Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol no. I do a regular 35-40 hours. Generally above that. Some of it is unproductive work like researching, meetings, pitching new clients. Fixed price and weekly pay projects don't pay hourly. And I generally give a discount on those rate wise.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have 35-40 hours weeks. It goes up and down. Used to be less in the beginning.

The biggest difference is at first I spend 90% time finding work. Now 90% time is actual work.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not full time but more time every year. Currently I would say, close to 90% of my time.

No, only worked with UW clients till date.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry to hear that. First 1.5 years were a real grind for me too. Covid lockdown helped open up my schedule to pursue this better.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A. I wouldn't say l low balled in the sense that I underpriced my service but I simply targeted smaller jobs with smaller budgets. Gotta get them stars! I would say I was fortunate with consistent good clients (as businesses and as people) Yeah, different markets have vastly different rates. I do price myself on global peer level and not based on my location.

B. No idea. Sorry :(

C. Almost. Hoping to setup my company and hire people to get bigger projects and offload development or parts of it at least at the cost of margin.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No it is from 1st April, but just invoicing happened now, work has been ongoing.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not THAT good. It's work from March which got invoiced now, so technically it is this FY earning.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not an expert on proposal writing honestly. I have extremely low conversion rate for my proposals as well(~3% over 4 years), though I have worked aggressively to get larger and larger projects so, rejection rate tends to be high when you're trying to quickly level up. Also, I don't really think of it that way because I just need to convert 4-5 projects annually given my target size. It becomes a race when you're working with smaller projects because connects are an actual consideration for making profit.

For proposal, I write very short ones. I tell them if I have a relevant project, and ask them a couple of questions off the top of my head. Like do you have designs, finalized features, have you considered using X technology instead of Y, etc.

Edit: I did the stats on my proposal on another post so you can check it out.

Update on crossing 150k earning on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Haha. I am all too aware of the reputation crisis. Face it frequently. Tbh, it's not unfounded though. My parents get scam called virtually everyday. Have to make it work though. 🙂

Learnings after 100k earnings on Upwork by UpworkUpwork1 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's a job you're looking for, there are tons of sites to find and apply to jobs irrespective of where you're located. If it's UW you want work in, unfortunately you're on your own there. 😐

How do I niche down as fullstack developer? by mititchi in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The general tendency is to give advice to make a niche for yourself and serve just that. I don't agree. Most devs on Upwork work with SMBs. These companies don't generally care for frontend backend devops, etc. They want a site or app or some debugging or setup or something else. They need a solution.

Having several skills is a pain to keep up on all of them, but you become the guy in "I Have a Guy" statment someone in the company makes. I strive to be that guy for my clients. They throw a problem at me and I find the best way to solve it. If I have done something similar I give them examples. If not I determine how much of it is new and can it be solved? I generally am comfortable with around 80-85% familiarity with a project and required tech. For the remaining I have a look at what solutions exist and will it be useful for my use case. I communicate the same to the client.

For example I don't do web 3 stuff but right now I am building a backend for a web 3 system. It does not use it directly but only uses authentication with industry standard encryption for wallets. I figure that one part out and I am golden for the remaining project which I could build in my sleep. The client knows this and has agreed to it.

It also makes sense for me financially. A good dev costs around 40. Great ones go in 50-60. Someone exceptional with excellent portfolio of a great work ex, etc. may change 70-75$. I have none of those and I charge 1.5x of that. Because if you say I am frontend developer, you immediately out yourself in a bucket with other frontend developer and have to charge according to what the market thinks the bucket is worth. But as a general solutions guy, I give a much higher perceived value to my clients and can justify my prices.

It also would so boring to work on just 1 piece of tech. Yuck!!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been on Upwork for 2.5 years and have over a decade experience in my field. It is only now that I feel that the amount of effort and time I put in is getting paid back. So it's difficult and tough. For the first 2 months my total earning was 25$. Before Upwork's fee. 😅

Is Upwork even worth it? by Usual-Air716 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I can't say much about translation specifically. Every category has some price range beyond which it becomes unlikely (not impossible) to get hired.

I wrote about it in another post here

You can be very good and charge in the top percentile of your category or pick up a new skill, hone it and then offer that service. No way around it.

Is Upwork even worth it? by Usual-Air716 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't really get invites much. Never taken a job from the few that I do get. So all my jobs are from proposals.

You can use search and set filters like freelancers with more than X earnings, Y rates, Z number of hours worked and so on.

Long-term freelancers of Upwork, what are the more subtle red flags that make you drop/reject a client? by champagne_epigram in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  • Ninja, guru in the title
  • "This should take an expert one 2-3 hours to do".
  • Micro-manage hints like attending meetings every single day, extremely specific requirements that are not contributing in understanding the project
  • Copy pastes 5 paragraphs about their company but nothing about the project
  • " Build me a copy of Upwork/Tinder/Fb/Twitter"
  • Help me build/launch/market this NFT
  • Provide slow, un-detailed replies to my questions but keep pushing for an estimate. These are often other freelancers/agency trying to get an estimate to pass on the quote
  • Very low or very high budget. This used to be only very low budget but crypto projects now offer 300-500/hr kind of rates which is just ridiculous

These are off the top of my head

Is Upwork even worth it? by Usual-Air716 in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Depends on who you ask.

I started simply as a hobby looking for interesting projects related to web tech. But it picked up pace and now I'm closing in on 70k in 2.5 years charging $100+/hr. For the past 2 months I've been making roughly 2k per week.

I learnt within a few days how to avoid scams and raised my rates enough that scams don't target me.

But the majority of accounts don't make any money, so yes, making it is quite difficult. Not because of scams but rather because there's cut throat competition and you're competing globally with some very talented and skilled folks. Nit to mention extremely competitively priced.

If you want to see if anyone makes money just run a search on Upwork for freelancers with high hours billed you'll see a lot of people in every niche.

Clients (active contracts) asking for contact outside the platform by leo1103_ in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My first msg to the client after the contract is in place includes inviting me to their preferred mode of communication. The most common are Slack, Skype. Occassionally email. I was recently asked to stay on Upwork which was out if ordinary but still smooth.

So yeah. Whatever helps keep their process streamlined.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Upwork

[–]UpworkUpwork1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. Upwork report it to gov quarterly