COMPLETE Upwork Tutorial to Start Freelancing

hey how's it going my name is josh burns and welcome to josh prince tech in this video i'm going to show you how to start freelancing on upwork specifically you're going to learn about hourly contracts fixed price contracts and the brand new project catalog how to find jobs on upwork upward communication both pre-contract and contract getting paid which we all love upwork fees and connects and the process of closing your job at the very end and getting that great review this is an upwork tutorial for beginners which definitely would have made things way easier for me when i first started freelancing on upwork back around may of 2016. this video is not sponsored by upwork and none of my freelance videos ever have been trust me i definitely wish they were i'm simply sharing my success with you to help you succeed as a freelancer this channel has helped freelancers all around the world to make life-changing money and have complete job flexibility if the past year has shown us anything it's that we cannot be dependent on a single employer or a single source of income freelancing diversifies your income across different employers and it comes with increased earning potential as well i've personally earned over six hundred thousand dollars freelancing on upwork since 2016. i likely would have never reached the income level that i'm at now solely working for one company on salary my income has increased significantly every year since i started freelancing and my goal is to help you do the same i'm from aurora area in central kentucky i'm the first person in my family to graduate from college and work in the tech industry i'm literally proof that anyone can be a high-earning successful freelancer with consistent hard work resilience patience and focused effort if you get value from this video and you enjoy my freelance content all i ask is to just take one second to hit the like button and consider subscribing to the channel we truly have the best freelance community on all of youtube i really believe that let's keep growing it together and if you want to learn directly from me i have a patreon where i mentor freelancers and i teach them freelance skills as well the bottom tier is just two dollars a month and that will give you access to exclusive freelancing posts and access to a new freelance discord server as well if that's something you're interested in then check out the link in the description below or go to patreon.com forward slash josh prince tech the very first thing that you need to start freelancing is a skill set that has demand before you create an account on upwork or do anything that i'm going to show you in this video your skill set comes first your skill set is the number one prerequisite for becoming a successful freelancer you have to put in the work the time the dedication and the consistency to learn a freelance skill that has demand and high earning potential on upwork no one is going to do it for you you have to develop the internal mindset that you're actually going to start learning and start taking action and stop convincing yourself you know what i'll just wait till tomorrow today isn't a good day for me i can always do it tomorrow so whenever i want to learn a new skill or enhance my existing skill set i prefer to do that completely on my own rather than being in group in person training i simply learn better on my own that's why i'm excited to tell you about our sponsor for this video which i personally use to learn new freelance skills and enhance my existing skill set skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people examples of topics include freelancing and entrepreneurship marketing graphic design web development and many others skillshare is great for lifelong learners which again is something that i believe every freelancer really needs to strive to be skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth as well as offers creative classes that are designed for real life and all the circumstances that come with it it's also super affordable as well at less than ten dollars a month for an annual subscription skillshare is designed specifically for learning meaning that there are no ads and they're always launching new premium classes one of my favorite classes is tony staunton's python 3 a beginner's guide to python programming on skillshare it's easily the most popular python course on skillshare with over 18 000 students and really great reviews i learned the best by practicing consistently and this course has great practice programs and best of all this course does not require any previous programming experience because skillshare is sponsoring this video the first 1000 people who click the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium so if you're one of the first 1 000 people to join then the free trial will give you unlimited access to thousands of inspiring classes like tony stanton's python 3 a beginner's guide to python programming thank you so much skillshare for supporting the channel and sponsoring this video alright let's first cover contract types on upwork there are two types of projects on upwork which are hourly and fixed price projects upwork recently added the project catalog as well which is a completely just brand new way of using upwork with pre-scoped projects the project catalog is something that i expected upwork to create there are certain skill sets that benefit very well from taking services and packaging them together and selling them like products so let's dive into both contract types and the project catalog i'm going to cover all three of them so you fully understand how they work on upwork for hourly contracts you include your hourly rate when you submit a job proposal for fixed price contracts freelancers submit their proposed bid for the entire project and suggest potential milestones during the introduction or interview process which i'm going to discuss later in this video you can also negotiate that fixed price and the prices of the different milestones okay let's say you get your first job on upwork and you win your first hourly contract and that's such a great feeling i remember back in 2016 when i got my first job on upwork it was amazing so you got your first job you've already communicated with a client you're ready to start working on hourly contracts you need to use the upwork desktop app the upwork desktop app is basically a way for you to log your hours which the client can also see as well as you can see right here clients can monitor freelancers progress by checking the work diary okay bear with me i know that some of this stuff is hard to look at in text it doesn't give you a visual representation i'm actually going to show you what these things look like so just bear with me okay this is the web page where you can actually download the desktop app all you need to do is select a download version in my case that would be windows 64-bit standard and then click download when your download finishes run the executable and install the upwork desktop app and this is what it will look like so you have to have an account on upwork already because you need to sign into it okay so i'm going to go ahead and sign into it and here's what it looks like when you're signed in minus the blurring i blurred out my client names because i don't want to share that information okay let's say this top row is a job that i want to work on i'm going to go ahead and click on it and now to start tracking time all i have to do is click this on off button and now it's tracking time i'm going to go ahead and cancel this because i don't want to be tracking time for this youtube video this actually leads to something really important as you can see right here this is a screenshot of my desktop the upwork desktop app will basically take a screenshot every 10 minutes capturing whatever you're working on and then upload it to the work diary and as you can see here i've logged an hour and 20 minutes out of my 40 hour weekly limit so on this contract i can work up to 40 hours a week do i work 40 hours a week for this client absolutely not i work whatever's assigned to me however the limit is set to 40 hours so that's what i can work up to if needed you can also add manual time if the client has manual time enabled then anytime you're away from your computer you can't use a desktop app then you can manually add your time this way let's say i worked from 9 30 until 10. so you can select 10 minute increments and again this ties into how the upwork desktop app works remember when i said that it takes a screenshot every 10 minutes and uploads it to the work diary that's how it tracks time it's in 10 minute increments and here i can type in whatever i worked on and i'll just type in something generic here so on january 18th from 9 30 a.m until 10 a.m i resolved a database issue for this client i didn't have the upwork desktop app installed so i couldn't track my time i'm going to go ahead and manually add it this way i'm not actually going to add this because i didn't resolve a database issue yesterday but you get the point let's take a look at some settings in the upwork desktop app that are really great to know i'm going to click on this gear icon and then click settings okay so this first part really important if you have more than one monitor like i do then you can actually change how it captures screenshots you can set it to capture on your active monitor or you can set it to capture all monitors you can have it send you a desktop notification when it takes a screenshot which i definitely recommend and you can have it play a sound as well when it takes a screenshot you can upload a custom sound or use the default one which is what i use and here's what it sounds like you can update your time zone the default is utc you can set up your camera as well and even have it take camera shots of you with your screenshots while you're working this is something that i don't have enabled but you know feel free if you want to enable it there's two reminders that you can enable as well the first one is to change a memo and the other one is to notify you when time tracking is off the messages tab is probably the best one to know about and this is what i love right here out of office responder you can see that i had mine set for right after christmas and what you can do is actually go to edit so if you're out of office on vacation on holiday whatever it may be and when your clients messages you then you can use out of office responder to automatically send them a message letting them know that you're unavailable for emails this is basically the exact same thing that you would set up for emails in gmail outlook or whatever mail client that you use if you want to automatically notify your client that you're out of office if they send you an upwork message this is how you do it here you can see that i had one set from december 26 to december 27th so if one of my clients messaged me within this time frame it would automatically send them this message and here's some additional notifications that you can have set as well here's some keyboard shortcuts that you can use and here's some advanced settings that you can play around with as well if you ever have any issues with the desktop client clearing the cache and restarting will definitely help that pretty much covers everything you need to know about the desktop app okay so i told you i was going to show you the upwork diary you can actually navigate to this when you're signed into upwork but we're going to go ahead and click on it here and here's the upwork work diary this is something very very very important that you need to know about for this specific contract i worked an hour and ten minutes on the 19th these are all the 10 minute increment screenshots that it took of my desktop while i was working you can see that i included a brief description of what i was working on this is definitely something good that you should be doing to add your description all you have to do is manually select each one of these and then go up to edit memo and right here you can add a description and here's something very important you see these little green boxes this grades your activity within the 10 minutes so if i click on this at 3 50 a.m it says that my activity level was 7 out of 10 minutes again all these times are in utc i definitely was not working at 3 50 a.m but anyway from 3 50 a.m utc until 4am my activity level was 7 out of 10 minutes basically saying that i was pretty active while i was working those 10 minutes this works great for some skill sets and others not so much there's some times when you know you actually have to think about what you're doing think of a way to resolve an issue how to implement something you may not be typing or moving your mouse around the entire 10 minutes if you're not active with your mouse and keyboard it's going to show up and make the client think that you may have not been working during those 10 minutes but depending on your skill set they should know if you're going to be using your mouse and keyboard a lot within the 10 minute increments so what if you forgot to turn off the time tracker and it took some screenshots of non-work items you can edit your work diary and delete any of the 10 minute increments so let's say right here at 4 20 am i really wanted to delete the screenshot and now it's going to ask you if you really want to delete it i'm not going to delete it because i was actually working here but for instance if you need to delete any of the 10 minute increments this is how you do it and once you delete it it will be reflected in your overall hours work for the day as well the key takeaway from hourly contracts on upwork and the upwork desktop app is to make sure that you're actually working on their job when you're tracking time if you're not they can easily find out by looking at the work diary and here's what an hourly job looks like i can click on this hourly job and it's going to give me a lot of information they're not sure how many hours it's going to be per month it says hours to be determined the project is expected to be less than a month and here you can see what their hourly range is that they're looking for as well this client is looking for a freelancer in the 35 dollar an hour to 63 dollar an hour range my hourly rate is currently 125 dollars an hour so this isn't a job that i would submit a proposal on you can use advanced search and apply filters to find whatever type of job you're looking for i'm going to show you that in the next section for fixed price projects you and the client can agree to certain project milestones that will need to be completed and you can get paid on those as well you don't actually have to use milestones you could have one fixed price for let's say a thousand dollars and whenever you finish the project and submitted your work you get paid for the thousand dollars however if the client has a large project then you can create milestones and get paid at each one when it's complete so hourly contracts are covered under upwork hourly protection fixed price projects are covered under upward fixed price protection there's definitely not as much protection for fixed price contracts regarding hourly contracts you will invoice your time by logging it with the desktop app which i just showed you as long as your hours meet hourly protection criteria you will get paid for the invoice let's say you accept a one thousand dollar fixed price project the client actually has to put that one thousand dollars in escrow before you start working whenever you submit your work which is actually a setting in your fixed price contract you can submit your work for approval by the client they have 14 days from submission to either request changes or approve it if the client does not approve your work or request changes within the 14 days then the escrow funds are automatically released to you if the client refuses to release the payment then you can file a dispute hopefully this never happens to you but if the client refuses to release a payment then you can file a dispute so as you can see there's definitely not as much protection under fixed price projects compared to hourly hourly contracts are the main contracts that i focus on i've never had an issue with them and i get paid every single week if i tracked anytime the previous week and here's an example of a fixed price project for five thousand dollars now if i go to submit proposal and i scroll down to the terms section [Music] from here i can select milestones that i want to be paid at or i can select by project and get paid for the entire thing when i'm finished i definitely recommend using milestones especially if you have a larger project if you have any personal clients off upwork and you're doing fixed price projects definitely request some type of percentage upfront that way you cover yourself where you get some payment before the project starts you don't have to wait around for effort to get that full amount so again we can add some milestones and say i wanted to add two milestones i could type a description in so now i have two milestones i can change the due date we're gonna do the first one by saturday and the next one by the following saturday and now i can break the amount up the client's budget is five thousand dollars and that's what i'm going to try to stay within you don't have to stay within their budget when you submit your proposal however if you want a great shot at getting hired you probably need to so again i'm going to break the total budget up we're going to do 2500 here and for the second milestone we're going to do the rest of the budget [Music] so instead of getting paid the full five thousand dollars on the 30th i'm gonna get paid 2 500 on the 23rd and 2500 more dollars on the 30th and that's why i personally like milestones you can get paid along the way rather than waiting until the entire project's finished to get paid but i specifically focus on hourly contracts i don't do a whole lot of fixed price contracts just because hourly fits way better with my skill set here's an example of a fixed price contract that i completed in the past the total budget was a thousand dollars and we had a thousand dollars worth of milestones that i got paid for it specifically there were two 500 milestones and this is both milestones that i got paid for so instead of waiting for the entire contract to finish up so i could get paid i got paid half of the budget halfway through and that's why i love milestones for fixed price contracts and here's the brand new upwork project catalog upwork clients can come to the project catalog and search for whatever they're looking for if they need something done that has a clear scope and an upfront price this is where they can find it to give you an example of this before the upwork project catalog existed i used fiverr to have badges created for my youtube channel for memberships this is something that could have been done through the upwork project catalog if it would have existed then and here's what they look like if i click on join there's one for my logo a bitcoin symbol a tesla game of thrones the iron throne a spacex rocket and mars but if the upward project catalog would have existed back then then i could have utilized it and you can type anything in here so for instance let's say video editing i'm going to go ahead and select it so now i can look at pre-scoped video editing i went ahead and added one for sql server on my profile i don't know if i'm really going to find anyone that way usually i just work on hourly contracts but you know we'll see how it goes let's see if i actually show up here i haven't even searched for myself this way yet so let's see if mine even shows up in the rankings okay so here we are on the first page and yeah there's my project right there i created this project catalog saying that i'll analyze the sql server instance make my recommendations and then implement them for the client making their sql server run faster there's three separate tiers in my project catalog and it comes down to how fast the client needs it done depending on how fast the client needs a turnaround and how many revisions they need or modifications that's how the price fluctuates who knows if someone will actually buy something for my project catalog i don't really know we're going to test it out though it's something that upwork is putting emphasis on so i'm gonna test it you may be asking yourself what types of projects or contract types should i be focusing on where can i make the most money the answer really depends on your skill set you can make a ton of money on hourly contracts on fixed price contracts and guess what you can make a lot of money in the project catalog as well it really comes down to your skill set and which one or combination fits best to maximize your earnings so i've earned over six hundred thousand dollars on upwork and i primarily focus on hourly contracts as you can see right here all of these were hourly jobs this is one of my friends david i met him a few years ago when we were in one of the upwork marketing campaigns together we both went out to san francisco we were in a photo shoot our photos appeared on upwork's website and other various places he's a really great guy and it was nice to meet him but anyway he's earned over eight hundred thousand dollars on upwork which is absolutely insane and if we take a look at david's projects you will see that most of his are fixed price there's one for eighty thousand dollars there's one for fifty thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars fifteen thousand dollars these are all fixed price jobs david is a product designer fixed price contracts work very well for him because a lot of his contracts have clear scopes there's one clear scope and he's able to do value-based pricing based on it now that you understand the different types of contracts and jobs on upwork you now need to know how to find jobs on upwork this is very important for new freelancers who are building their reputation and profile but not getting any job invite yet if you're unfamiliar with what i'm talking about when an upward client posts a job they can invite freelancers to apply for their job let's say for instance i'm looking for a video editor alex don't worry this is purely for educational purposes after i create the job upwork will recommend certain freelancers to me based on my requirements i can then browse through those freelancers and if i like any of them i can invite them to apply for my job i can also manually search for freelancers just like you search for jobs if i find a freelancer who i want to work with then again i can invite them to apply for my job i don't remember specifically how long it took for me to start getting job invites on upwork but i do know back in 2016 it took about three to four months before i got my first job as a new freelancer i honestly just didn't know what i was doing i submitted way too many job proposals and wasted a lot of time in the process so i'm gonna help you tremendously and show you how to find the best jobs for you okay this is the find work tab when you first log into upwork on this tab you can see some basic filters for searches over here you can see us only my feed and best matches these are my main three database administration as a category as well these other ones here are searches that i've just done in the past kind of randomly besides sql server i actually do look at that one but these are the main ones that i focus on probably best matches database administration and sql server best matches is actually new and it kind of matches you based on your skill set and jobs you completed things like that it's really new that's why you see this blue circle here anytime you see this blue circle on upwork it means that it's a new feature essentially so you can see it here there's one up here as well this is under direct contracts definitely another new feature so anytime you see the blue circle just think new feature so anyway i'm going to click on best matches but yeah i really like this all the jobs that have been appearing for me well most of them at least are jobs that i do on upwork they're really related to my skill set and the different skills that i have listed you can see a lot of these involve sql server these are jobs that i would personally look at if i was looking for jobs to start bidding on i definitely recommend checking out best matches i really like it a lot it's showing a lot of great jobs for my skill set here i would definitely recommend that you check it out as well you're probably going to find a lot of things that relate directly to your skill set it's a great thing that upworks added in recently definitely check it out okay now we're going to do some advanced searching i'm going to search for sql server so this is one way that i definitely recommend doing searches on upwork because we can add a lot of filters here whatever you type in here is the type of job you're looking for so you could type in video editing copywriting you get the point basically whatever type of job you're looking for type the name of it in here and now let's take a look at the important part which is filters select an experience level when i first started out on upwork i mainly focused on entry level and intermediate jobs however i've been on upwork for over four years now i've positioned myself as a high quality freelancer so now i only look at expert the biggest difference between these is how much money you're gonna make at my current rate of 125 dollars an hour i'm probably not going to get hired at intermediate level or entry level but again when i first started on upwork i mainly focused on entry level and intermediate in the twenty five dollar an hour to about thirty five dollar an hour range those were my first three to four jobs on upwork all fell within those ranges and obviously if you have a lot of experience you don't have to start out at those levels when i started freelancing in 2016 i was 26 years old and had only been out of college for a few years i needed to build my confidence and my skill set and my abilities as a freelancer that's why i started out at lower levels next up we have job type if you want to be selective here select one if you leave it unchecked you're going to see both of these i primarily focus on hourly jobs so i'm going to select hourly number of proposals for this one if you're a new freelancer i would definitely recommend only these three i also have an upward client account i heard my video editor alex on upwork and i've used it a lot when there's more than 10 proposals submitted on a job the client actually has to click a button to load the rest of them the first 10 proposals show up on the first page you'll probably hear different opinions on this some people will tell you that it doesn't matter how many have been submitted but from my own personal experience i know what i saw on my upwork employer account i didn't want to go through all those when it got over 20. so that's the main reason why i recommend this i personally believe that when there's a lower amount of proposal submitted your chances of being interviewed being noticed being hired skyrocketed so this is what i would recommend selecting payment verified i don't do anything with this one some clients will wait especially for hourly contracts until they find a freelancer before they verify their payment method but be extremely careful never work on a job until the payment is verified if a client tries to get you to work on something before their payment verified there's a chance that you won't be paid do not do that make sure they're payment verified and if it's an hourly contract then use the upwork time tracker but again i'll leave these unchecked client history i'll leave this unchecked as well some of my largest upward contracts have came from new clients to upwork i believe i have two contracts that are over 20 thousand dollars in earnings now and i was the first freelancer that they ever worked with i would recommend leaving these unchecked you never know what type of big client is coming to upwork and they're wanting to spend a lot of money if you check this you might be missing out on a big opportunity under budget the first elections are related to fixed price contracts so if you're looking for a fixed price contract in any of these ranges go ahead and select it here and if you're looking for hourly contracts you can add a minimum rate and a max rate so if i was looking for something let's say in the thirty dollar an hour to sixty dollar an hour range i would add that here i usually don't select anything here but if you're looking for a specific length of a project this is where you would filter it and then hours per week if you're looking for a specific amount of hours per week or let's say you can't add on more than 30 hours a week it really needs to be less than 30 this is where you would also filter it i'm looking at hourly contracts expert experience level and here's the proposal filters that we added and i have a us-only filter set as well now i have this enabled because the us-only jobs usually pay more with my hourly rate being 125 dollars an hour that's one of the main reasons why i use this however i've personally worked with upwork clients all around the world but this really comes down to what you're looking for there's going to be way more jobs if you turn off the us-only filter yep 245 and this number looks low only 30 jobs found but i put a lot of filters on here i really got granular with what i'm looking for and that's the point i'm getting at don't waste your connects make sure you find the best jobs that fit you and your skill set as well and i'll give you one more thing here to keep in mind let me open up an older one let's say this job really sparked my interest and i want to submit a proposal on it the title looks great the hourly rate looks amazing the job details look great they're an upwork plus client payment verified okay we're ready to get started what most new freelancers would do right here is submit a job proposal and this is where you could be wasting your connects this job actually requires four connects let me show you why you would be wasting them i'm not sure exactly why this job still shows up in search i personally think it's because the freelancer hasn't billed any hours yet so there's not any hours logged or any earnings on this contract yet but they've already hired a freelancer and you can verify that by scrolling down and there it is and what do you know there's our job under clients recent history you can also see that zero hours have been billed and that's why i think it still shows up in search there haven't been any earnings on this contract yet so that's why it's still showing up even though someone's been hired something you can do which i've done in the past let's say i submitted a job proposal and i feel great about the job but they ended up hiring another freelancer if i went to the original job posting which is what we're looking at right now i could scroll down look at the recent history and i could find the freelancer that they hired then i could go to that freelancer's profile and i could try to figure out why they chose them over me maybe it was because my rate was too high maybe it was because the freelancer had more experience there could be a lot of different reasons but that's one thing you can do and also be sure to save your search so how do you communicate with clients before the contract starts this is definitely an area that's not documented or talked about enough upwork has strict requirements that you can find in the user agreement everything in the user agreement is extremely important because violating any of those requirements can result in your account being suspended or terminated okay here's the direct contact information that you cannot share with upward clients before your contract starts basically any form of communication outside of the upwork platform is considered to be direct contact and that violates the terms of service some examples of this are your phone number email address physical address link to contact form or form request and contact information link to applicant management system or means to submit a proposal or application outside of upwork any handles user names or information that would enable a user to contact you on social media or any other website platform and it also includes communication tools like skype slack wechat teams and zoom here's the key takeaway that i want you to remember before your contract starts and that means before you're hired before they send you that offer and you accept it before then all of your communication has to remain on upwork no matter what the client asks you for even if it's your email address or just simply your phone number to do an interview you can't give it out politely tell the client that you have to keep all of your contact with them on upwork until the contract starts or violates terms of service if they choose not to interview you they'll be more you don't want to risk having your account suspended over one client there's way more clients trust me all the pre-contract communication must remain on upwork for all the interviews introduction calls or any discussions with clients before the contract starts you have to use upwork now i'll show you how to communicate with clients before your contract starts this is actually my upwork client account but it will look the same way on the freelancer side as well for messaging what you're looking at right now is the messages tab this is the upwork direct message that i have opened with my video editor alex using the upwork messaging system is one of the accepted forms of communication before a contract starts before the contract starts this would be an accepted way to communicate so what about introduction and interview calls personally i always do a quick 10 minute introduction or interview call with every single upward client before i decide to work with them it gives me a chance to understand if i'll be a good fit for them for their project if my skill set matches what they need the introduction call goes a long way for me and being successful on upward so pre-contract the way that you would do an introduction or interview call is you would use the upward calling feature which is right here and then you have a few options they recently added in zoom they did a partnership with zoom and now you can actually schedule zoom meetings with the client which is amazing so most clients that i do introduction or interview calls with most of them use them i would say that the upwork calling feature is pretty similar to google hangouts you can do voice video you can pretty much do it all here with the upward call as well it's definitely improved i had a lot of issues with it initially the audio was usually not that great and sometimes it wouldn't even detect my webcam but it actually has come a long way and the last time i used it it worked well and the last option is a phone call it'll basically give you a number that you and the client can call and join so before a contract starts with a client this is what you need to use to communicate with them you can use the upwork direct messaging you can use zoom to do a meeting you can do upward calling or you can do a phone call these are the forms of communication that are accepted under terms of service again don't violate them you don't want to risk your account being suspended not with how upwork and freelancing is going to grow in the future you don't want to be missing out on this opportunity once you accept an offer the contract starts and you're ready to start working you can now communicate with clients using whatever works best for you and the client communication is immensely important to ensuring that your projects are successful and your clients actually know what you're working on i don't want one of my clients sitting around wondering is josh working on my project today if you start a new upward contract with a client but you don't communicate with them they're likely going to be wondering what's going on when a client gives you feedback and a rating when your contract ends communication is one of the things that you're going to be scored on remember that when you're working on contracts after the contract starts you can exchange other forms of contact information such as emails and phone numbers you can also use communication tools like slack teams and skype i have a lot of clients who use slack and they added me to their workspace after your contract starts you can simply use whatever form of communication works best for you and the client effective communication has been one of the most important factors of my success on upwork i make sure that all my clients are always up to date on my work and never left wondering what i'm working on as a freelancer you probably want to be paid right when you get paid depends on your contract type all right now let's talk about something that you probably care about a lot which is getting paid so when your earnings become available depends on the type of payment let's first look at my favorite one which is hourly contracts it's based on a weekly billing cycle the weekly billing period ends on sunday and your funds are available for withdrawal 10 days later which is the following wednesday if you're a top rated freelancer you can also get paid faster now due to covet 19. it was one of the main requests from freelancers to get paid quicker and upwork does a great job of listening to freelancer requests i can tell you this personally i've been a freelancer on upwork since 2016. they've made some great improvements to the platform which came from the request from freelancers upwork does a phenomenal job of listening to the freelance community and i'd love to see that but if you're a new freelancer let's say you made five hundred dollars this week when sunday rolls around that five hundred dollars is going to go into the 10 day waiting period and the following wednesday you're going to get paid at 12 a.m utc this payment system works great for me once you start getting a lot of hourly work every week at 12 a.m utc you're going to get paid for the previous week's work and then for fixed price contracts that are based on milestones once the client approves your milestone so that's after you submit your work for approval and the client approves it then your funds are available for withdrawal after a five day security period passes and last the client also has an option to give you bonus payments this is any type of incentive or bonus they want to give you on top of the work they're already paying you for these are available after your client's payment has been successfully processed and the five-day security period passes there's also different payment methods that you can use some of which involve transfer fees and obviously before you can get paid you need to set up a payment method and if you're a us person in addition to setting up your payment method you also need to set your tax status i'm not going to say too much about taxes here because that could be a fully dedicated video there is one exception for tax forms if you're a us person and you receive over 20 thousand dollars with more than two hundred transactions through upwork then you'll receive a form 1099 k if you don't meet those requirements then you're gonna have to get all your tax information together manually again i'm not gonna dive too deep into taxes i'll consider this for a future video if it's something that you guys want to see but again there's so much information there it could be a fully dedicated video now after you're ready to set up a payment method here's the options and as you can see some of these payment methods come with fees the one that i personally use and most other people do in the us as well is direct deposit via ach this payment method involves zero fees you can do direct to local bank at 99 cents per transfer and there's other options that come with fees direct to local bank wire transfer instant pay all of these have different fees if you're outside of the us and none of these apply to you then you have the following options including paypal it's extremely simple to set up a payment method go to settings get paid add method click the setup button choose a payment schedule that's it you're done now let's discuss the fees involved with using upwork and before we get started i want to say that i believe the fees are fully worth it upwork brings freelancers like yourself and clients together all around the world i personally do not like searching for jobs it takes me away from the one thing that generates money which is working after you build a strong reputation for yourself on upwork with a lot of five-star reviews the jobs will start coming to you i rarely have to search for jobs on upwork i get consistent job invites and i have long-term contracts as well now regarding fees upwork charges a service fee to freelancers which is taken as a percentage of your earnings on upwork it's a sliding fee that's based on your lifetime billings with each client upwork fees include twenty percent for the first five hundred dollars that you earn with the client then it drops down to ten percent after you pass five hundred dollars earned with the client and then after you pass ten thousand dollars it drops down to just five percent i know thinking about making ten thousand dollars with a single client seems impossible or seems crazy when you're first starting out i definitely felt the same way but now i have so many contracts that are well over ten thousand dollars and i'm just paying five percent in fees and here's an example for you let's say you win a fixed price job of a thousand dollars you'll be billed at twenty percent for the first five hundred dollars and then ten percent for the remaining five hundred the fees are definitely worth it for what you get out of the platform and once they drop down to 10 and 5 you're not losing much you can definitely increase your hourly rate a little bit to offset fees upwork also has a freelancer plus membership subscription which comes with benefits the membership plan is 14.99 per month and it's designed to help you more effectively market your services submit proposals and stand out here's the main benefits be discoverable by keeping your profile active even when taking a break so if you're taking a break and you're not actively working on any jobs at the moment your profile can still be discovered by clients and you can get job invites be competitive with insight into competitor bid range on jobs so this you can actually see what other freelancers are bidding you can see the bid range from high to low of what other freelancers are bidding on jobs that you're bidding on which can help a lot in determining where to price yourself engage and apply you get 80 connects per month 70 included with your planned purchase and 10 free connects from upwork and you can also create a customized profile url this is something i haven't done yet but i probably will i'll probably create one that has josh burns tech in the name of it it's definitely something that i need to get around to doing especially since i'm paying for this membership and you can also keep your earnings confidential i don't do that for mine because i don't care you know i want clients to be able to see how much i'm earning especially if i have a really big project it can give them more confidence in me as a freelancer but if your freelancer plus you can also hide your earnings now let's talk about in my opinion the most important part of this entire video which is client reviews your success on upwork is going to be closely tied to your reputation what clients say about you is either going to make or break you as a freelancer when a client views your profile you want them to see tons of five star reviews and great feedback which builds their confidence in you if they view your profile and they see tons of bad reviews why should they want to work with you i don't go to amazon and buy products that have tons of bad reviews just like upwork clients won't hire freelancers with bad reviews my reputation on upwork is what brings in consistent job invites there's tons of clients on upwork who are looking for the best talent and they have more than enough money to pay for it what if you get an unfair review from honestly just a bad client well hopefully first off you're doing introduction calls using upward communication so hopefully you can filter out clients that don't really fit with you if for some reason you do receive an unfair review you have some options first if you have top rated status or higher then you can occasionally request to remove client feedback and there's different types of approval as well you can remove only from your job success score the public score and the comment will still be visible on your profile or you can remove from your job success score and from your profile this means that your public score will be hidden and the comment will be replaced by this feedback has been removed these are great options if for instance you just run into a bad client or you just may be running into someone that's had a rough week trying to get a problem fixed and you may you may take the hit there hopefully this never happens to you so you have to be top rated and also requests can only be made every three months and after 10 or more completed contracts from the time of your previous submitted request so it's only something that you can request every three months or so if needed this is why i always stress introduction and interview calls do your best to filter out any clients that you think you're just not going to fit well with when you do your introduction and interview calls really listen to the client figure out if you're going to be a good fit pick up on any social cues that may seem like you're not going to be a good fit to work with them maybe there's a personality thing from the client do your best to vet the client to make sure you're not going to run into an issue where you need to request to have feedback removed i've personally worked with over a hundred clients on upwork and i have numerous five star reviews and great feedback the introduction and interview calls that i do are a huge component of my success on upwork if i didn't do those calls i would often get myself into situations where i could be needing to request to have feedback removed from my profile so they're very important definitely schedule interview and introduction calls with new clients set yourself up for success and that's where you start so what if you're not top rated and you're fairly new to upwork well then if you fully refund the entire project then it won't appear on your profile however it does still affect your job success score so let's say i have a 500 fixed price contract something went horribly wrong and when closing the contract the client left me a bad review if i then fully refund the 500 back to the client the review will be gone but again my job success score will still be affected there's nothing you can do about that besides dispute the review of the client and hopefully they'll give you a better review you have the option to allow the client to edit feedback and that's in your contract settings when your profile is flooded with five-star reviews and great feedback more and more clients will want to work with you building client confidence not only leads to more jobs but it can also lead to long-term work which can be very lucrative so what if you do an amazing job and you really know that deep down you just did amazing on this job but the client left it open and they didn't give you feedback send them a message and let them know that you would like to close the contract so you can have a review and then if they have more work in the future that you can help with they can simply create a new job and invite you to it over deliver and give without expectation once you focus on giving more than you receive the jobs and the money will come pouring in my client reviews and feedback are way more important than any money that i make if my content helps you and you get value from it be sure to follow my instagram and twitter i post freelancing tips and show you my work ethic and grind every day like most things in life the more time that you put into upwork and freelancing the more you will get out of it everyone can learn upwork best practices i mean i have a full freelance playlist on my channel that freelancers from all around the world can watch for free what separates you is your work ethic and your soft skills be someone who people want to work with you may be the most talented person and whatever your skill is but if you're always negative and you're difficult to work with you're always going to struggle as a freelancer be overly positive and be someone who people they genuinely just want to work with it's so important to start now and stop convincing yourself you know what i'm just going to wait until tomorrow today it isn't a good day for me i can always wait until tomorrow what's a big deal that mindset will lead to immense procrastination where eventually you're going to talk yourself out of even starting don't let fear of failure paralyze you take control of it everyone fails i've failed numerous times i feel like i don't even deserve all the five-star reviews in my profile everyone fails you're gonna get better if you haven't hit the like button yet and subscribe to the channel definitely do that now i have a lot of really great freelancing content planned for this year that i'm excited to share with you and help you grow if you're focusing on building long-term wealth like i am or you essentially want free money then use my links in the description of this video to get free stocks in both robinhood and weeble and again if you want to learn directly from me then check out my patreon at patreon.com forward slash josh burns tech start today put in the work put in the grind be consistent on a daily basis and let's get to work on this end screen i recommend checking out these videos and be sure to hit that round subscribe button for weekly tech videos and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything thank you for watching and until next time

Channel: Josh Burns Tech

Views: 42,562

Keywords: upwork tutorial for beginners, upwork tutorial, upwork, how to start freelancing, freelancing tutorial for beginners, how to work on upwork, upwork for beginners, upwork tips, up work, upwork project catalog, upwork 2021, upwork profile, upwork desktop app, how to use upwork, upwork approval, how upwork works, what is upwork, how does upwork work, start freelancing, josh burns tech, how to upwork, upwork guide, upwork course for beginners, project catalog upwork

Id: yDBu7hss2MQ

Length: 49min 37sec (2977 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021