What is Upwork?
Upwork was started in 1999 (as Elance) as well as eventually in 2003 (as oDesk) as well as once again on 2013 (as Elance-oDesk) finally on 2015 (as Upwork) found at Santa Clara, California, U.S.
It is an excellent website for freelance workers as well as clients who want quality work and good services from the operators of this online website. People can get the best academic, business, environmental, educational, and administration services of various types. There are many job opportunities open on daily basis. In addition, Upwork is highly motivated and helps you to find a job aligned with your affinity by sending you some emails with open positions that are in compliance with your previous jobs , profile details and interest. Moreover, Upwork's administrators are sending job offers to help you find some interesting job that can improve your skillset and gain additional knowledge. And the last but not least important - each Upwork user is protected by embedded highest security standards in both domains - account administration and payment realization. This platform takes a real care for its client
Some of the categories to work on Upwork!
5. Writing & Translation
6. Admin & Customer Support
7. Finance & Accounting
8. HR & Training
9. Engineering & Architecture
Pros
3. Fast Hiring Process
4. Remote Work Abilities
Cons
3. High Competition.
4. Rating/Review system.
Payment Methods
3. Bank Codes
4. PayPal
5. Payoneer
6. M-Pesa
7. Wire Transfer
8. Instant Pay for US Freelancers
How it works
It offers very reasonable terms and conditions, fee structures that is suitable for both the freelancer as well as the employer. Best of all is it has fair time tracking facility which ensures a secure work environment with very less exposure to fraudulent for both parties.
1. Tools
3. Getting hired
3.1 To increase a chance of getting hired there are numerous steps and strategies one can apply:
- Building great portfolio and profile
- Completing all projects successfully and on time - having high success rate. Along come the great client's reviews.
- Biding competitive - always bid higher value vs. clients’ allocated budged.
- Having superb skills which make you one of few bidders for a given job. The more niche the job the less bidders, the higher chance of being hired.
- Being always available. There are lots of jobs where you get hired for sake of client's urgency.
4. Bidding
Bidding requires continuous monitoring of "Find Work" My Feed. You want to make sure to review and read all the posted jobs and decide on which ones to make a bid. You will be spending quite some time going over these daily. So you should learn to optimize your selection/bidding process.
4.1 Read the job description carefully, ignore all jobs that are not well defined. These jobs can turn out to be significantly larger than what you might assume from the vague description and a promise to provide more info over chat. Remember, you need to bid upfront and should you want to increase your bid the client will likely not accepting it; ultimately you waste your connects. This is to urge clients to provide clear job requirements attaching all relevant information we need to make our estimate and bid.
4.2 In many cases a job description requires you to provide a proposal how to implement the solution. We do not want to provide free work and consulting. Keep concise and high level, describing only major building blocks of your solution such as listing the language, modules and high level overview.
4.3 Cover Letter (my typical cover letter)
- State you have skills to do the job
- State you are available for immediate hire
- State when you will be able to deliver e.g.: 48 hours from hire
- Give high level example of previous project with similar or same requirements.
- Make sure you read the job description and include special keywords. There are lots of clients/agencies that have automatic bidding where a bot makes an automatic bid. Clients generally avoid these be placing a requirements somewhere in the job description asking you to start your cover letter with a unique word. Failing to abide will put your bid directly into client's trash,
4.4 Answering questions:
Some jobs require you to answer direct questions as part of making a bid.
4.5 Review client's history and see if the client is hiring within your bidding price. No point of bidding if your bid is 10 fold bigger than customer average hourly rate paid.
5. Avoid Free Work
As with every system there are clients that try to get you to do a lot more than you assumed you were hired for.
5.1 You might be asked to provide detailed solution description as part of your bid - well bidding and providing detailed solution with no guarantee of hire is free work. I do not do that. Concise description is most what my bid will offer.
5.2 Clients like to add additional features on top of the project. Typically I full-fill the extra work when it is within 5% of the overall job effort. For more I request a new milestone to be created.
Most honest clients will follow this process; however there are clients that will tell you that you will get a great review with 5 stars if you do these extra featured... or you will get a bad review... Remember you want to have great review as it is important for your overall success for the future hires.
5.3 Clients like to promise future projects if you do extra mile on this one. Well the extra means doing free work and the next project mostly never realizes. You want to work with clients that will pay you in full and extra for all your work starting from first job. You want to be paid for job well done on schedule with required quality. Nothing else. So ignore the promise.
6. Data Exchange
Upwork allows for file exchange of size up to 25Mb with limitations.
You cannot exchange binaries or zipped binaries. I had many projects where I had to build an executable out of python code. These cannot be exchanged via Upwork. You need to use other means. I use my own web site where I upload the zipped/password protected file and deliver a link to the client.
When you get a client sending you a package with "problematic" content Upwork will block it. You need to go to the Upwork support to get it released to you. I took me about 10 minutes with Upwork support.
Furthermore, they help both the client and the freelancer maintaining profile which exactly reflects how they have been performing during past contracts.
Lastly, Upwork is very suitable for any skilled person around the globe, as it offers an independent work environment with no hidden charges or any extra amount needed to pay to start your career. Just bring your extraordinary skill and start your career with freedom.
Conclusion
- High in volume—so stay focused and choose only what's the best fit for you
- Awesome opportunities to interact with
- The majority (to my Marketplace, I can confidently say a whopping 99%) of projects are NOT spam or chicken feed
- Lots of opportunities (and freelancers) to choose
Some things that I would like to see improved on Upwork would be:
- Better fees for those of us that have been loyal users for a number of years.
- The option to add charges to our time if we have clients that we need to get reimbursed from.
- Less down time on issues with different job posting/job searching aspects of the interface.
- More appropriate rating form the clients. The items that we are 'grading' them on when we leave feedback are mostly not applicable to them as an employer/client. They are mostly asking questions as if the employer is the freelancer.
- MOST OF ALL, they need to get rid of showing rates to the public. A range would be okay but not every Tom, Dave, and Harry needs to know what I make on jobs. Right now, you pay for a subscription and it hides that but we shouldn't have to pay for that.
How much can you earn from it?
There are hundreds of jobs advertised on Upwork every day and finding the right one can be quite difficult. Though it's hard to get a job on Upwork as a fresher. Work hard, very hard even when you don't get any job; just keep working on proposals, profiles, and in improving your skills.
You get paid in two ways:
- Hourly projects (you are paid hourly on the project done with the platform fees)
- Fixed-price projects (you are paid once everything is complete with the platform fees)
The price range starts from $3 (Hourly/Fixed) all the way to the up. But mostly ranges from $10-$10000
But it's likely going to take some time to earn a good money for freshers. Give it a shot!
Highly recommend.
Rating: 4.4/5