Are You New to Upwork And Hoping to Figure Out How to Land Work Fast?
Watch my latest video about landing work on Upwork or read the transcript below!
Landing work fast on Upwork doesn’t have to be difficult, but I see so many freelancers struggling with it and never being able to accomplish their freelancing goals because they get stuck in the cycle of using a process that doesn’t work and then getting frustrated that they are not landing clients.
My Number One Tip
If you are on Upwork and you want to land work fast, pay attention to my number one tip. I call this fast, cheap and simple (FCS) jobs — landing jobs that can be completed quickly and give you a great opportunity for an easy win are wonderful because it makes the client that much more likely to give you five-star feedback.
Getting these jobs is a lot easier than landing a retainer project because, simply, you haven’t proven yourself yet on Upwork. You need that positive five-star feedback from your early clients in order to leverage that into future work with other clients. I call these fast, cheap and simple jobs because it can be anything across the board that can be completed relatively quickly and is right in your skillset.
If you are an editor, for example, you may be able to complete an FCS job editing somebody’s PowerPoint or proofreading someone’s blog post. It won’t take you a tremendous amount of time, but this is a great way to land work fast on Upwork because there is a much lower of a barrier for the client to consider and hire a total newbie. With these types of projects, clients are looking for someone who can complete it effectively, but quickly. They might not do as much vetting or look at every single freelancer’s proposal. If you can turn this work around quickly and you can do it well, the client is that much more likely to leave you positive feedback and reviews on your profile. You can turn that into jobs galore in the future.
Many people get hung up on wanting to land amazing high-value, big dollar clients on Upwork when they first get started, but the truth is that you have no social proof or track record until you have landed some earlier gigs. It can be a big leap of faith for a client to hire someone that they have never heard of before.
Build Your Portfolio
To bridge that gap, you can do some extra work and ensure that you land a couple of easy, fast, cheap and simple jobs that can be done early on in your Upwork career. Once you have already begun to build up feedback on your profile, it will be easier for you to land bigger jobs that pay better because you have already built yourself as someone who lives up to their word. You told someone you’d meet a deadline, you told them you had a particular skill set and then you had that skill set and leveraged that into an amazing opportunity.
It doesn’t matter if never hear from the client who hires you to do an FCS job again. You are using these jobs to build up your feedback and your portfolio. You are also getting that great work experience of testing out whether you really enjoy being a freelancer on Upwork anyways. You shouldn’t jump feet first into freelance jobs if you never had one before and you are not sure about your ability to do the work or to meet a deadline. Taking on a really pressure-filled project is often not in your best interest because you are so new to the field, but when you use the fast, cheap and simple method to land work fast on Upwork, you will be surprised to find out that the client is likely thrilled that you simply met their deadline and stayed true to what you said you would do. They are much more likely to give you five-star feedback because you have exceeded their expectations
For any freelancer who is looking to land work fast on Upwork, you can’t do it without a great pitch and great work samples. Invest time in creating great work samples and writing a great pitch. Ninety percent of the pitches that I see fall flat on Upwork are falling flat for one reason: the pitch just isn’t well written. You are being generic and copying everybody else’s pitch. Figure out a way that you can stand out from the crowd and really leverage that opportunity to practice your pitching and land some fast, cheap and simple jobs.
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HI, I’M LAURA!
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