- Hey, how's it going? My name's Josh Burns and
welcome to Josh Burns Tech. So I get asked a lot. How am I making over $10,000
a month on upwork.com as a SQL DBA and SQL developer? In this video, I'll be
sharing everything with you, telling you why I started
freelancing, how I got started, how I landed my first job, how I consistently get long-term clients, showing you my largest contracts, and also giving you tips to
help you consistently win jobs in Upwork long-term and
make life changing money. Freelancing has improved my life in more ways than I
could have ever imagined. It's allowed me to live without
ever worrying about money, which can be one of the most
stressful things in life. So I grew up in a really
small area in rural Kentucky and I guarantee you that most people who live where I grew up don't even know what
freelancing or Upwork is. And I'm telling you this to show you that there's nothing special about me. I'm just a normal guy who
should have grown up to be average at best, but I always had a
burning feeling deep down to be successful and pursue the life that I always dreamed of. And if you have that same feeling, then I strongly encourage you
to pursue it and go after it. Don't wait around until later in life when you're looking
back wondering what if, what if I learned that skill? What if I worked harder? What if I pursued my goals and dreams? Regret is a scary thing. So push yourself to go after
whatever you want in life, whatever makes you happy and fulfilled. I went from barely scraping
by paycheck to paycheck to making over $650,000
on Upwork in five years. My skillset has also grown
at a rapid and insane pace. I own a beautiful 40
acre farm with my fiance and I have a fully upgraded Tesla Model X that's sitting out in my garage. Freelancing has also opened the door for me to invest consistently and build passive income sources that give me even more freedom in life. My skillset and career
have absolutely skyrocketed because I've been able to
work on numerous projects, really fun, challenging projects across different industries
around the world. I have so much more knowledge
and technical ability in my skillset because of
Upwork and freelancing. If you appreciate everything
I'm sharing with you for free on YouTube, then take a moment to hit the like button on this video and subscribe to the channel if you want to learn how
to make money freelancing and completely change your life. And if you want to take it a step further, then check on my Patreon
that's linked down below, patreon.com/joshburnstech
which offers tons of benefits like a private Discord server giving you the ability to interact with me daily, exclusive content, and also be able to see
the overall breakdown of my crypto portfolio. Thank you guys so much, I
truly appreciate the support. I truly believe that we have
one of the best communities on all of YouTube, so let's
keep growing it together. So first let's talk about why I started freelancing on upwork.com. After college, I started out
in a tech support position which if you're in IT, then you know this is the main position
that most people start out in. And in that position, I
made about $40,000 a year, which monthly is about
$3,333 before taxes. That's way more money than I
had made in my entire life, but I also had $30,000
in student loan debt and if you look at it that way, I would have been paying off
those loans pretty much forever and never really achieving the life of freedom that I wanted. In that tech support position, I worked and grinded insanely hard and eventually worked my way into a SQL DBA and developer
role and I got this opportunity because I started looking
around at the company and finding positions
that I was interested in. I knew that my manager
valued the hard work and professionalism
that I put in every day. So I sent him an email to
set up a one-on-one meeting to discuss my career goals. I told him that I was
really interested in SQL and wanting to work towards a career path in SQL server database
administration and SQL development. He met with the CIO and
thankfully, he approved my request. I started working with a senior
SQL server DBA and developer on a daily basis, usually going over and working with him in the afternoons and being mentored by him. And eventually I got promoted to full-time SQL DBA and SQL developer. After accepting the new role, I got a raise to about $55,000 a year. Now this was a nice $15,000 raise, but was still well below the
average pay for my skillset. Now I initially asked for 70,000. However, I was told that I
would eventually progress towards 70,000 over time
as I earned certifications. I knew that I was leaving
a lot of money on the table with the hope of eventually
getting those raises which could have taken years. After I was in my new position for awhile, I started exploring SQL DBA and developer positions in
my area to test the waters. I ended up finding a SQL
DBA and ETL developer role at the University of Kentucky which is the largest and most
well-known college in my area. I applied for the job and they
contacted me pretty quickly. After a couple rounds of
interviews, one phone interview and one interview in person, I was offered the position
at $70,000 per year, which was my goal. However, I really wanted to stay at my current company at the
time because I loved it there, but also didn't want to pass
up on another $15,000 raise. So I met with my manager,
I told him about the offer and also told them that
I wanted to stay there if they could match it. My manager met with the CIO. They talked about everything and ended up giving me another raise, pushing my salary up to $70,000 a year. I accepted it and then
I turned down the offer from the University of Kentucky. About a year later, I
realized that I was relying on one income source, one
business to increase my pay. I could work insanely hard, but unless they gave me another promotion, I was gonna be stuck getting the standard one to 3% raise a year. I knew that if I really
wanting to increase my income then I needed to add additional sources. I first heard about
freelance sites in college, but didn't explore them because I didn't feel like
had the necessary skills yet. However, now I feel very
confident in my skillset so I started exploring freelance websites. I found Upwork and decided
to create a profile. So as you can tell, I poured
tons of time into my skillset before freelancing or
creating a profile in Upwork. The truth is if you want to make life
changing money freelancing, then you need skills that pay
well, and also have demand on sites like Upwork. When choosing SQL server as a skillset, I researched average pay and this was before I ever
considered freelancing. So I actually searched for salaries. When doing my research, I found that both SQL DBA
and database development both paid very well and had great future
job growth projections. Based on this research,
I knew that I could have a six figure career in SQL DBA or development without freelancing. As I mentioned earlier, I was
able to increase my salary from 40,000 to $70,000 a year before I ever created a profile on Upwork. This leads directly into a tip, which is to research high-paying skills and then take online courses to determine if you enjoy the skill. The fact that I love working with SQL and databases every day is a major reason why I'm earning over
$10,000 a month on Upwork. I'm able to wake up every day and be excited to get to work and I never had that feeling before. SQL server and databases
just really fascinates me and there's always something new to learn. The best investment that you can ever make in your entire life is in yourself. And with that being said,
I need to take a moment to thank our sponsor for today's video, which is one of my
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new premium classes. Skillshare has tons of great courses for freelance skills like SQL server. The complete SQL server
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follow for beginners with over 1800 students and
tons of highly rated reviews. It has over 30 real-world
exercises to help you practice and learn more about each
major topic in the course. And because Skillshare is kind
enough to sponsor this video and support my channel, the first 1000 people who click my link in the description will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium. Thank you so much Skillshare for supporting the channel
and sponsoring this video. Starting out on Upwork
can be very intimidating especially when you're competing
against other freelancers who are already established and have great reviews
and feedback as well. I remember seeing Upwork jobs that had 10 to 20 proposals submitted
on them and thinking how in the world am I gonna stand out among all these other freelancers? It actually took me about
three to four months to get my first job, but I finally found ways that worked. First, I created an attractive profile that focused on the
client and how my skills would benefit them and
make their lives better. Also be sure to use a profile
photo that's high resolution. A lot of you probably are underestimating how important your
profile photo actually is. If you need inspiration on how to create a
profile that stands out, what I would personally recommend doing is finding the highest-paid
freelancers in your skill area and then using their
profiles to get inspiration as well as ideas on
how to structure yours. And if you want even more tips on how to create an Upwork profile that stands out to clients, then be sure to watch the video, link to the top right after
you've finished this one. Next when trying to get
my first job on Upwork, I mainly focused on entry and intermediate
experience levels. Now these jobs are
definitely lower paying. However, client expectations
are also lower as well. So other than getting my first job, I also needed to build my confidence and prove to myself that I
can handle freelance projects on my own and do well on them. I also focused on finding
jobs that had a lower amount of submitted proposals. The best way to do this is
to bid on jobs very quick, which means that you need
to be very active on Upwork. A great tip for your cover letter is to be open with the client. Tell them that you're just
starting your freelance career and their job aligns immensely
well with your experience. Also ask the client to schedule a quick introduction call with
you and give them a few dates and times that you're available. Now for me personally, I usually try to keep this
call to 10 to 15 minutes. This is such a great way to
get the client to take action and look further into you. My best advice for you
when preparing for the call is to write down any
questions that you have so you can ask them and
also be sure to read over the entire job description very carefully. I always have the job open on my computer during the call and also
taking notes as well. If you want to see an
example of my cover letters, how I write them, and how I customize them
for each client as well, then check out the video at the top right after you finish this one. Using the tips from this video, I was able to get my first
job on Upwork in May of 2016, which paid $25 an hour. For this job, I basically
made small updates to a MySQL database, updating
data in specific columns. This turned into an
ongoing job and the client would reach out to me
usually on a monthly basis asking me to update data
in the MySQL database. This job resulted in a five star review with amazing feedback and
I also earned over $1,000. Your main goal with
your first job on Upwork should be to get a five-star
review with great feedback because this is gonna lead to more work. Focus on over-delivering
and going above and beyond to exceed the client's
expectations for you. So the main reason why I'm able
to earn over $10,000 a month on Upwork is long-term clients. With long-term clients, you
can actually make more money because you can spend more time working rather than searching for new jobs and submitting job proposals. The job search and job
proposal processes on Upwork are very time-consuming
and tedious processes if you're doing them the right way. All of that time that you
spend looking for new jobs is money that you could be
making with long-term clients. So a question that you likely have is how do I find long-term clients? And the answer is actually
really simple, do a great job and over-deliver for every
client that you work with. It's nearly impossible
to actively search for and find long-term clients
because most clients on Upwork simply had needs that they're
looking to have fulfilled. Your job is to fill the need by over-delivering and doing a great job. If you do a great job and you have a positive
and helpful attitude, every time that you work with a client then you're gonna be the first person that the client thinks of when
they need additional help. Your skillset is also a critical factor in your ability to get long-term clients. Some skillsets are better suited for single purpose, really quick jobs whereas others have more
weekly consistent work. Most of my clients on Upwork do not have any internal employees with sequel DBA or SQL
development experience. And because of this, I am
their go-to SQL resource, which leads to long-term consistent work. My main tip for you is to over-deliver and genuinely focus on
helping the client succeed and providing value to their business. Put yourself in the client's
perspective and think, what can I do right now
to make their lives better and provide more value
to them and then do that. Now let's take a look at my
highest earning contracts on Upwork, which will
show you the real power of long-term clients. This is my current Upwork
profile and let's go ahead and take a look at some
of my largest contracts. Let's scroll down to the
work history section. And now what I'm gonna do is
order by largest projects. And this is a great tip for you. You can do this on any
freelancer's profile. So maybe you're interested
in learning a skill or you just want to look up a really successful
freelancer who has your skill. You can do this on Upwork. You can look at their work history, see the job titles for the type
of jobs they're completing, and in some cases you can also
see the description as well if the job isn't private. So right now, this is the largest contract
I've ever had on Upwork. I think one of my open contracts is getting close to this
one, but as you can see, I made 75,000, almost
$76,000 on this contract. You can see this client was looking for an ongoing
resource that could assist with data warehouse and
related system management. Now, what I did for this client was a lot of ETL work using Talend and also managing the
Redshift data warehouse. So everything from loading data into the data warehouse,
manipulating data, transforming it to get it
ready for front end reports. It turned out to be a great
job and a great opportunity. I got a great review on it
and I made almost $76,000. And now we can scroll down and see a lot of my other large contracts. So this one's $66,000, regular database maintenance and changes. Scrolling on further, MSSQL DBA, upgrade SQL server, MSSQL DBA, database administrator and so on. And as you can see, I have
a lot of completed projects that were over $10,000. And to clear up any confusion, I'm not actually working
on 34 different jobs at the same time. This is how many I have
that haven't been completed and haven't been closed out. A lot of these are older clients that will reach out to me
when they need something, but I'm not actively working
on 34 projects every week. There's no way I could
manage that by myself, but I do have some large
in progress contracts. There's one for 6,000, 8,000, 34,000, this is still in progress and
they gave me a review already. Here's another one in progress that I have a review for already as well and I've made over
$50,000 on this contract. And again, the key point that
I wanted to drive home here is that you can go to
any freelancer's profile and do what I just showed you. You can look at their jobs,
what they're completing, look at their reviews,
look at the job titles. This is gonna give you
a lot of inspiration as well as get you ready. The main thing that I
want you to take away from this entire video is to start now. Look inward at yourself and determine where you
need to make improvements and where you need to put in more effort. Start today and stop convincing yourself. You know what? I'm just gonna wait until tomorrow. Today isn't a good day for me. I don't really have the time. I can always start tomorrow. That mindset is gonna lead
to immense procrastination where you'll eventually talk yourself out of even starting. The most common thing that I
see holding freelancers back is a lack of action. If you have huge goals and
ambitions for yourself, but you never take action, then you're gonna be living a life that's completely full of what ifs. What if I put in the
work to learn that skill? What if I sacrifice my free time to work on my goals and ambitions? What if I gave freelancing my all rather than putting in mediocre effort? Your skillset and talent will only take you so far freelancing. You could be the most talented
person in your skill area, but if you lack motivation and a consistent strong work ethic, then you're always gonna be held back from reaching your full potential. The more time that you put into something, the more that you're gonna get out of it and that definitely applies to
both Upwork and freelancing. I keep the mindset that life
does not owe me anything. It's 100% up to me to go after what I want and make it happen. Start today and begin the process and taking control of your life. If you haven't signed up on Blockfi yet, then go ahead and use my link below, blockfi.com/joshburnstech to
get up to $250 in free Bitcoin when you open a new account. This is such a great way to
make your crypto work for you. Generating passive income,
earning compound interest while you sleep or play Rocket League. - Really what a save. What about that shot you
whipped three plays ago? - If my channel has helped
you on Upwork and freelancing, then all I ask is to hit the
like button on this video and drop a comment below. Your success will be an inspiration to other freelancers who are
struggling to find confidence and stay focused. You can also get two free stocks valued up to $1,850 with Weeble by signing up using my link
down below and depositing $100. This is an easy way to get free money because you can basically sell your stock right after you get it if
you don't want to hold it. My Patreon is now open as well for anyone who wants to join
the private Discord server, learn how I make over six figures a year
freelancing from anywhere I want, see my crypto portfolio breakdown, get exclusive content as well as alerts on cryptocurrencies that
I'm researching and holding. This is a great way to
give more access to me. We're building a great community on Patreon and Discord as well so I highly recommend checking it out. You can go to patreon.com/joshburnstech or click the link down below. Be sure to follow me on Instagram
and Twitter @JoshBurnsTech to get more cryptocurrency content, see my daily work ethic and grind, and also all the other things
that I enjoy most in life. As always, thank you for watching. I'll catch you in the next one. On this end screen, I recommend
checking out these videos and be sure to hit that
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