How I Earned Over 20K in 3 Months Freelance Programming on Upwork!
What is up guys! Welcome to my blog so in my last blog I made on becoming a software engineer and a top tech company I mentioned that freelancing was one of those things that you can do to become a better programmer and engineer. After that, I was asked by several of you guys after showing my upwork.com portfolio how I was so successful on that web site.
So in this blog, I will be giving you guys four tips on how to be a successful freelance software developer on upwork.com. let's get into it so before we get into the tips we're gonna start with a little bit of a backstory as to how I started freelancing on upwork.com y'all are gonna learn that I love to tell stories so if you feel it a little bit impatient and you want to get right into those tips I will not be offended you can go ahead and click right there and I'll see you over there.
But for those of you that are still here, I want to talk about how I discovered upwork.com and why I started freelancing, to begin with, while I was in college so I was finishing up my third-semester internship and I was basically without a job at that point I basically had no income and it was like a panic State it was just more so like well what am I gonna do next while I'm wrapping up my last semester in college so I'm thinking to myself like well I could who get a typical nine-to-five that cop most college students work but I don't think it's gonna pay well and it's not gonna continue to cultivate my ability as a programmer. So I thought to myself why not develop for money for people why not build things with the skills that I acquired during my internship and while building my own personal apps why not use those skills to actually make money.
So that's exactly what I did however I was at a loss I'm like well how exactly am I supposed to find people that want things built so what I ended up doing was doing a quick google search basically searching for freelance Android development jobs and I came across a website that was known as odesk.com which is now known as upwork.com so I thought to myself like oh I hit the jackpot like we're in there I basically have essentially a pool of people that are looking for Android apps to be develop by me right I didn't think about anything else at that point so I said in my profile hooked everything up got my profile picture on fleek basically from my description in there I thought everything was on point I got my skills listed I'm in there right I'm about to make the big bucks but the first thing I noticed first thing I noticed and I was immediately intimidated by the amount of people that were applying for each contract I'm like how am I supposed to stand out in this crowd so I'm thinking like well the only way I could see myself actually landing a contract is if I lower my rate and what I had as my rate at the beginning was essentially what I was making during my internship but I decided like no we're gonna lower it even lower than that we're gonna go $12 an hour I came across a particular contract that said basically that the client was looking to be taught Android while building an Android app which they would use afterwards right it essentially would be a collaborative coding session done over Skype but you would also be working on their app at the same time and of course, the client could use whatever skills you had taught them during that session to continue working on the project in their free time or you could work on it when the client was not there and it's billed them for your time and after completing that project successfully.
I was gifted with my first five-star rating and that set me apart from everybody else that was applying for most of these jobs that I was looking at and things went up from there but that gets me right into my first tip which is to start cheap the reason I say to start cheap is that it increases your chances of getting your foot in the door and getting that first contract landing that first contract will essentially allow you to give it an opportunity to gain feedback or what they call the rating the rating essentially is gonna tell any potential clients for contracts that you apply for in the future what type of work to expect of you so if you have a five-star rating and you do well on every project that you had in the past and naturally your clients are gonna have way more confidence in hiring you and picking you for a particular job that you apply for so it's also important not just to start cheap which increases your chances of getting your foot in the door but to make sure that you are taking contracts that you can complete with success and that leads me to my second tip which is to get your skills now I know it might sound obvious but before you can become a successful freelance developer it's important to at least having a little bit of skill and whatever services you plan on offering to your clients this will ensure that you're at least able to complete fairly simple projects with success and like I said success leads to good ratings good ratings lead to more contracts which leads to more money you did.
For example, if I wanted to be a front-end web developer I would focus on learning HTML CSS and JavaScript and there are many resources out there for learning whatever you need to learn whether it be books or things on the web and in a future blog I plan on talking about what I think are some of the best resources for learning how to program once you feel like you have a good grasp of the programming language and tools necessary to develop and your said specialty I recommend that you start to cultivate those skills that you just learned by building and working on a personal project what this will do is they'll teach you a few things it'll, first of all, to teach you how to turn an idea into a reality which is essentially what you will be doing for your clients.
You will also learn how to scope a project which is basically a fancy term for determining what the objectives and the constraints of a project are after you pass the scoping phase and figure out exactly what it is that you want to build it's time to move on to the fun stuff which is actually working on your project while working on your personal project you will find as you run into a scenario where you know exactly what you want to do with your project but you don't know how you are going to do it this will be your main way of growing as a developer and this is a big learning opportunity so there's a chance to basically fill in your knowledge gaps once you are copying your skills that you can build something worthwhile it's almost time to make some money so let's head right over to the computer and I'm going to talk about tip number three which is making sure you have a good profile alright guys so here we are on my upwork.com portfolio as you can see here having a good profile is a fairly straightforward thing just ensure that you have a clear profile picture that it basically shows your face and shows your client who you are be sure to have an accurate title as to what services you offer as well as the description is very important as well so just be pretty precise here and talk about what you specialize in and what services you offer in the next section here is the portfolio just list anything here that you think is relevant to your experience.
How I Earned Over 20K in 3 Months!
Compare Upwork VS Freelancer.com
This is obviously a very outdated Upwork profile but this is the one that I use and this is the one that helped me to land contracts so that is why I'm sharing it with you guys but yeah as you see here I just listed apps that I worked on down here in the skills just be sure to be accurate like I said it goes back to just giving your client more information about yourself being sure that you're describing what it is that you actually have to offer as far as a skill set and what it is you specialize in then, of course, you have your test this is basically more social proof that you can do two things that you say you are able to do I'm not sure how seriously these are actually taken on this website though because you can find most of the answers online and then of course at the time I put my employment history I listed my internship there and of course my degree from the University of Toledo and computer science and engineering that is pretty much it as far as a profile goes.
So I will see you guys back on set and for my last tip be sure to personalize your messages to some extent when you are applying for these contracts now I know it may be tempting to copy and paste the same messages to many clients in order to increase your application volume and volume is definitely a good thing when it comes to applying for contracts but I personally recommend against this reason being is that these copy and pasted messages are usually easy to spot the strategy I think works best is to actually understand the exact requirements of the job you're applying for by reading the description thoroughly and customizing your message to fit the needs of that project this is a good chance to ask any questions you may have about a particular project that you're applying for and this is a chance to sweet-talk your clients.
Essentially it is obviously for you to write a love song to them as to why you guys are meant to be and why they should hire you to build what they need built now I'm in no way saying to any water I'll blow dry now I'm in no way saying to handwrite every message it's okay to use some type of template and then customize it to the particular project but really what I'm trying to send home here is to pay attention to what you're applying for it and make sure it's actually something that you want to take so if you guys are still rocking with me this late in the blog thank you so much I really appreciate it we are already over 100 subscribers thank you guys so much for all the love that is the type of thing that keeps me encouraged to pump out these blogs for you guys I just like to teach and encourage and motivate man like this feels really good and I really appreciate all the love and support so if you are new here be sure to hit that subscribe button and also from my previous subscribers or any potential new subscribers be sure to hit that notification barrel as well so you can be notified any time I upload a new blog but yea be sure to follow me on IG and shoot me a message on there if you have any questions or if there's something that you want me to cover in a future blog I am really responsible in there and I love to hear from you guys but again thank you for the love and support and I will see you guys in the next one peace.
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