How to start on Upwork as a professional programmer?
Nowdays, with the price of connects quadrupled in the last year it makes only sense to be on Upwork as a professional coder if you plan to make over $100k per year. So the first points will be to give you an idea of the amount of money you will need to put into the platform and what earnings you should aim for.
1. So let’s start with the money you will need to put into the platform as a freelancer.
To apply for jobs, you will need to buy connects which are used to apply for jobs.
For example, if you want to place 5 proposals per day at 20 connects per post you will consume 3000 connects in one month. In money that is about $500. And if you place 10 proposals per day the price will be double, 6000 connects and $1000 in money. So, you will need to put between $500 and $1000 in the budget for proposals per month.
Now if you get one or more long-term jobs you won’t need to apply to new jobs for that period.
The free way to get jobs is to rely on job invitations and purchases of your projects in the project catalog. But that is unlikely to happen as a new freelancer.
2. Now let’s discuss your hourly route. To make over $100k per year you will need to have a premium hourly rate, like $100 per hour. If you have 100 hours of work during 1 month at $100 per hour you will make $10k per month and $120k per year.
Usually, you will have months with a lower amount of work and some with higher amounts of work. Now from $120k, you will pay 10% to Upwork and then pay taxes from the remaining amount.
3. Now let’s discuss the niche you will need to find. Web developers specialize in front-end development, back-end development, or both with full-stack development.
I specialize in front end and you want to choose a main CMS(content management system) with which you will work. For example Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, or Wix.
I saw that I got more profile views organically when I focused only on 1 platform in my profile title.
You can have in your profile description that you work with multiple platforms but in your title, I recommend having 1 or 2 platforms.
For the back-end, you will probably choose a database and a programming language. For example PHP and MySQP or Node.js and MongoDB.
Then for full-stack, you can use a combination of the above 2.
If you specialize in a niche and gather jobs in that area you will appear higher in search results for related searches because you worked on such projects.
4. Profile optimization. Make sure you have a good profile image and no grammatical mistakes in your profile info. There are lots of videos about profile optimization for Upwork and I will skip this part.
5. Cover letter for applying to jobs. There are also lots of videos on this topic and I will skip this part as well.
6. Portfolio section from your profile. You want to add some projects to the portfolio section so that potential clients can see the level of your work.
Make sure that the thumbnail images are professional and that you have a link for each project if the type of project has one.
There is also an option to add your previous jobs and you should add that info. Also if you have certificates from courses you can add them too.
7. Jobs: There are lots of jobs posted each day and I recommend you don’t post proposals on jobs that were posted longer than 24 hours back.
Make sure to apply to jobs that last longer than 1 week and are from clients with a clear description and the client has over 4.5 stars rating.
You want to save some searches so that you can quickly go to that page in the future. This will also influence the jobs that appear in your default feed “My feed”. I recommend you place proposals daily until you are fully booked.
8. Let’s move to feedback. You need to deliver great results in order to get great 5-star reviews from clients.
Make sure you understand clearly what the client wants and you can deliver great results.
Feedback is one of the most important parts of freelancing on Upwork. Potential clients look at what your past clients said about your work.
9. Optimization strategies and mentors. Upwork started in 2015 and since then there have been freelancers who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions.
I recommend you join a premium community of Upwork freelancers where you will learn different strategies.
Such communities are usually created by top earners.
Make sure that the creator has made at least $100k per year consistently.
10. If you're looking for additional free advice I have more videos about Upwork on my YouTube channel in the playlist "Upwork tips"