Starting as a novice on Upwork enables you to discover fresh approaches to achieving your career objectives. Upwork is made to assist you in making connections with possible long-term customers that can support the expansion of your freelance business.
We're determined to support your success! We make it simpler for you to market your most sought-after services, exhibit your greatest work, confidently accept new customer relationships, and see the results of your persistent efforts.
How can you make use of all of this? We'll provide resources and best practices in this post to assist you in laying a strong foundation. We'll examine:
What you need to get started on Upwork
Your profile is key to connecting with opportunities on Upwork. The information you share isn’t just your introduction to potential new clients. It also helps Upwork determine which projects to show you and where your profile should show up in search results.
Before you can start submitting proposals for job posts on Upwork, you’ll need to complete at least 50% of your profile. This includes basic information about who you are and what you do, including:
Of course, we recommend completing 100% of your profiles! But you don’t need to do it all right away. There are some elements of your profile, such as an intro video or a robust portfolio, that can take more time to prepare.
In fact, you’ll probably update your profile on a regular basis. “I’ve redone my profile more than 75 times!” Peggy said. “You have to be able to position yourself according to what your market needs and wants and cares about. That's why I keep editing my profile, even if I only change a sentence.”
How to create an Upwork account
As you create your profile, you may find it helpful to explore the Upwork website for inspiration. For example, you can browse:
Ready to get your freelance business moving forward? Let’s start at the beginning.
1. Go to Upwork.com and click “Sign Up”
It’s easy to create an account and register on Upwork.com. Go to the website and click on the “Sign Up” button. Choose “I’m a freelancer, looking for work.”
2. Sign up using your work email address, Apple profile, or Google account
There are a few ways to sign up for your free account:
Finish creating your account by adding a few more details:
Decide whether you want to subscribe to our top tips. Then hit the appropriate checkbox once you’ve reviewed the Upwork Terms of Service—including the User Agreement, and Privacy Policy.
We know: Reviewing the Terms of Service can be a lot to process. But it’sunderstanding these terms is also critically important to your business and your success on Upwork. Get to know some of the highlights here and check out the new starter's guide to being safe and successful on Upwork.
Once you’re ready, click on “Create my account” to move on to the next part, creating your Upwork profile.
3. Start your journey on Upwork with a few questions
Through this initial process, you’ll be prompted to answer a few questions about yourself, including:
We also want to know about your work preferences. There are two ways to pitch your services to potential clients on Upwork:
There is no right or wrong answer—independent professionals often combine both strategies and you’ll be able to do the same. The response you give during the sign-up process just indicates how you think you’d like to start.
4. Tell us more about what you do
Your freelancer profile is an important part of your introduction to potential new clients. Its goal is to share who you are and the work you do, highlight your expertise, and capture attention. The Upwork Academy course on Creating Your Profile can give you an overview of the whole process.
First, give your profile a title:
5. Summarize your past work experience
Your past work experience can help build credibility with a potential client—particularly when you’re new to Upwork. It can not only emphasize not just your level of expertise but also highlight industries or subject areas you may already be familiar with.
You may want to include:
6. Highlight your educational background
This section summarizes your formal education. If you choose to add entries here, all the details are optional except the institution.
We suggest including:
7. Add your language proficiency
Upwork operates in English and you’re required to indicate your English proficiency in your profile. But clients on Upwork come from all over the world and often do business in other languages, so be sure to indicate any other languages you might speak.
While language skills are self-assessed, try to be as accurate as possible so you set the right expectations with potential clients.
8. List your skills and show potential clients what you have to offer
You can highlight as many as 15 skills from Upwork’s extensive list on your profile. As you start to type in a skill, Upwork will offer suggestions from a standardized list. These skills will show up on your profile—you can drag-and-drop them into the order you want—and help potential clients understand whether you have the skillset their project needs.
9. Polish your title and write your profile overview
A great title and overview can make a difference to the responses you get from clients since they’re among the first things they will see. Let’s start by thinking about what clients will see in search results; it’s basically an ad for your services.
What can you do to help entice potential clients to click through and look at your full freelancer profile? The profile title and first two lines of your overview will appear in search results, so you may want to focus your efforts there.
Make your first sentence count. Your whole bio can be a critical tool to convert new clients, but the very beginning is the most visible. In fact, while your overview can be up to 5,000 characters, Overholt suggested keeping it to a few short paragraphs: “If the ‘read more’ option pops up, you’ve got too much,” she said.
“I’ve hired freelancers with zero experience on the platform just because I was impressed by their portfolio and their bio,” she explained.
“Your overview should be one or two short paragraphs: This is my profession, this is how much experience I have, these are the kinds of projects I want to take on, this is what I can do for you. Short, sweet, and done.”
10. Identify the main services that you offer
You can choose up to 10 work categories—your core services. We suggest picking the strongest, most specialized, and/or most in-demand. While the categories you select will impact how clients find your profile, you can submit proposals to job postings in any category.
11. Set your hourly rate
If the question about setting your rates sparks anxiety, keep these two things in mind:
You can also learn best practices for setting your rate from Upwork Academy.
One mistake new freelancers on Upwork often make is to base their rate on their salary as an employee. While that may be a starting point, it doesn’t account for costs you’re now responsible for, such as equipment you rely on, your home office setup, taxes and professional fees, or ongoing skills training.
Learn more about how to set your freelance rate or take the course on setting your rate from Upwork Academy.
You may find it helpful to start at one rate, then adjust it as you build your reputation through completed projects and client feedback, improve your understanding of the value you offer to long-term clients, and get a better sense of the effort each project requires.
12. Add profile photo and a few last details
Businesses want to work with professionals they can trust with critical work. Does your profile photo inspire confidence?
Upwork has a few requirements for profile photos. For example, the photo must:
Your photo doesn’t need to be professionally taken. But hHow can you ensure you have a high-quality profile image? Check out these tips for your Upwork profile picture to get suggestions and examples.
You’ll also be prompted to share your contact information, including your address and phone number. Only your city, state, and country will be shared with potential clients; the additional information is for Upwork’s administrative requirements.
And if you’re traveling or are otherwise not currently at home? Enter the address you use for tax purposes.
13. Go for the bonus points!
You’re just about finished! Review your freelancer profile information one more time before submitting it for publication.
While you need to complete at least 50% of your profile before you can start submitting proposals to job posts, you can add optional items to get your profile to 100%. This may include:
If you aren’t ready to add this additional information right away, don’t worry—you can always come back to add more information later.
14: Your freelance journey on Upwork has begun!
With your Upwork account set up, you’re ready to start working toward your first project.
In the next section, we’ll share best practices to help you find a great project and submit your first proposal.
Still haven’t signed up for Upwork? Take your career or business to new heights and get started now.
Finding your first project
Once you’ve added the required profile information, you can start to look for your first project on Upwork!
Explore job opportunities using the search bar at the top of any page. Optimize your search with keywords based on your skill set and the types of projects you want to work on. To avoid missing good opportunities, also think about the potential clients you want to work with: What language would they use to talk about their project or to describe the type of expertise they need?
For example, you may be a front-end developer, but someone who isn’t familiar with the industry might say they’re looking for a “web designer” or “web developer.” Add the terms you come up with to your existing search terms to capture a broader range of projects.
Then, use Upwork’s filters to narrow your search even further. These include:
Also, watch for the Featured Job banner. Featured Jobs are projects from highly motivated clients who have paid so their project will stand out.
Use Connects to submit a proposal
Connects are a valuable resource on Upwork; you can get them for free and by purchasing them. There are several ways to use Connects, including submitting proposals to a specific job post. To get the most out of your Connects, it helps to be strategic. For example, review each job post to ensure it’s a great fit for your skills and experience and double-check that it hasn’t already been filled.
Learn the ins and outs of the job search process:
Winning new clients with a stand-out proposal
A proposal is your chance to convince a potential client that you have the experience to fix their problem or help them reach their goals. While your proposal likely won’t clinch the job on its own, you want to capture a client’s attention and confidence so they’ll contact you in order to discuss next steps.
As part of your proposal, you can—and should—write a cover letter for Upwork. When a potential client receives your proposal, it’s likely the first thing they’ll see. Even then, a cover letter is your first chance to introduce yourself and you want to stand out.
“When I post a new project as a client, I can get anywhere from 10 to 50 submissions,” said Overholt. “Clients don’t have time to read through every proposal, they fly through them. You’re trying to quickly stand out in a pool of 50 other professionals and that can be intimidating!”
Be strategic with your efforts. Danny Margulies, a freelance copywriter and client on Upwork, recommends taking what he calls the “upside-down proposal” approach: If a client asks additional questions as part of their job post, your responses will actually be shown at the top of your submission instead of the cover letter.
“Answer the additional questions [first], put a lot of good, juicy nuggets in there, demonstrate your knowledge, demonstrate your caring to clients in those additional questions, and then move on to your cover letter,” he suggested:
Make it personal. Open with a friendly greeting that includes their name, if possible. And, if you use templates for your proposals, be sure to customize your cover letter to fit the project.
Be brief. Succinctly describe who you are, what you do, and how you can help their project succeed. Freelance SEO writer Sean Cope knows it’s tough to cut through the noise. “Clients don’t have the time to read lengthy proposals with details that are unrelated to their challenges,” he wrote in How To Create a Proposal That Wins Jobs. “Long proposals may not convince anyone, as almost no one will take the time to read them.”
Pay attention to the details. If the client is looking for specific skills, highlight your experience using those skills. If the job description includes a specific request, such as the client looking for a specific type of expertise, address it in your message.
Focus on the client. Peggy suggested putting the client rather than yourself at the center of your proposal. “One piece of advice I read is to use the word ‘you’ more than the word ‘I,’ and remembering that stops me,” she said. “In a cover letter, I’ll tell a prospective client that ‘your job caught my eye,’ rather than ‘I am this and I am that.’”
Be careful not to overpromise. Peggy learned that to help protect your reputation on Upwork, it’s important to set the right expectations. “You might read a proposal and think, ‘I can probably do that.’ Then you oversell yourself to the client to get the project,” she said. “If you can’t deliver, you could end up in a mess with a negative rating.”
Get help from ChatGPT. Leaning on ChatGPT to write a compelling cover letter can be a helpful starting point. But use AI carefully. Personality is an important part of a good cover letter and, especially in a competitive environment, relying on artificial intelligence to do the hard work is unlikely to stand out.
End with a clear call to action. Recommend a next step for the potential client to take. For example, you could ask them to reply and schedule an interview or encourage them to check out your Project Catalog offers.
For many projects, there will be several more steps—including an interview—before a potential client makes a decision. Think of your cover letter as the best way to start a conversation and take the first step toward a new working relationship.
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