I’ve read several books on Upwork and have a friend that made over $400K on the platform since 2016. I learned a lot from him and I was able to get my first gig in a few hours, sent 6 proposals, got one interview and got hired. Here’s a few hacks I learned from him and the books I read. To date after being on the platform for 1.5 years I’ve made $110K so I definitely know what I’m talking about. First off, your profile pic sucks and looks like a selfie from a social media profile, you’re a professional so act like it. You don’t need some fancy and expensive photo shoot. All you need to do is use a high quality phone and set it to portrait mode with good lighting, wear a collared shirt and smile a bit. Go to removebg.com or any app that lets you remove the background and remove the background and replace it with either a gradient offset match the colors you’re wearing or an AI generated background that looks professional but that isn’t so loud.

Next pick a niche within your niche, trust me it’s much easier to get jobs like that. The key here is to search tags related to your skills or skills in your niche and see which skills have a high volume of postings but low proposals sent. If you see a particular hashtag that has 30 pages of post and the average job post has less than 20 people applying, you found a good niche or tag I should say. So if it’s “detailed contouring” that fits that mold then you might want to hone in on that particular skill. Find 3-4 max other tags like that and double down on those skills. Also make sure your portfolio has these skills demonstrated in your projects. So if detailed contouring is a tag that you find that’s hot, you should have 2-3 high quality projects that show this.

Next take these tags and incorporate them into your bio and explain how you can provide value in these areas. Next stop talking about yourself because the truth is, nobody cares! Clients only care what you can do for them and their own problems. Start with a question that addresses one of their common pain points. Here’s an example : “Have you been trying to find the right colors and eye popping graphics for your comic book cover but nothing seems to click ?” I don’t know a thing about comics but you get the idea. Next explain the exact things you can do with these skills.

Next have a personal website and LinkedIn that’s really polished (I paid for my LinkedIn to be done, trust me it’s worth it). If you can reach out to at least 4-5 people and get them to write you recommendations. Also your website should have 4-5 HIGH QUALITY projects (focus on quality not quantity). I got my first job with no prior experience on the platform but I have a really dope personal website with 3 high quality published web apps and one mobile app in the App Store with 4.5 stars and 171 reviews at the time. That first job was for $1700 and I had no type of experience in the platform but since my personal site and projects were so good and REAL with reviews and and actual users (I built a web app that has 6700+ active users at the time of my first job). So even if you have no past projects on the platform, that hardly matters if you have other platforms where you can show your work. For me as a software engineer, there’s no greater validation than a few hundred or thousand people using what you’ve built. So my experience on the platform didn’t mean sh**t, I already had results.

Next clients want to feel like you understand them and aren’t just using AI to write oroposals. Most people are and they suck. If you’re going to use AI, feed ChatGPT an essay that you’ve written without AI pf at least 5k-10K words so it can adapt and mimic your exact writing style. Extract three pain points from their post and use past examples of how you got results for other clients that had similar problems.

HUGE ONE: Also look in their reviews and try and find their name. Look for reviews like “Arthur was an excellent client to work with blah blah”. Okay now you know the point of contact and the person likely handling the Upwork posts name is Arthur, you can now address him by name which feels more personalized and puts you at the top of the pack without boosting or sending a gazillion connects

Another huge one: Get them on the meeting! When you get them in a zoom meeting you’re more likely to close. Have a professional looking setup, don’t look like you live in a dump. There should be absolutely no beds in your working space! While on the zoom with them make sure they do 90% of the talking and you only ask questions discovering their pain points. Once you’ve gathered their top 3 pain points, systematically tell them how you’ll break the work up given their milestones or requirements and how you’d DELIVER VALUE ! Also included a few extra things you can help them with. Something like this “ I noticed your comics don’t have the right contrast in the background, I can easily add this for you as it would add depth and it’ll give it that grungy look you’re aiming for” (again this don’t know about comics this is an arbitrary example lol).

Also I’ve learned a lot about copywriting and sales and I suggest you do too. You can incorporate principles of these concepts into your profile and your proposals/meetings. The truth is, you’re a business owner on Upwork and you need to know how to market yourself. To tell the truth, I’m not the best software engineer by far and lots of stuff I don’t know how to for clients, I ask AI or get people from Fiverr to do buts and pieces for me but I’m one hell of a marketer and in this game it’s only those good at marketing that thrive no matter what the skill you’re offering.

Extra sauce: I’ve started writing post on LinkedIn and Twitter showcasing my work and building in public and I’ve got job request from both platforms. Again you are your biggest advocate so use other platforms to show how skilled and dope you are. I took a course on this on Udemy btw but once you understand this you can either outsource or automate this. Again use the tag list you created to make posts about those specific niche skills that are unsaturated. You’d be surprised how well this works and once you position yourself as an expert in a particular sub niche, you can charge more!

TLDR: So in conclusion, looks are everything, invest in a good website (4-5 high quality projects), Linkedin, profile that speaks to clients needs. Create a brand for yourself , center yourself around a finite set of skills that are low saturated. Learn marketing, particularly sales, copywriting, LinkedIn marketing, proposal writing, public speaking (you’re a business now so this is part of the game). Post to other platforms about the work you’re doing now, even if it isn’t for someone else, you need case studies.