When you are an aspiring freelancer or looking to advance in your career, it’s common to wonder how you can land more clients on Upwork or how you can get started without any freelance experience at all. If this is you, keep reading because down below I cover multiple ways you can begin to gain an edge over the competition by identifying what freelance skills are the most in-demand. Then, I share my personal experiences on the platform and how I started out landing clients on Upwork. Whether you are eager to start freelancing and need help landing that first Upwork client, or you are just interested in how to make money as a freelancer, then this blog is for you!



• Market Research For In-Demand Skills

• Align Yourself With A Platform

• How To Get Clients On Upwork 

• How To Get Certified
  

Market Research For In-Demand Skills

When you start to think about what skill you want to provide on Upwork and what kind of services, my suggestion is to do market research and look at what are the in-demand skills right now. Look at what skill is being hired for on Upwork and once you start to understand what businesses are hiring freelancers for it will help niche down on a skill you can start providing.

Go to Upwork.com and navigate to their homepage and you will see a lot of different top skill suggestions that you can research further into that are on the rise. Some of their top skills listed are:

Upwork will tell you what skills to focus on and you can see a lot of skills that are in-demand and on the rise right now. Upwork has all of that data on the back end; they know what freelancers are making money and what kind of businesses are hiring freelancers for. So I suggest you do some research before you even start to offer any services. This is the first step before you go out there and land a client. The building blocks of becoming a successful freelancer on Upwork are first finding what skills are in-demand, and seeing what people are going to pay for.

The beauty of freelancing is that anyone can have success and can find something they are good at. As a freelancer, you can have the freedom to choose what you want to do. When it comes to providing different services, ask yourself what are you going to sell, and what is the skill that will allow you to have the life you dream of? Make sure you find an in-demand skill that you best resonate with and can see yourself doing for a long time.

Align yourself with a trusted platform as a freelancer to build your credibility and to become a specialist that caters to a specific niche. Once you start to find what you like the best and what aligns with your personality type the most, that's when you want to start to find a platform that best aligns with you. That is how you're going to get an in-demand skill to the marketplace and also be able to differentiate yourself as a specialist in that platform you chose.

There are many platforms in which you can provide freelance services surrounding, including:

• Google
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest 
• Upwork
• Fiverr
• YouTube
• Freelancer

When you find a platform to get good on, you now will be able to become more than just a generalist. For example, if you’re a video editor now, you can leverage that skill on the platform YouTube and become a ‘rock star YouTube video editing master.’ Whatever your skill is, and the platform you align with, get more specific because that's what clients are going on to Upwork and looking for to hire. They're not just looking for a very ‘general job’ filled.

Now sometimes there are sometimes bigger corporations looking to fill ‘managerial roles.’ But for the most part, a lot of these profitable freelance opportunities are in the form of ‘specialist roles’ looking for a ‘YouTube Marketer’ or looking for someone to develop a Shopify store, a WordPress website, etc. So when you align yourself with the platform that also gives you the ability to leverage the platform's free resources, free content, and all their educational resources so you can start to absorb how to be the best at that platform you picked. You don’t need experience yet, this is to do with all about setting yourself up.

When I started freelancing on Upwork, I worked a lot on building an amazing portfolio with good reviews, and staying in my lane developing credibility and experience on whichever platform(s) you choose. Know that you're not stuck to it and you can always change. Sticking with the platform of your choice will help you get certified. That will let you start to benefit from aligning yourself with the platform that you already established yourself on. Being known on a platform helps you build trust and credibility with clients and that's what helps you separate yourself from the competition. Just a couple of certifications can change the game and get you more clients.

In order to get more freelance clients on Upwork it's important to focus on your own self pursuit of self improvement. What I mean by that is don't get discouraged from the competition and let that discourage you from ever getting started. Too many new freelancers focus on the competition which can end up setting them back.

Instead, focus on: 

• Building your portfolio
• Creating good case studies 
• Using third party data
• Getting 5 star reviews and testimonials

Don’t be scared to take a couple of smaller projects to start to gain experience and get yourself in the algorithm to work your way up. That’s how I started (two thirty-dollar projects) and now I have multiple multi-thousand dollar contracts going on with clients all from Upwork. When you focus on fully building out your profile and gaining valuable experience, you will be able to start to win more jobs on Upwork.

Also, on Upwork there is a new feature called Project Catalog™. As a freelancer, this is an additional way for clients to find you and for you to sell more projects without having to go and send proposals out. Upwork said:

• “With Project Catalog” you can create a powerful new revenue stream, based on the work you love the most."

Their purpose with this project is to “help you make the most of your time so you can do more of the work you love.” This is a great way for a lot of people to land more high-paying clients and better utilize the platform. So when you are on your Upwork profile check out a tab called 'My Project Dashboard.' This feature has already generated freelance clients for me weeks after I created one.

> I have a YouTube video describing how you can use the ‘Project Catalog’ on Upwork to land more clients. Click to watch that video here.

Get Certified

Taking an online freelance course is a fantastic way to learn and develop your skills. To be a successful freelancer, it takes commitment and continuous self-development to achieve your full potential. Investing your money and time in yourself is always encouraged if you want to have a long-term successful career. It no longer takes a college education to understand a topic or learn a skill that can make you a substantial yearly income.

With the internet, we have access to so many resources and online courses to learn a new skill as a freelancer. For example, Google provides a lot of free training resources. I'm certified in Google Ads on a different number of platforms as well as a Google Partner Agency. Being certified gives you more credibility to your name especially if you just started freelancing and don’t have any experience yet or have a little bit of experience with some reviews on Upwork. Getting certified will have you stand out from the competition and give you the opportunity to land more clients. This doesn’t have to take four years of school to achieve, there are plenty of resources for you to choose from to advance your skill-set as a freelancer that are both paid and free options.

If you want to learn more about how to land clients on Upwork, I created an extremely affordable course that teaches you how to build a profitable freelance business by providing skills to freelance clients on Upwork. It's over 10 hours of content and it'll show you everything from:

• Setting your profile up to have success
• How to pinpoint where the best clients are
• How to find those high ticket clients
• How to create those winning proposals that actually get clients attention

>> Watch the first lesson for free here and save 90% if you buy <<

In Conclusion  

It's all about identifying first what freelance in-demand skill aligns best with your personality type. Then finding which platform to provide services on and then taking action to start earning more money by providing them.

Don’t let your lack of experience hold you back from getting started. Remember to be proud of who you are as a freelancer and the talent that you have right now. Each freelancer is unique and different types of clients will resonate with different types of freelancers. You just have to have confidence in yourself to put yourself out there with the knowledge you already have within and give the most value possible.

There's always competition but you have to start somewhere. The more you practice and get feedback from your clients, the better you’ll get. If you resonated with this blog and want to learn more about how you can land clients without any freelance experience then click here to watch my new video now!

- Paul Mendes

 Founder of Profitable Freelancer