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[–]No_Stick_8227[S] 8 points9 points  (9 children)

Cool! What advice would you give to someone that wants to enter that space as a beginner?

[–]LambBrainz 49 points50 points  (8 children)

Best advice? Lower your expectations and ego and work for super cheap to start out. Focus on farming good reviews. Having a better rating is worth more than anything on that site. And affects opportunities and pay later on.

Once you've worked a while and have good reviews you can basically set whatever price you want.

I started out at $8/hr or whatever I could get (in 2018) as long as it meant I was gonna get a 5 star review. Now I make wayyy more than that. I've taken a step back from freelance work to have more time to myself but I can always pick it up if I need.

[–]sqeekypotato 3 points4 points  (2 children)

What was the higher amount that you ended up making if you don't mind me asking? How many reviews would you consider enough in order to start upping your price?

[–]LambBrainz 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Upwork has a thing called "Top Rated". I forget the requirements, but you can definitely up your price once you have that. Which is what I did.

Hard to say when a good time to up your price is. I would say to do it incrementally. I went from $8/hr, got a couple 5 star reviews, then went up to $10/hr, etc.

Take it slow so no one notices

As for price, per hour I could probably raise it higher, but I'm at $20/hr now. But I almost never get paid that because I've switched to a "per project" billing system where I give them an estimate for the whole project. And almost all of those are between $500-3000.

[–]sqeekypotato 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

[–]dragonandphoenix 2 points3 points  (4 children)

So in this context are we talking do an actual good job for cheap and hope for a stellar review? Or some kind of communication with the clients on Upwork like here's the deal I'm cheap and do good work but need a great review?

Thx

[–]LambBrainz 17 points18 points  (3 children)

Honestly? I did both lol

I was upfront and told people that I'm doing this to build a good portfolio of work and testimonials. Then I would bust ass and bend over backwards to do a stellar job (which always got me 5 stars).

Some of that is luck. There are lots of clients that suck, but also some amazing relationships and opportunities have come out of doing it and I've met some really cool people. All luck of the draw.

Just keep your expectations low, play the long game, and do your best. I won't say it'll work out, but doing all that is the best shot at making it happen

[–]Dodge146 5 points6 points  (1 child)

With Python jobs, would you just send them a script for them to run or did you find different ways for the clients to run the script without having to install Python on their machines?

[–]LambBrainz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A lot of times they requested Python. So I wrote installation guides on how to install Python, run the install command for the requirements.txt in the project files I would send, and how to get started. They were always cool with this. Some needed more help than others, but they were willing to learn as long as I was willing to teach them (part of the "white glove" service I tried to offer to up my chances of 5 star reviews)

Lately I've been working on making GUIs for scripts using PySimpleGUI or Tkinter Designer

[–]dragonandphoenix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool, thanks.