Upwork is my favorite freelance site. Unfortunately, it is already populated by millions of others! When trying to get your foot in the door, you need to know how to start a freelance business and find clients – fast. A proven approach for creating a good freelance business on Upwork is structured here below. But, if you’re not a reader, consider personal coaching and courses. It’s the fast way forward!
Step 1. Plan how to start a freelance business in your own situation
Since joining any freelance site without a business idea and the definition of your clientele is pointless, you’d need to get those figured out first. Read these first before you jump in:
- Is Upwork a Race to the Bottom?
- Freelancing – It’s an Expert’s Game
- 4 Freelance Myths You Need to Debunk Before Leaving Your Day Job
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 11(+1) Freelancer Stereotypes You Cannot Avoid Meeting
- Let’s Science the Shit Out of Unstable Freelance Income!
- 10 Freelancing Hacks You Should Know Before Joining a Freelance Site (One of the best hacks is to be a client first!)
- How to Start Freelancing With No Experience From Absolute 0 and Totally Crush It!
- How to Avoid Being a Business Idiot When Going Freelance
- Learn How to Freelance Remotely: 45 Best Questions From My Webinar Course
- Freelancers’ Customer Acquisition Cost
- The Dog Ate My Business Plan
- What Should a New Freelancer Know? 3 Planning Phases Better Than the Business Plan of the Underpants Gnomes
Step 2. Sign up!
Once you know what kind of business you plan to do, sign up on Upwork without any hassle with these tips:
- Upwork’s own profile setup guide
- Upwork’s Terms of Service and the rest of the Legal pages
- Upwork ToS Violation: 10 Mistakes That Get You Banned From Upwork
Step 3: Create an attractive Upwork profile
Create an effective Upwork profile:
- Freelancer Profile Writing 101
- Freelancer Profile Writing 102
- 9 Freelancing Hacks for Starting Freelancers
- If a Wizard, a Ninja, and a Kick-Ass VA Fought, Who Would Win? 11 Worst Freelancer Profile Title Examples
- How to Start Freelancing and Make It to the Global Top – My First Year on Upwork
- Does Upwork Profile Boost Help? These 4 Superheroes Tested the Feature for 2 Weeks Straight!
Step 4: Get your first projects going
Start finding suitable freelance projects by focusing on having a service that matches your clients’ needs 100%:
- Have You Proposed Right? Part 1: How NOT to Write a Winning Proposal
- Have You Proposed Right? Part 2: How I Wrote Winning Proposals (with Upwork Cover Letter Examples)
- Have You Proposed Right? Part 3: How to Write a Winning Proposal
- 11 Empirically-Proven Freelancing Hacks for Online Freelancers
- $1,000 per Day as a Software Developer: The Secret Behind My “Ludicrous Speed”
- Why and How New Freelancers Keep Failing, Part 1: The developers
- Why and How New Freelancers Keep Failing, Part 2: The Designers
- It Easy to Find Freelance Jobs? 57% of Freelancers Say It Is Not!
- How I Avoided Getting Scammed on a Freelance Site
- Upwork Scams 2022: How to Avoid Them Without Going Into a Personal Lockdown
- 13 Bad and Dangerous Clients on Upwork That You Should Never Work With
- How to Get Clients on Upwork With Proven Screening Methods
- How to Open a Conversation With a Potential Client
- Code of Conduct for Online Freelancers, Part 1
- Code of Conduct for Online Freelancers, Part 2: How to End Toxic Client Relationships Like a Boss
- How to Avoid Scope Creep as a Freelancer: 3 Tips from a Pro
- Ask Mr Nuts! 4 Impressive Examples of How to Utilize AI as a Freelancer
- Are There Fake Jobs on Upwork? 18 Red Flags You Should Know
- How to Deal with an Abusive Client as a Freelancer: 6 Brilliant Tricks You Must Know
Step 5: Grow the value and expand your freelance business
When you already know how to start a freelance business, rinse and repeat by following this proven approach:
- Always Look on the Bright Side of Freelancing Failures
- The Strangest Invitations I Ever Got via Online Freelancing Sites, Part 1: The Flash, The Delegator, and Doctor Strange
- The Strangest Invitations I Ever Got via Online Freelancing Sites, Part 2: The Shopper, The Lawyer, and The Googler
- My Algorithm for Picking Freelance Gigs Online
- What Happened When I Raised My Hourly Rate on Upwork to $199
- TOP10 Invitations I Got on Upwork … and How You Can Get Them Too
- Freelancer’s Sales Channels – 5 Proven Examples Other Than Freelance Sites
- Is It Easy to Find Freelance Jobs? 57% of Freelancers Say It Is Not!
- CocoLord and My 70 Other Crazy Nicknames – Personal Branding Tips for Freelancers
- Freelancer vs. Solopreneur: 10 Big Differentiators That Level-Up Your Freelance Business
- 2023 Freelancing Statistics That Will Amaze Even the Best Freelancers
- New CoachLancer Job Board Brings 100’s of Great Verified Clients for Freelancers
- My Brilliant 37-hour $11,000 Gig – How to Write Upwork Proposals in 2023
- How to Get Great Clients on LinkedIn Without Paying Even $1 or Posting Anything
My domain-specific tips for independent software professionals
These are additional readings for software guys based on my 20+ years of developing, researching, and inventing software (awarded in 5 different categories):
- Being a Freelance Software Developer – It’s Not About the Code
- What is CTO-as-a-Service and How I Do It as a Freelancer
For those with academic backgrounds, I would recommend taking a look at the article How to Freelance With a Ph.D. Like a Boss that helps you to identify the parts of freelancing that are similar to the scientific process and to learn a couple of other freelancing tricks.
Supporting articles
Practical tips from freelancers to freelancers in all kinds of freelancing-related issues:
- Should I Be a Generalist or Specialist Freelancer? 4 Important Factors to Consider
- Guide to International Payments 101 – Get a Good Virtual Dollar Card in Nigeria
- African Freelancers Taking the Freelance Market by Storm
And finally, some freelancing fun stuff:
- Freelancing Is The Holy Grail
- 4 Ridiculous Upwork Stories You Won’t Believe Are True
- 15 Best Freelancing Memes
With this list and recommend order of reading my articles through, I wish you all the best with your freelance journey.
Happy freelancing!
