He became top rated freelancer in first 4 months on upwork | Data analyst freelancer

hello everyone we have kasim berti today he is a very successful freelancer in the field of data analyst and data science and we are going to have an awesome conversation he is going to provide a lot of tips on how to be a successful freelancer on upwork now before we start let me share my screen really quickly and show his profile so he's from charcot pakistan the interesting thing is he started freelancing august 2020 just this year this year within four months he has finished 19 jobs 347 total hours with 95 percent success rate his success rate is gonna be hundred percent uh pretty soon because uh when he started uh in the august he was of course new so that's the reason for this five percent lag but you'll be surprised in four weeks he's going to be the top rated upward freelancer that is a rare achievement that kasim has done and you can look at all his projects he's mentally mainly into power bi analytics different analytics project bi projects so overall data analyst our data science profile and by the way he is one of the subscribers of code basics channel and one day we had some random conversation and i figured that he was learning this power bi from our sales inside project series and then something motivated him to start freelancing and now he's he's just rocking he is earning 25 per hour but in terms of pakistani rupees it the his monthly earning is close to two lakh rupees so you can imagine like in four months reaching to this level is indeed an achievement and there are there are a lot of things that we can learn from kasim today so kasim thank you very much uh for spending time uh during your weekend hello there also thank you so much for inviting me to your channel first of all i would like to thank you to the code basics channel completely that i started learning from data analysts from your channel thanks to you and your complete youtube channel so first of all i would like to say that to start freelancing wasn't a difficult thing for me because before starting my freelancing i have searched a lot of things on youtube on google on different platforms studied from blogs of different freelancers so what you have to do you need to believe that what are you reading how people started from scratch and they are doing great day by day with the passage of time so so double just ask me and ask me to help you guys if you need any queries there are some questions we are going to answer the most questions uh will be about upwork and data analysis so this will be a good thing for me to answer all these questions sure so i think in the video description will share your linkedin profile as well kasim if you don't mind so that people can connect with you and you know you know people can collaborate okay so okay okay definitely you can share that but that's not updated okay then no no problem we'll update it and we'll uh yeah we'll share it uh after a few days when it's updated uh so you you did your b tech in computer and when did you finish your btec in computer engineering i completed my bachelor's from computer university of engineering and technology tax club from pakistan and it was finished in august 16 2019 and right after my bachelor's i went to the huawei technologies for my internship and my internship was going to convert into a complete job but i quit it so due to my some other reasons and i wasn't happy there so i started to work myself uh first of all i started with my one of my seniors his name was said he just like i am going to tell you some tips he told me some tips and i learned a lot of things from that person from your senior okay okay yes and you created a work profile when when was the time when you created your profile it's like i created in 2016 and i've totally forgot that i have an upward profile when i need it it wasn't approved by upwork so it was approved on 27th of july 2020 and i started to work on right at the end of july maybe 29th july or first of august i see so again friends today is it's november 21. he started in august which is just four months back so just just look at the phenomenal success that kasim has achieved four months he's gonna be in two weeks he's gonna be top rated upwork freelancer he has completed 19 jobs earning more than two lakh rupees per month so when you see people tell that upwork is too much crowded too much competition people say okay if we uh register a profile today we'll not have a success so what are your thoughts on that how can you become because you have lived that story that you have achieved success when there is too much competition actually when you compare effort to other platforms like freelancers or fiverr upwork has pretty much a potential right now whenever i started my data analyst career on upwork i started to apply on different jobs and they were most of the almost 15 on average there were 15 proposals on each and every job so if you apply a night time there were only five proposals so what i did how i become one of the good freelancers uh i just tried to get some work in the night when most of the freelancers are getting some rest right this is the this is the main reason how a beginner can become an influencer on a pro i see so when there is no competition during the night time you apply and then if the client is available then they will see your message and then you get connected right yeah and it's the way how you apply like most of the people use bots for the applications for the proposals you don't need to use that board you don't need to buy those boards so what you need to do you need or another thing don't use copy paste proposals like most of the people write proposals all the time and they just copy paste to get the number one to in the application you don't need to be that one okay so what you need to do you need to write the proposal and get some keywords from the from the project details given by the employee get those keywords write it down on your proposal and at the end of proposal you should mention why you are the best why the employer should contact you this is the main thing let's suppose if if a project client asks something at a very beginner level you should ask a question or maybe two casting to the employee to uh convince under a question yes to convince him convince him that you know you know something better than the project details you know something in advance so these questions are in your proposal question marks are always welcome and it is a prominent thing in your proposal most of the people don't do this thing i see so it shows that you are doing critical thinking already on that project and if you ask a smart questions it will already leave a positive impression on that person say okay this freelancer is smart because he's asking smart question you know my question definitely and always write short proposals you don't need to write lengthy proposals okay so if if you are writing short proposal it is easy but that for the employee to read and to get back to you i see so uh tell me the story about your first project that you got was there like too many too many bits on that first project and how did you achieve it and and even like how do you even decide your rate okay so actually to decide rate is not something on to you so but in apple in any platform when you go and create your profile you are very beginner no one is going to trust you so what you need in the first uh you need reviews okay like i'm the beginner i don't have reviews i i can't say anyone that i need ten dollars or fifteen dollars maybe forty dollars per hour for this project so no one is gonna trust me and what you should try with the minimum with the minimum wages for that project so on upfront the minimum per hour wage is three dollars per hour so i started from three dollar per hour so there is another technique when you apply for three dollar per hour somewhere replies to you most of the people reply at that time when someone replies to you you can convince him in the chat that this is something very extraordinary you the work is not that much simple so in the chat you can also convince to raise your wages to five dollars maybe six dollars per hour or maybe simon it it's up to you there are different techniques i see okay so when you uh so yeah what was the first project okay sorry i couldn't answer i forgot the first project i completed was that athletic hardware a power bi project that complete series i learned from you so what i did with this project i completed everyone just listen this thing very carefully i started my first project with sir devil's youtube channel i completed this series and made same project i started it so and i uploaded it as a portfolio by his permission and i showed people that i know something about power bi and it's good so when i when there was some uh something in my portfolio i get some other data from online like data quest or other websites and did same thing as i did in that power bi series of code basics so in this way there were three to four projects in my portfolio portfolio is very important when someone comes to your profile page so then you need to show something so once my portfolio was set up it wasn't difficult for me to get the first project my first project was same on power bi and it was the same project as i did with the code basics youtube channel so it was almost 99 the same project i need to find something so that's amazing i didn't know we're very good [Laughter] i'm glad yeah yeah i'm glad yeah it helped the only difference was there wasn't a sql data source excel data source okay and and that kind of makes it even easier you know excel you pull it power bi and just you just do the work definitely it was very easy for me and i was thinking for every minute to start the whole youtube channel yeah no problem and uh if you don't mind sharing how much you earned in in your first project in first project i earned fifty dollars but fifty and how much time did it take for you uh yeah it was the first project and almost four hours four hours the reason behind it took four hours because i was chatting and questioning lots of things to the employees that to confirm either my direction is right or wrong that is and that is very good thing like when you are working on this project technical implementation is one thing but client communication getting clarification on requirement is actually more important because if you without understanding if you do implementation that time is wasted so that's the thing about upwork is the client communication is most important and then comes technical skills now i always say that if you start working in some company you know then you don't develop you only develop technical skills because someone is spoon feeding but as a freelancer you almost become an entrepreneur so you know how to manage client communication finances everything you are your own business so you do a lot of holistic development overall so i'm glad that you finished your first project four hours on fifty dollar i know it's not a very huge amount but in terms of success you must have felt great right like when you when you had that 50 coming into your account what is the feeling yeah actually i was feeling like it is my first project and it was unbelievable for me because i have never done any single project that was paid to me yeah i have paid to you here i remember it seemed like when i go started getting some money in youtube i like my job i'm earning much more than what i earned in youtube right but it was a small amount maybe 30 dollar a month and it just makes you so happy you want to share with the world i told my wife like look i earned 30 dollars it gives a different feeling it's very good feelings yeah so if you guys want to learn power bi so the series which um kasim mentioned i'm gonna provide a link in the video description below so you can also learn this series and you can use a different data set maybe and create your own dashboard you know and that can help you in cracking job interview or in even you know help with the freelancing as well here i would like to add something that you you you guys don't need to learn every data visualization tool if you are good with power grade that's enough if you're good with tableau that's good so you try one and go with the advanced level so it will be much better than learning all with the basics okay this is something that is what that was very important to me and on the other hand you mentioned that upwork is good because it is providing communications plus the technical skills both as compared to working in any company so when you are working on any when you are working in any freelancer platform especially on upward every individual on upwork or every employee that's a complete company 90 plus are complete companies so either the company's manager is talking to you or maybe the company's ceo is talking to you so in this way in future you can create your own upwork agency or maybe any your own company by getting different projects you are because you have some idea and some knowledge how to talk to different ceos managers you will be good in in i think deciding how much states so exactly it will help you in every way yeah yeah it's good i mean i we are just talking kasim right on the on the phone the other day because kasim is getting a lot of work and he's not having time i i told him that maybe he should have his friends like few of his friend and maybe you can start your own company you know and become like a big ceo of a company uh so and kasim i'm pretty sure it's gonna happen like the rate at which you are going and you're making progress i have my best wishes i i think you will be do be doing a big things in the life um so how do you manage client communication overall and how do you do like frequent calls so just talk about how do you make sure your client is happy first of all whenever i applied to any job i mentioned one thing in my proposal that i will give you the results after every two hours so client becomes very happy by reading this thing that it is going to update me every after every two hours so and by every two hours what you mean is uh so that our viewers understand let's say it's a 10 hour project right so that's what you mean like so 10 hour project two hour will be basically 20 percent work done so it's not like right now it's eight o'clock you are calling at ten o'clock twelve o'clock it's not like that right every twenty percent forty percent so you decide basically milestone yeah definitely so by two hours no one asks you to provide me after two hours update every time so because they are not very free or they don't have this much time so what does this mean i signed initial draft after two hours or maybe three hours sometimes so when i was whenever i sent initial draft to the to my clients they approved that either you are going to right direction or wrong direction so whenever you send your first draft what you need to learn from the project is if your client becomes aggressive that what have you done what are you doing then don't work with that person so if it's a happy then accept your project on upwork otherwise you don't need you don't need if you accept this project and the client is not happy some there are some good clients some bad clients everywhere on every platform right right so if the client isn't happy try to convince him try to make him happy by doing some good work but if you know he or she is not going to happy anyway so don't worry that don't work because the point is important question because if they screw up your rating if they give one person rating then it's so bad everything works on a rating right yes everything works works on rating you are they're going to ruin your profile it doesn't matter how many years or how many months you are going to work so okay your your rates become lower and your rating becomes lower and whenever someone searches for data analyst definitely you will be maybe on the bottom i see and now so see you are a data analyst data scientist freelancer how much coding is needed like if person knows just power bi or tableau let's say and very little scripting i know power bi and tableau also has some scripting but let's say you don't know python too much can you still do freelancing or you have to absolutely know the coding yes definitely you don't need to learn about python at all if you are working as a data analyst with power bi only because some companies there are different roles for each company for data analyst like first company is working with the data analyst using python script and second one is using data source as a excel and other using is mongodb so it depends which tools the company is already using this this is something that matters so if you want to work as a data analyst you don't need to learn all the coding you just need to learn logic and that is only five percent of the data analysis in power bi we use dax language and i'm query so dax language doesn't need that much code like hundreds or or maybe 50 50 of lines so there are only two or three lines for merging of two columns or maybe if else conditions so this is some very basic uh coding that everyone knows who got it comes who comes here to learn data analysis is that much important and i think you once mentioned that let's say you are building a project which is on a tablet now you don't know the tableau do you still build that project or you think oh no i need to learn things first and then i can beat it okay first of all i would like to say something that in the start when i started to work on upwork most of the projects i i i don't know how to execute this project i don't know the tools they are using so one good thing is that i ask the client that give me some more time i requested more time and started to learn that project with that tool so this thing is very important for a freelancer that if you don't know any tool completely you can request freelancer uh the you can request for your employee to give you some more time and then you can do that project in that time i see but still you are like being confident and you're not like okay i don't know tableau i won't be the project right so i like that attitude that even if you don't know you know that you can learn these things you know you have that confidence so you are building that project and by building that project not only you are learning the skill but you are earning money now that project comes to your portfolio so so far you have done power bi projects tomorrow if tableau projects comes in i think you will build it and then tableau comes to your portfolio your portfolio becomes bigger and bigger and then you can attract more diverse work definitely you can say that in my first scrapping project i scrapped on only one almost 120 million of data records i prepared a script it was data scrapping of different company files so i i have never done the scrapping before but whenever i get this project i started to learn scrapping from very basic level so at the end i i prepared the script and the employer told me that you don't need to execute because if on my laptop it was taking 53 years to scrap that data 53 years yes definitely on 20 million records because in each record there are almost 20 plus columns having phone numbers founding years managers oh my god that was so much data so the employee employee got multi-agent server so he was something using a very fast and very accurate i see so if uh let's say you have a hundred dollar project so do you get that hundred dollar or does upwork take some commission yes it takes 20 percent of the commission up till 500 us dollar project so if you are if you are working with your old client then it's very good for you because when you goes up when you go up to the 500 then it becomes 10 oh i see so if you it is 600 let's say then only 60 will be taken but if it is 500 no no if it's 600 then up to 500 it will be a oh god then above 500 will be 10 i see so remaining so it will be uh 20 20 of 500 will be like 100 and then remaining is like 10 so on 600 you are paying 110 got it got it uh so when you um so i know you are very successful but talk about the difficulties that anyone faces so let's say the people who are watching they start uh on upwork like what are the common difficulties that they face and how do you overcome those actually in the start the most difficult thing was to spend some money because you need to buy some connects and you don't know either you will get some work or not you just need to believe yourself and you need to do some consistent work proper homework before because every connector cost you 25 rupees in pakistan pakistani rupees so you get only a point one five dollars per connect so and it takes six almost six or four connects to apply for any job on upfront some jobs takes two only so i see and i think patience is very important right because sometimes people start and let's say six months you don't get any project yes definitely wait a minute sorry yeah no problem okay so patience we are talking about patients right patience i think is very important uh because initially for six months let's say you don't get it and you don't i shouldn't lose the hope i know my friend he started to work on half work in 2017 and he quit because he wasn't getting enough work to feed his family so he quit now he's working some other job maybe but i know i know the reason why he could because he was not getting enough work so if you are not this thing happens happened to me as well in the start i was getting most of the work in night and there were some days like three to four days i wasn't getting even any response from the client and i was very i was very disappointed right like you get like and like i think what happened to my profile and i think the first one i got that was only my luck you know maybe such kind of thing comes from your mind i see have you so have you done so you're a freelancer data analyst data center have you done any courses or any degree in data analyst or data science no no actually i am a computer engineering and if you look on my courses it was it were mostly for hardware side and a little bit about softwares so i see you you can have 60 percent work on hardware like arduino and ics and 40 percent was on softwares i see so for the viewers who are watching many times because people ask me question that okay we need to get a degree certificate but look at kasim he's a bachelor in computer science majority of his course was in hardware and now he he learns power so how did you learn power bi from the youtube only right yes only from youtube it wasn't difficult for me and i what i have what i'm doing right now i started from youtube there was there were i many times how many times i started to work to learn from coursera or udemy but they were very slow and you are not getting everything from any single course you need to do almost two to three projects for every different part of the tool so on youtube this is the only thing i have used i see so yeah so people who are listening if you have a willpower and if you have a desire or to do something great you can learn things on your own on youtube for free and you can achieve the kind of success that kasim has uh achieved so now i'm just going through a list of a question so people also argue that you need to have a lot of experience in order to start start freelancing of course that is not true right you when you you just started in august and you do not have any experience and i started i started uh to work on upwork as a freelancer in 2020 august and the most incredible thing was that i learned the power bi one month ago from the start okay you can say that there was no experience needed you the only thing you you need is your passion that how much you are consistent like if you work for one day and you take rest for two days then this is something not going to work i see so any other advice you have for the people who wants to start freelancing but they are reluctant actually most of the freelancers they fear like in my back in my university time one of my roommates he was very good freelancer he was doing great but i was very fear that i can't do this thing so what oh in my mind i started to hate that this is something not for me so uh now after three to four years when i am done with everything from the university and i good i get a good chance and i started to work on first i i uh for the in 2019 when i learned from my senior he taught me things of a freelancer but i implemented these things on upwork as well and it is working very well so for the for the viewers my only advice is please don't quit you guys only need to believe whatever you read on your in the different blogs like if so if in the blogs some people say that you need to applying these projects the way they tell you you need to believe that i i'm very good with web surfer i studied lots of things about different platforms and i believed i said that is something that helped me a lot that's a very very good point like having self belief is i think the most important thing in order to become successful yep yes definitely and another advice for the data analyst that start from very basic don't go high without learning the first tool don't go for the second one so okay i am working with only power bi and i have worked with korean companies with greeks companies and right now working with usa a u.s based company so this is only from power play and started from power bi i went to as your clouding go with azure right iot edge as your iot hub so all these things uh were just told to me by my company owners my employees so i started to learn these things gradually so this is how a freelancer works so don't forget and learn one thing completely okay so you started basically so you have step by step journey just to summarize so he learned power bi from youtube he looked at my uh sales insight at lake hardware series then you got a first project of power bi which was very similar 90 similar so you got success with that and now you have a good rating on upwork so you get second project third project and most of the projects are on power bi so now you are kind of almost becoming a power bi expert because you are doing like a real projects so kasim did not do any certificate nothing you know computer engineer he just learned as you go and right now what in in poverty i am sure i can do everything maybe it is on google map maybe it is on bing map so now what is the most awaiting thing for me i'm making for december 2020 update from power bay power power bay gives you updates on every month so this is something i want to tell you that there is no old document that i need now i'm working on updates if a new update comes i just need to change some few things in my previous project and that's all i see so you are kind of uh almost getting in sync with the development that they are doing so you already know so uh when someone was asking me on upwork are there enough data analyst and data science projects do you see a lot of data science data analysis projects on offer yes yes i started to work on upward and then one day i thought that why not to other platforms i went to freelancer and fiverr as i made some ids and but there wasn't enough work but on upwork there are complete companies you are dealing with so the data analyst jobs is something that only works for big companies not for small companies or maybe three or four person companies you know very well data science projects are very costly projects and on upward companies so that's why you will get more work on offer even if you go to the fine work option in upward you will see there are almost 10 projects in maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes i see and gradually i think in terms of we are talking about rate so you started working as a three dollar an hour rate now you are working at 25 an hour so as your work grows as your reputation improves i know some people charge 200 an hour like 400 right data science especially the niche the difficult work they charge a lot of money i know an indian girl named her name is asana and she is taking 175 per hour 175 an hour wow that's that's huge so yeah the good thing is if you go in the start i started to work with complete projects maybe a project based budget and then after doing some good work the employees started to trust on you and they ask you again and again for some more work and then they say you work for us for our project so in part our project the good thing is that you will be paid either the work is done or not yeah yeah yeah yeah even even if you are coming communicating with your employee they are paying you you are getting some money i see so um when you are looking at all this project the most of the projects that you have done so it will be either so building a dashboard in the power bi doing uh web scrapping on some records right like what are the type of projects for our viewers just say like what are the type of projects you get like what is the actual work actually when i when i told you that you need to learn only one complete tool so in the project description if client mentioned that he or she needs power driver so you need to know everything about power bay when you are expert so that then you apply and you know that whatever he or he is going to tell you you know everything about power bi so what i uh in the start i started to make some reports some dashboard on power bi i did some web scrapping but when i got some more skills i started to work on row level security embedded embedded dashboards like you are embedding dashboard into the different websites i have designed some courses for for the students these were paid courses so i was told by the employer that he needs some course for the power bi i made some dashboards some exercises so these kinds of projects i have done perfect all right kasim thank you very much for your time this conversation was super useful i also learned a lot of things from this conversation because i i have not done freelancing on upwork of course so i learned a lot of things from you and other other viewers who have also learned a lot of things from you i think we should continue this conversation maybe have a another round in the future as well i know one thing this is famous in our country that the teacher may not be the king but he is the king maker yeah so if you have not done freelancing that but whatever i am doing i just started from you and i told you once that i was almost quit i was almost on the edge of the quick to freelancing or maybe the data scientist feed i was going for any other job maybe 25 000 okay and see the thing with freelancing is uh you are your own boss you don't have to travel you work from home first of all so much flexibility right like what are the so let's cover that so what are the pros and cons let's say you're working in a big company let's say why earning two lakh rupees per month versus you are doing freelancing two lakh rupees per month sitting at home so what are the what are the good aspects of freelancing so the good thing about freelancing is if i am earning to like experiment i am not working eight hours a day and the second one i'm not doing consistent eight hours and maybe i am doing three hours or four hours maybe i'm not working for two days because i was on i was on a wedding ceremony so these kinds of things you you get a lot of time for your friends and family but whenever i i i got some permanent job on upwork as well but i refused the reason was it was it was paying a lot but i if there is work or either there is work or not you need to sit on your table your tracker is on the camera is looking at you you have to work ah so that is not good right like even i like that like so let's say you work for two hours in the morning eight to ten after that ten to twelve you want to go out and play cricket as a freelancer you can do that but as if you're working corporate your time is controlled by the employer by the employee definitely and i wake up whenever i'm just i i feel that it's easy for me and i can wake up easily now yeah yeah yeah and full control of your time yes everything is fine yeah so and and i think the other thing about freelancing is which we mentioned is you learn a lot of entrepreneurial skills which you don't learn when you are in corporate company right yes like client communication soft skills it's like you are running you are your own company so all those soft skills well because whenever your company most of the time you don't get a complete project this is the main thing you get some part of the project yeah part of the project and then they don't tell you why they are doing this and what is the start line what is the finish line you go the same person your manager gives you some work and they do this thing all the time so on the other hand freelancing is something too much better you know from the start to end i was i forgot to tell you one thing in the u.s elections you can see there is some like dashboard showing map and all that things so we are working on same kind of thing so for the maybe the next time elections in power there we can do the same thing wow that's really good to know so maybe next u.s election the the dashboard might be built by you who knows right yes it may be but it depends the home i work with and the thing i was trying to tell you is if i was working in a company i never knew that my product my work is going to use in such a big place that you're creating yes i can't know the impact what i'm doing right now but if you are you working on a freelancer the employer tells you why he needs this thing and what will be the deliverable so this is something very important and even sometimes working as a freelancer i get so many ideas in my mind to launch my own product maybe yeah that is also true but if you are working in a company you don't know you don't take risks because you know if you take this yeah and that is need more time and maybe you you need to leave your job exactly so you are you become risk taker you do develop enterprise skills i think confidence also right like when you know okay i can on like say two like five lakh rupees per month and i don't need any employer you it builds so much confidence in you it makes you a different person yeah definitely great kasim i am so happy for your success i really wish you grow uh to a very high level and we'll continue this conversation maybe we'll have next conversation as well and also once we talked about uh producing a tableau series as well so maybe i'm planning to everyone i'm planning to produce a series similar to the power bi sales insight series that we did we are going to do similar series with tableau as well and i will be collaborating with kasim kasim is a is working in a in industry now he he's a pro now he's like a top rated freelancer and you will get a lot of insights from that project series so it will come up soon so please uh stay tuned on that kasim thank you very much for your time and i'm going to wreck uh stop our recording now okay thank you very much

Channel: codebasics

Views: 373,527

Keywords: data analyst upwork freelancing, upwork data analysist, upwork data analyst, freelance data analyst, data analyst freelance, data science freelance, freelance data scientist, upwork data analytics, data analyst freelance work, data analytics freelancing, data analyst freelancing project, data analyst upwork, codebasics upwork, codebasics freelancer, data analyst freelancer on upwork, data analyst upwork project, how to get more freelancing projects, how to start freelancing

Id: sQnG6XiFfLE

Length: 41min 57sec (2517 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020