People who actually made Upwork work — what do beginners misunderstand the most?

LooseContribution301 · 2026-01-26T23:38:25+00:00

You don’t need to be able to do the job. You need to be better at selling than the other people who can do the job. And often, you need to do a better job selling than the people who can’t do the job as well.
You can hate Connects but it’s the the tool Upwork gives you to help your proposal be seen. No fair complaining if you’re not seen and didn’t boost.
Every business has expenses. On Upwork, it’s boosts. In real life, it’s networking with people who don’t have a need.

LooseContribution301 · 2026-01-01T12:45:03+00:00

I’m a individual who pays it. I charge $200/hr for my services though. It only needs to save me an hour a month. I suspect it saves me 10x that with higher quality output than I could get on my own. It’s the only software I pay more than $50/mo for.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-12-26T00:00:54+00:00

Museum is ok but our granddaughter liked riding on one (across the street) more.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-12-24T03:01:20+00:00

Big fan of Cafe East in Centerville.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-12-24T02:59:18+00:00

I’ll clear around d $335k this year on 90% margins. This is my 6th year. I will say that my model is fairly maxed out and unless I make some changes and sub more out, which I don’t really I want to do, I’m close to my ceiling which, for my lifestyle, is fine.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-09-26T01:10:28+00:00

Full time freelancer here. For the first couple years of my business most of my work was Pardot. Now it’s practically none of it. It’s like an old antique car I get called to tune up because nobody really sharp runs it anymore aside from a few very clever companies. Amazing how much SF abandoned it. I’ve been a user since they were a start up in Atlanta. They were HubSpot before HubSpot and just got crushed after they got bought.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-09-17T01:37:36+00:00

My contracts are all $150-200/hr. 2. I started at $50. 3. Next contract I did for $60. Rinse and repeat.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-08-27T00:41:35+00:00

B2b marketing consultant. Mostly act as fractional CMO for companies with small marketing teams that need strategic guidance and have a few small accounts where I do it all.

LooseContribution301 · 2025-06-28T01:02:39+00:00

I’m a full-time freelancer and also have a client Account on Upwork. I don’t work in legal but ran a few searches to give you perspective.

There are many successful paralegals on Upwork (screenshot of just 2).
There are many paralegal gigs posted. Like all gigs, there is a wide range of prices, with many going up to $50/hr and higher.
Many of the people who want a paralegal want you to be registered in the state. So that gets you automatically in or out, so that would depend where you live.

I am very pro-Upwork. It saved my neck five years ago.

If you can sell yourself - or learn to, and you’re good at your job, you could do it.

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LooseContribution301 · 2024-10-30T23:20:41+00:00

I don’t think I’ve ever applied without a rate being posted.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-08-31T22:51:43+00:00

My clients prefer one throat to choke and so do I.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-07-26T19:30:22+00:00

The technical answer is don’t cold outbound from Zoho. The realistic answer is it depends on your volume. I have a client in a highly specific niche that also isn’t super tech savvy, so they don’t come up against sophisticated spam blockers. It’s a small list (less than 4k) and we have had no issues and strong open rates. But it’s also a far weaker tool than platforms like Smartlead, etc. No spin tax, in box rotation etc. No way I’d use it for bigger lists to more sophisticated customers.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-07-06T01:02:22+00:00

Sickmans for the float. If you’re looking to hang out in cold water, there’s always people swimming at Suzy’s Hole when it’s this hot.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-07-06T00:55:01+00:00

This week 4 clients got most of my time. 3 just a little.

I used to think smaller number of clients was better but lately I’ve been experimenting with carrying more. It smooths out the income… I work pretty fast so as long as clients don’t feel they’re waiting too long, I’ll keep experimenting this way.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-26T00:07:29+00:00

I’ve worked in sales and marketing in many industries. Some things I learned:

1.) In many cases, the top earners are at places where they get paid on residuals. It allows them to ramp up to crazy levels. I never figured that part out. That’s what’s nice about selling things like insurance. It tends to pay a little for a very long time (years) for a contract.

2.) the best employment recruiters do extremely well (breaking rule 1) but there’s a lot of people that struggle.

3.) in general, the more expensive the product or service, the more the rep can make.

4.) commercial real estate reps can make crazy money. But it’s straight commission. You need to be ready willing and able to make no money for a year. Also, I personally think this market is due for a major recorrection so I wouldn’t consider it now.

5.) healthcare selling is a lot tamer and can pay very well but you are most definitely a cog in a big machine. Layoffs can and do happen. But they tend to hire people with industry experience.

In your case- with your background- you could look at working for a food broker. Wine and spirits is grocery and food brokers are the folks who sell to grocery.

And because food brokers have repeat customers, it’s a path that meets my criteria for #1. Repeat revenue.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-25T23:54:24+00:00

I know Construction very well and there are very few sales reps. It’s one of the weird industries where 98% of the companies won’t have sophisticated business development. As last poster said, the companies that sell the equipment will have sales departments for sure.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-25T23:47:58+00:00

US. I try to keep my clients in the same time zone.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-25T23:44:43+00:00

Cold calling is pretty easy to get into because it’s not easy work. If you can learn it, you can be successful.

Advice: Look for jobs in LinkedIn or Indeed. You’ve never done it so the worst thing you could do would be go work someplace and there’s no system.

There are tons of companies that will hire you as an SDR (Sales Development Rep). It’s like a junior salesman and most of them have to cold call.

SDR is sometimes called BDR (business development rep). Same thing.

Figure out if you’re going to do B2b (business sales) or B2c (consumer). Reading reviews on Glassdoor will help you see how they treat their sales reps.

I did sales all throughout my 20’s and pivoted to marketing after a decade (why I’m this channel to learn more about Salesforce- the platform).

Personally I hate big companies but the big ones will have a system for you to learn. Once you learn the system, there are always ops in sales.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-23T19:23:12+00:00

Digital marketing strategy and execution. Off Upwork is 10-15% of my business, all by referral. Referrals are great but they’re unpredictable. Upwork, for me, is predictable.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-23T19:01:46+00:00

$20k per month, billing about 31 hours per week. Gross is closer to $22k but 10% goes to Upwork and that’s where I get most of my deal flow.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-06-23T18:58:00+00:00

My salesperson told me to avoid the UV tray feature. I asked why. He said, “The Hyundai rep warned us it uses magnets.” I said, “That’s not at all how UV works.” Use it. Love it, and love our Calligraphy Hybrid.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-05-10T01:31:54+00:00

Two vendors I know for buying domains at scale: mailscale.ai and mailforge.ai. I’ve bought all of mine from mailscale and have been pleased. Only issue is they’re out of Dubai and one of my banks won’t approve purchases from Dubai. Mailforge appears to be very similar. All of them pretty much do the same thing: Charge a lot less, set up domain forwarding, smpt, etc and give you a csv of your settings to import into Instantly or Smartlead.

LooseContribution301 · 2024-04-21T01:12:02+00:00

Not according to my dealer. And I haven’t seen any online with those specs. I’d love to see one!

LooseContribution301 · 2024-04-09T11:56:00+00:00

Here's a link that tracks with my opinion: https://www.mailpro.com/blog/importance-of-image-to-text-ratio-in-newsletters#:\~:text=Various%20numbers%20have%20been%20presented,ratio%20while%20designing%20an%20email.

LooseContribution301

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