best. 23. How To Find High Quality Clients Using Advanced Search: Hi guys, welcome to this bonus lesson. In this lesson, I will show you how you can find high quality clients using search option in upwork. Let's sit on upwork, okay. For finding jobs posted by high quality clients, you can use the search option to do it. Just click here and type anything that is related to your keyword. Maybe presentation design, for example. And then you will find a page like this in the lab site. There are different filters. You can use the filters to select high quality clients. Now first comes the category section. Now I don't want you to select anything from this category because it will narrow down your searches. Because many times when client post job, they select multiple categories. Don't select anything from this category section. And then comes the experience level. Many good clients do not select experience level when they post job. So keep it empty for job type. Select hourly and put your minimum or maximum hourly rate. Now a client who posts a job for say, $5 per hour, usually a cheap client. You can put your minimum expected hourly rate here. For example, it is 50 for maximum, you can put anything like 500. It's up to you for fixed price, you should put a minimum or maximum price because there are many job posts with $10 or $5 Don't select anything like this. Put your minimum and maximum value for myself. I always like to put 500. You can put any number you think you're comfortable with. Maybe $300 to maximum say $10,000 okay? And then comes the number of proposal section, this is very important. Select less than five to ten, maximum ten to 15, because if you select 15 to 20 or 22 50, it means the job you are going to send a proposal for has already get many proposals. So don't select these two options. You can select up to 15 proposal, that's good. Then must select payment verified options. Then comes the client history. No, his one to nine, his ten plus his man And good clients have no highest history because they are new to this platform. Don't select anything from here. Here comes the location, this is very important. Most of the upward job are posted from the United States. If you want to get quality clients, most of the clients comes from US locations, select United States. Okay, well you can select client time zone, but this is not important. Skip this section. Talent clouds are for you. If you are already in some talent clouds. For myself, there are a few talent clouds. But if you are not in any talent clouds, then this option will not be available for you. Even if the option is available, Don't select anything from this list, okay. Then come the project length, Keep it as it is, okay? Then hours per week. It means how many hours you want to work. So keep it as it is. And then connects needed also keep it as it is. Same for the job duration. These are few filters you need to put when you are searching for a high quality client. First of all, the hourly rate. Set the limit for fixed price project. Set the limit for proposals, Set the number of maximum proposals, and make sure the client payment method is verified. And select your location. Okay. And then click on the advance search section and you can put all your related keywords in any of these words section. Just click it here. Presentation design, say Pitch Deck, say Power Point, and so on. And then click on search, okay, The search result will find. Those particular jobs that has these particular keywords. And if the job is fixed price, the range, if the job is hourly, the range should be this, and the number of proposal is maximum 15. The client's payment method must be verified and the clients are from United States. And when you are done, you can save the search for further use. Just click on Save Search and name it properly. I personally name it like this. Hq clients. Q means high quality clients, US. I already have a search result on the same name. That's why this is showing I'm writing taste here, okay. And once it is done, click Okay. This is how you can save your searching for high quality clients. You can do the same for other locations, like go to current location and select United Kingdom, because this is another area from where the clients high quality jobs, then Canada, then neither land, and so on. When you were done, you will see now there shows the locations, Canada, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States. As we already saved our search with United States, Just delete it from the list. You see for this particular word, there is no search. Anyway, you can save it. Click Save Search and write it. Hq Clients global I saved. That's why it is showing the save search already exists. Well, let's right test. Okay. Then click on Save. Once it is done, if you click on Find Work section, the HQs test, Q clients global test. If you click on this particular search, it will show almost all of your saved filters. I don't know why, but very recently there are some errors. While you are clicking on Save, you can fix the error. I'm going to show you how what happens here. You see this payment verified filter is deleted. So just check it. Another problem is here, That's why there is no search result. Just click on Advanced search. We put these keywords in any of those words, right? But now it is showing in this all of these words. Box, just cut it and paste it here. And click on here. Okay. You now get your search result. This is how you can find high quality clients. Okay, that's it. You can change your search result anytime, you can delete it anytime. To delete or edit Safe search, just click on this three and click on Edit Safe Search. You will find your Sap searches here. I'm deleting this one and this one, okay? And click on Done. That's all. Hope this bonus lesson will help you. Thanks for watching. 24. How To Track & Send Proposals To Your Previous Client's Job Posts: Hi guys, welcome to this bonus lesson. In this lesson, I will show you how you can track your existing clients job post on work. And how you can send them your proposal without losing connects. Okay, Well, let me show you that. Okay, to track down your previous client's job post, just type anything in the search for job section, say word press, you will get a filter in the electron side. From here you see in the client information, there is an option called my previous client. Just select it, but you will not find any search result here. To find the search result, go to Advance Search and delete the keyword type here. And then click on Search again. Okay, Now you find all your vous client job posts. For example, this one. This job post was posted yesterday. This job post was posted 20 hours ago. Now how can you understand exactly which client post the job? To get the information you'll find there is a link of your previous job post. Just click on this particular link. What you need to do, just click on Messages section and type a personal messages to the client that, hey, I saw a job post on work that you need a J, I'm interested to work with the project. I already worked with you for this particular project. If you are interested, we can have a chat. This will save your connects. If the client is interested, he or she will answer you and you can go further from there. Okay, well, let's go back again. Go back, so this is how you can track down your previous client's job post. And you can save the search. Just click on Safe Search option and write it. Previous clients, I already saved a search in the same name. That's why it is showing I'm writing it. Test, okay. Then click on say, well, now go to Find Or Section. If you click on previous clients, test this saved search, you will find all the job posts from your previous clients. But recently, Por has some issue with safe search. For example, here you see my previous clients is not selected. So in that case, you need to select this and you will find your previous clients job. Okay, Anyway, let's delete this Sap Search. To do it, just click here, Sap Search and delete, okay? So this is how you can track your previous client's job. Here is the recap of the listen. First of all, find previous client's job post as I already showed you. Then check your search at least once a day. I mean the Sap search option. Then send the client a personal message if you find a knee job posted by the client, okay, tell the client that you just saw their job post, mention your last work and tell you are interested to work again with them and do not apply for the job. If the client is interested, he or she must reply your message and you can proceed from there. In that case, you can save your connects. Okay, so that's all. Thank you so much. 25. Upwork Direct Contracts: Hi guys, welcome to the bonus lesson. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about direct contracts from February 20, 2020. Por introduces direct contracts facility. Now what is direct contracts? The pilancers who has clients already outside Por can deal financially with their existing clients via up. In short, they can work with their existing clients and can take the payments via upper like Paypal or Pioneer. Well in Paypal, when clients send you an amount, Paypal charges percent plus tax on 5% as service fees. This may varies on your location. Once you got $100 from a client, Papal will give you around $94 The same thing for up direct contracts, but here the charge is only 3.4% You will say almost 2.6% if you compare it with Papal. The good thing is your clients don't need an pork account. Also, your payment is protected by escrow. The clients should pay you first before you begin a project. Another advantage is your earnings from the clients will be shown in your profile. So it will overall gives a good impression to your profile. But I personally don't use this direct contracts option for saving some extra money because I don't want to disclose my client information to upper anyway. If you want it, you can do it for yourself. Let me show you how. Okay. For direct contracts, you just need to scroll down and you will find it here in the homepage. Just click on it, you can create a contract. Just click on this button, put your client's e mail ID, client's name, and the job description. And you can select hourly. If it is hourly, then put your hourly date. You see the upper fees is 3.4% It means if your hourly date is 100, then you will get 96 point $6 And this is the weekly limit. Suppose you want to work 10 hours every week. Your total budget will be $1,000 Your client should deposit $1,000 It will be deposited in Escrow. Once the project is done, upwork will release the payment, okay. And once it is done, you can click on Next. Same for the fixed price. Just select it and go to Next. And you have to follow the steps. Okay? That's pretty simple. I'm not going to go detail there because I personally don't like this option because in this option I have to disclose my client's information to upwork, which I don't like. That's why I don't use it. But if you want to use it, you can do it. It will save you some money. That's all I hope you understand about direct contracts. Thank you so much for watching.