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A few people reached out to me asking how they can get started on Upwork. I'll share some of the advise I gave them here for everyone.
The first thing I say is put in the time and effort picking your niche before you even start applying to jobs.
In this context, the niche is a category or skill on upwork.
It's easier to gain traction when you're racking up successful job history in a single category or skill than it is to complete jobs in multiple categories.
Take what I do for example. I'm in Web Development but my category is WordPress. I can do all sorts of things in Web Development but I stick to WordPress.
The more jobs I complete, the easier it is for Upwork to start highlighting me as a best match, being shown in search results or as the freelancers recommended to invite after the client posts a job.
If you focus on this in the beginning, you'll get to the Upwork is promoting you phase faster.
So how do you pick a niche?
Ask yourself some questions:
When you find something in the middle, that's your niche.
In my opinion, this is the fastest way to start making significant and consistent money on Upwork.
When you implement this strategy right off the bat, you’re hyper focusing your profile.
The goal is to collect job history in your category so Upwork promotes you for jobs in this category.
To zero in on how to actually do this let’s go back to my example.
My expertise is Web Development. That means I can apply to a whole bunch of jobs on Upwork but I focused on WordPress instead of programming languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc. Or other platforms like Joomla, Shopify etc. Or frameworks like Laravel.
In WordPress if focus I still have 100s of opportunities a a day/week to find a job.
The point I want to get across is to set an intention that you’re building your profile around successful job history in the category that you decide to work in.
As you collect job history in your category, upwork starts displaying your percentile on the client side when they see your profile or proposal card and they show how much you’ve earned in the category.
This is where Upwork promotes you and places you in front of the client in the following areas:
I would have had the exact same success if I focused on any of these other ones instead of WordPress but WordPress is what fit closer to the middle of the venn diagram for me personally. It just wouldn’t have worked or at least would taken a whole lot longer if I applied to each of these randomly.
So many freelancers miss this in the beginning and end up taking the long way around. Focus on this and you’ll be on a fast track to the results you want on Upwork.
