Lesson to this lesson is called how to find the best freelance jobs, and it will show you how to use
the Upwork platform to find the best jobs to submit proposals to.
The reason this lesson is important is because there's a big difference between a good client and a
bad client.
And when you start to work on the wrong type of job, then you get yourself in these relationships with
clients where it's just a nightmare situation.
This is what you might be waking up to angry clients who are never happy with the work you deliver.
This is because you decided to work with them.
You need to understand what goes into a bad client and what goes into a good client.
So then when you use the Upwork search, you can distinguish those and make sure you're only spending
your time and energy on the clients that are going to be good for you to be a profitable freelancer.
You not only have to provide in-demand skills, but you need to work with the right type of clients
that are willing to pay you and that are happy with the value that you are providing.
If you work with the wrong type of clients, they will start to not only affect your energy and motivation,
but eventually they'll also impact the bottom line because you won't be making as much as you could
if you were working with a high ticket client.
In this lesson, we are going to be covering the process on Upwork, how looking for jobs works, how
to do customized searches.
And we will be diving into all of that.
I will also cover what goes into a good job.
This is the different things to look for as you begin to do your job search so you can make sure you're
only reaching out to the best jobs for you.
Then we will discuss the red flags to avoid there are certain red flags that are pretty obvious, but
I'm also going to show you some more advanced ones that can give you an idea for how much a client pays
on average, if their payment method is verified and a lot more things that will help you get more transparency
before you even send that proposal out.
And lastly, we will be covering how to search for jobs on Upwork.
That is when I will be doing a full demonstration for you so you can see me live walk through how to
search for jobs, how to do custom searches, how to save your searches and much more.
First, let me show you a demo video that Upwork has, which describes the Upwork process as a freelancer.
Without work, you can find clients who love and work you love to do, collaborate with companies all
over the world and work on your terms.
We'll take care of the contracts and make sure you get paid on time every time.
It all starts with a free profile.
Share your professional background and build client confidence with accomplishments, accolades or even
case studies and a video for a personal touch.
You can update your availability and rates as you grow.
AI powered search filters through tens of thousands of opportunities to quickly identify the ones that
are right for you.
Review client ratings, history and project details before you apply.
Start with a one off project or ongoing engagements.
Just submit your proposal.
Ask any questions and answer any of theirs.
Then negotiate terms with a strong profile.
Clients will start coming to you from file sharing to conferencing.
Everything happens right here on Upwork.
That includes protected payments, so you get paid on time for your work.
As your reputation grows, your career will, too.
So you can work as much or as little as you want.
Looking for a more rewarding way to freelance?
Upwork is how?
So that was an overview of how the Upwork platform works.
And as we went over in the circle of focus, it's very easy to get sidetracked to start to want to do
things off the platform as you get more experience.
But as you just saw, if you do focus on the platform, you build your reputation on Upwork.
You use the skills that I'm teaching you to find the best jobs and work with the best clients.
Those clients will start to come to you.
But that's only if you dedicate yourself to Upwork and becoming a successful freelancer on there.
Now let's dive into what they were showing in the video.
The air powered search that they mentioned gives you the ability to toggle the exact settings that you
want so you can discover the type of jobs you're looking for going to be doing a walkthrough on this
shortly where I show you how to search for specific jobs, how to use custom filters and how to save
searches.
The Upwork feed is a beautiful place.
It is how you can keep your pipeline full at all times.
It's always being updated literally every minute of the day.
There's new jobs being posted because there are so many opportunities in the gig economy, and freelancers
now are needed more than ever before.
So you can choose the best categories that fit for you.
And this is all about where you're at in your journey, whether you're looking for certain type of jobs,
if they're hourly or fixed priced.
If you're looking for a certain experience level and all the way to the skill that you want to provide,
that is going to help you narrow down the best jobs for you.
So I always like to look at my Upwork homepage because that serves as a feed based on all the skills
that you entered on your profile.
So that's a good way to look at what Upwork's algorithm is recommending for you.
And then after you've went through all of those, you've sent proposals out to the ones that are interesting.
That's when you can get a little bit deeper into the Upwork platform and start to do these air powered
searches using their advanced searching feature.
So if you're just starting out, of course you don't want to toggle the extra jobs, and if you're an
expert, you don't want to target any of the entry level.
So you always want to make sure that you have the right settings because that is the foundation of what
jobs will start to come up as you begin to apply.
Next, I want to talk about another way Upwork helps you keep your pipeline full.
And this isn't on the platform.
This is actually an email that they send out, and I get these on a weekly basis, sometimes multiple
times a week.
And these aren't direct invites from clients, but these are just jobs on Upwork that need more proposals
that fit my skill set.
And that's exactly what Upwork wants to do because they need to fill these jobs.
That's how Upwork gets paid when they match a client to a freelancer, and it goes well.
Everyone makes money, so they'll send you emails based on the skills you've entered in the jobs that
you've worked on.
This is another extremely helpful way that you can use speed to your advantage.
You can jump on these quick and you will have a much higher chance for success because if you're focusing
on just one thing, like we said, that is when you will start to see the most impact.
And Upper provides multiple different touch points in different ways that you can fill your pipeline
at all times.
As we get into what makes a good job, so in the video, you saw that you're able to review the client's
reading history and specific project details.
So I like to look at it as two different things because there's the job posting itself and then there's
the client history and ratings as you're going through your search.
You first want to look for some of the basic things that they provide, such as if their payment method
is verified, what their rating is because the ratings work both ways.
So a freelancer also reads the client at the end of every project.
This helps keep the platform very fair and transparent.
Also, it'll show you where the clients located, how many jobs that they've posted and how many people
they've actually hired.
That is the higher rate.
And that's another important thing to look at because it shows you how many jobs they actually hire
a freelancer for and how many don't ever lead to a job.
You can also see how much they've spent on the platform.
So in this example, right here, they spent over two hundred thousand.
They have their payment method verified.
They have five star review.
You can see where they're located in New York and then it'll show you the average amount they pay freelancers
on Upwork.
And this is just on every job post because all of this info is provided for you as you go through and
start to look through these projects.
Always make sure you're reaching out to not only job descriptions that make sense for you, but you're
also doing more research on the client and making sure that they're a good fit.
Now, let's go over some jobs to avoid so jobs that look like this always be on the lookout for red
flags.
So I will show you where you can access the past reviews, but for this focus on just what you can see
and what you can see is two very upset people.
There is the client and the freelancer, both leaving each other a one star review.
And this was for a thousand dollar project.
So this isn't just some little project that someone hired a freelancer to do.
This is a thousand dollar project.
And I'm not going to read through this whole thing, but if you want to parse it and read through it,
I suggest you do, because this is what you need to avoid.
If you have a review like this on your profile, it will damage your reputation, likely for a long
time.
You can always get more good reviews, but something that's like this is something that will harm you
for years to come.
This is the ultimate thing to avoid on Upwork.
You need to make sure you're only reaching out to jobs that are the best fit for you, and you're working
with clients that have a track record of success.
If you're working with clients that are a little bit shady that you have a gut feeling that aren't a
good fit.
Don't let the money deter you from being ethical.
Another thing you want to avoid is a client that no one has bad reviews, but number two is also very
brief with their description and ones that are just looking for entry level work or having paid freelancers
a lot in the past.
Anyone looking for entry level work or can't even take the time to write a full description now it just
shows that they're not a high ticket client.
And if you reach out to jobs like this, and even if you get these types of jobs, you are not going
to be making a lot of money and you're not going to be able to build a profitable freelance business
from this.
Even if you're just starting out and you want to get some good reviews, never work with a client that
has a one star rating and never send a proposal out to a job that doesn't even use a full sentence.
So if they can't even capitalize and use full sentences, that's a red flag right there.
They're not serious.
Even if it looks like it's a good hourly rate, don't let that trick you.
You need to move on and go to a client that will actually respect you and pay you what you're worth.
Here's another job to avoid.
And this is when you continue to look at the client's history, and it's just more and more of these
bad reviews on both sides.
This shows that obviously something is wrong with this client.
If they're hiring someone and they're both leaving each other, one star.
There's no way that that's a good client for you to work with.
You can see here, they wrote, unfortunately, her work was below average, and she didn't have the
knowledge she stated at the beginning.
So if they're willing to leave a freelancer that review without being able to understand that in the
interview process and without this freelancer being able to identify that this client is not going to
work out, this is what it results in a one star review for both of you.
So before we jump in, the whole goal was to show you no one.
You need to protect your profile and your reputation like it's your life because it is.
That is what will get you money in the future.
The more you build your profile, the more good reviews you have and the more money you've earned through
the platform, the more clients will start to come to you.
And now it's time for the Upwork job search demonstration.
You can follow along and also look through all the information I'm about to go through in the Upwork
job search manual hand out.
And this is where I go on the platform.
I show you how to conduct searches and how to find and identify the best clients possible for you.
Welcome to the Upwork job search demonstration.
This is what it looks like once you log into the Upwork platform.
This is your newsfeed, and it has all of the different jobs that have been posted based on the skills
on your profile.
So there's three different ways you can find jobs.
The first is on your News Feed, and I have mine set to us only.
So it's showing me jobs that match the skills on my profile that are in the U.S. and on this platform.
These U.S. only jobs, if you look at this, they pay 75 percent higher rates.
They have 20 percent less competition and the earnings are 50 percent larger.
So if you're located in the U.S., I highly suggest you use this feature and you only apply to jobs
that are located in the U.S..
This will automatically filter out a lot of work that is low level, and you can focus on people that
are looking for clients located in the U.S., and you can get paid more for it.
So as I was saying, you have three different areas, the first is this homepage, and as I scroll down,
you can see that this is pretty much a never ending feed.
And it posts jobs and shows jobs based on when they were posted.
So you can see this was an hour ago.
And as I continue to scroll down and keep going, it will just keep loading so you can load more jobs
and you can keep scrolling down.
It it'll show you that a lot of these are still very recent, so I'm already on the second page.
And this was posted two hours ago.
So your home feed serves as the most recent jobs that were posted.
That's really what this is for, because it shows all the different skills and you can keep going down
and down.
And the more you go down, the further back in time it will show you.
As we go back to the top, the other place you can find and search for jobs is on the left hand side
of your screen, and this is where you can search by the skill category.
As you go through your job search process, your goal is to be a detective to find high ticket clients.
It's important to be extremely selective as you go through your journey and as you're searching for
jobs to apply to.
What the left hand side of the screen lets you do is search by specific category so you can get even
more targeted.
For example, if we click through to e-commerce development.
It will now show me only jobs for that specific skill set.
So if you want to look in more detail at a specific skill and see how many jobs are available, you
can do that.
And based on the criteria I have set up in the e-commerce development skill set in the U.S. based on
the settings I have, there's hundred jobs available right now, so that means there's 613 jobs I can
potentially go through and apply to.
Once you start to see how much opportunity there is, it will open your eyes to how much you can really
make as a profitable freelancer.
When you look through specific skill set, these are all related to e-commerce.
However, like we learned in the skill section, there's a lot of different skill sets within the main
categories.
So within e-commerce, there's Amazon, there's Shopify, there's Squarespace, there's a lot of different
projects.
So even though you're still targeting a skill set, there's a lot of different variations within those.
So you can look at what type of jobs are best for you based on what skill set you're learning and where
your expertise lies.
The last place you can look for jobs is the air powered search that we saw on the video.
If we scroll all the way to the top, you can always access this search by clicking on this little magnifying
glass.
When you click on this, it will open up a full advanced search that we can use to find the best freelance
jobs possible when it opens this page.
What you want to do is click on this filters button that will pop open all of the different filters.
And right now, it's set to the most broad range possible, so when you just click through, it will
keep it at anything.
So any job type, any experience level, any client history, any hours per week, any budget, any
number of proposals.
If you want to get more detailed, which is what I suggest you do.
You can go in and start to narrow down what is best for you based on where you're at.
Another cool thing they show is how many jobs are available right now because there's nineteen thousand
nine hundred and one jobs right now available on Upwork.
And of course, this is the broadest setting, but you only need to be successful with a small amount
of these jobs to build a profitable business.
And that is what I'm showing you to do, because once you've developed your skill set, you have your
millionaire mindset, you're ready to start delivering the work.
And you know what goes into making a good client?
Now it's time to find those clients.
So what you can do is narrow it down.
So for me, I always look for expert level positions for you.
I recommend starting at intermediate and avoiding entry level at all costs because this is where it
is just a race to the bottom.
So either start with intermediate or if you have an advanced skill set, start with expert as well.
And then you can look for clients that have at least hired one person before.
This helps you narrow down your search even further.
And then you can leave it a little bit open if you want, because sometimes fixed price projects are
good and sometimes hourly price projects are good, and sometimes an hourly project will lead to a fixed
price project.
So I don't like to automatically take one or the other out, but what I do like to do is keep them open
and keep in mind what I'm applying to and which type of job it is.
So once you have some settings that you're happy with, you can save your search from there and as you
can see, it narrows it down and shows you how many jobs are available now based on what I have selected.
So this is all the jobs based on my skill set that are intermediate level expert level and have at least
one to nine hires on the platform.
So if I wanted to save that, all I have to do is click this save search button and I can type in exactly
what this is.
So I would type in intermediate slash expert with one two nine hires.
And what it will do is save this search and you can access it later on.
This is really helpful as you begin to look for different things, and you can always access that on
the left hand side of your home page.
From there, you can get more detailed and you can search for specific skill sets.
So if we want to look for a specific skill such as e-commerce like we were looking at before.
This is a way.
You can search for a specific skill set with this search filter over it.
When you click on the magnifying glass.
And scroll down and you click close filters.
What it did now is narrowed it down again.
So now it's at 487 jobs because I typed in e-commerce, so now it's not showing me intermediate expert
one two nine hires.
It's only showing me those that also have e-commerce somewhere in the job description or in the skills.
This is how you can start to get super targeted because now we have 487 jobs that are likely a good
fit if we want to provide e-commerce.
Once you have this narrowed down, it doesn't matter which method you use, whether you use the home
page method, you use the category method on the left side of the page or you use this advanced search.
The next part is the same for all of them.
You just need to start going through each job.
And what I do is I like to scroll through on the surface.
So all of these are clickable job posts that you can click through.
But what Upwork does is it provides some info right on the front.
So you can automatically start qualifying certain jobs because once you have your desired search settings
set up, that's when you need to start to do the scanning and actually looking through these jobs.
And speed is such a valuable thing, starting with jobs that were posted.
The most recent makes the most sense, and you always want to send proposals out to the jobs that were
posted the most recently.
That's where you have the most chance of actually getting a response once proposals have been sent in.
And a lot of people have applied to a job.
You will see that number here.
So five to 10 is not too bad once it gets over 10 and it gets into 15 to 20 or more than 20.
That's when you have a very low likelihood of actually hearing back.
So always start with the jobs that were posted the most recently, and then you can start to move on
to other jobs that are a little bit more broad or that have been posted longer.
Go.
During your search, also, keep in mind, you only want to click through to jobs that makes sense for
you.
So if we continue scrolling and we see right here, MailChimp, if this looks like a great job but you're
not good at MailChimp or you never use MailChimp and they need a MailChimp expert, don't apply to that
job.
It is not going to be a good situation for either you or the client.
You only want to apply for jobs that are appropriate for you that you can deliver on.
That is how you will build a profitable freelance foundation that will serve you for years and years
to come.
Your ultimate goal is to get to expert level jobs, but if you're just starting out.
Start with those intermediate ones.
Start getting reviews on your profile and avoid the entry level jobs unless you just want to work for
peanuts.
Next, once you find something that looks promising for you, that's when you can start to click through
and you can look at the proposals that were submitted already.
And that means how many other freelancers already applied.
And then you can also see if their payment method is verified.
I only like to apply to jobs that have their payment method verified.
This means their card number is in Upwork.
It's verified.
And if you work with them, you're going to get paid on time every time.
You can also see the reviews the client has, and if you scroll over it without even clicking through,
you can see how many feedback that was based on.
And this was one feedback.
So this is one client.
They had one freelancer they hired for $40.
So take that with a grain of salt as you go through, because just because it's a five star review doesn't
mean it's the best client ever.
It's still a good start, though, and as you go through and you look at more and more jobs like, for
example, this one.
This climate is also based on one feedback, but that was $400 job.
So you can automatically start to see what a client does on average and who they are before you click
through.
And you can also see the job description, the title and the budget that they put in for the project,
as well as if it's a fixed price or an hourly.
When you're looking through all of these, you want to find ones that make the most sense for you.
With everything we just went over.
So the title, the type of skill they're looking for, what kind of position it is, the budget for
it, when it was posted, the job description and the client's profile and background.
As we go through these, let's find one in real time that looks good.
So right here, this one automatically catches my eye for a couple of things.
They're only looking for freelancers in the U.S. You can see that right here.
They're located in the U.S. they have spent over a thousand.
And they have five stars based on two reviews, and they have a payment method verified and it has 10
to 15 proposals, which is still in that sweet spot.
This job was posted five hours ago, so it's still somewhat recent.
I think if you can get to something within the first 12 hours, that's really where you have your best
shot.
After that, you still have the ability to get found and noticed, but your likelihood falls off.
So this job looks good.
No one.
I can click this heart button if I want.
When I do that, it keeps it in my save jobs for later on and then I can click through.
Once you click through, it will open up the actual job description and you can see the client's details
on the right.
And then you can see the job and the description on the left.
You can also see how many Connect's are required to submit a proposal to this project.
And then you can see how many you have available to submit.
Once you get to this page, I always like to look at the client's info first just to make sure that
it's good and it's a good fit.
Before we dive into the job description.
So right off the bat, we already saw their five star review.
We know that their payment method is verified.
And now what we can also see is that they have eight jobs posted.
They've hired half of them.
They have one open job, which is this job, and they spent over $1000 and they paid on average, 50
dollars an hour.
And they've done that for 12 hours.
They've been a member since 2018.
So what this tells me is that this is likely a good client.
I can see before I even do any reading that they took the time to write out a full job description,
which shows me that they have attention to detail.
I can see that they have multiple good reviews and that they spend over a thousand.
They hire half the job that they posted and their hourly rate is pretty high.
So just with that info alone, I can now start to look at if this job description is good for me and
that's the exact process I recommend doing.
What you can also do is dig deeper into this client the way you do that.
Is you scroll all the way down and underneath all of the settings of the job post, you will be able
to see the client's recent history.
And this is where you can see the exact reviews left on both sides.
You can see when the jobs were posted, how much they were for and what they paid the client for.
This is also helpful to see what the client's been up to and see if they're a good fit for you.
You can also see what jobs that they currently have in process.
So this is apparently someone that is doing a lot of things on the platform.
They have multiple jobs in progress for graphic designers, videographers.
And this shows me that this client is a great opportunity.
We just found this live on the spot, so I want to show you the process I go through and automatically
at this point.
Now this is a good client.
I can tell you that because of everything we've uncovered.
So then what you can do is dig deeper into the job description and then you can look at the settings,
what the client is looking for, the hours it says to be determined.
This is three to six month project, which means they're likely looking for someone on a long term basis
and also intermediate level, which is what I recommend if you're starting out.
And this is also good because if it says intermediate and they're paying 50 an hour on average, that's
a great fit because that means they're really willing to pay for that good mix of experience and value.
And then you can see the type of questions that they are going to ask when you submit the proposal,
if you decide to do so.
So every job you submit, you need to submit a cover letter, which is basically the first thing a client
sees, and that's what stands out to clients.
But in addition.
And in order for them to narrow down freelancers that are the best fit for them, there's also the opportunity
for them to pick more questions.
So this is where they ask things like Do you have any questions about the job description?
Do you have suggestions to make the project run successfully?
Why do you think you're a good fit?
And then sometimes they'll ask for examples of previous work that you've done, and this is all things
you can look at before you send a proposal.
Because if you don't have any existing work and you don't think you're a good fit necessarily and you
don't know how to answer these, that's a likely sign that you should focus on something else that you
have more experience in.
If you focus on jobs that you can answer all these questions on before you even send that proposal,
you're setting yourself up for success and you're only going to work with good clients at that point.
When you go down further, you can see the different skills and expertise categories they chose.
And for this, you can see they chose a lot of different skills for them.
This helps the job show up in a lot of different sections.
And since this job is a multiple skill job, as you can see, social media manager growth and content
that tells me that they're looking for a real freelancer who can provide multiple services.
And that's why they have all of these picked because there's multiple platforms that go into social
media management, and they wanted to make sure to include that.
So they have the best freelancers reaching out.
When you get to the bottom of this, this is also where they have their preferred qualifications.
And if you see this check, it means you meet that.
So since I have a job success score of over 90 percent fluent in English and I've earned over 10000,
it's all showing up as checkmarks.
If you show up as exes, it doesn't mean that you can't apply.
It just means you have a lower chance of hearing back from the client.
Then you can see the activity on the job.
This is where you can see even more behind the scenes info.
And this is a powerful feature that not a lot of freelancers know you can see.
But if you go to this area on the job post, you can see when the client last viewed the project.
This is very important because if they're a serious client and they're high tech a client, they are
not going to let the job just sit there for days and days.
So if you see this is a job that they've reviewed recently and you can also see if they're interviewing
people, you can tell how serious they are and how likely they are to hire a freelancer for it.
You can also see how many invites they sent out and if they were answered or not.
So this is a great time to get into this job.
If I was going to bid on it because they haven't started interviewing anyone yet, they haven't reviewed
it in five hours and it was only posted five hours ago.
So if I get in there now, I know I can be in that first batch of freelancers that they look at, and
that is how you can start to show up and find the best jobs possible with the right strategy in place,
then you can see the bid range.
This is why I suggest paying the fourteen ninety nine a month at the time of this recording, which
is what Upwork Premium costs for that you're able to see behind the scenes, what the highest bid is,
what the average bid is and what the low bid is.
And this helps you slide in to this in-between range if you want to based on the budget.
So if we go up here and we look at the hourly to be determined, they don't have a budget range set,
but we can also see that these paid fifty an hour.
So if we go down here, we can see that that fifty an hour fits right in the middle of there.
And that's where I suggest really sliding in.
Unless you are a top level expert and you know you need to charge a higher rate than the high rate,
says I always recommend sliding in right in between because if you come in at fifty dollars an hour,
let's say that's a good middle point between the high bid and the average bid, and that shows the client
you want to be paid what you're worth, but you're also a little bit cheaper than the most expensive
person.
That's a strategy you can use to stand out and get jobs more frequently.
If you're always coming in at the highest bid possible or the lowest bid possible, you're likely getting
thrown out because most of the freelancers hired are in between the high and average bid.
Then always make sure that you're not bidding something that's too off from what they're averages.
And since their average is 50 and it fits right there.
That is how you can start to bid on jobs that have an hourly basis and you can do the same thing if
it was fixed price.
It would show you the fixed price bid, high average and low amounts.
Once you have all this data now, you have a better idea of how you can craft the best proposal possible
for this project.
If it's a good fit for you.
Now, let me show you what it looks like when you go to actually submit that proposal.
What you will do is you will click that submit a proposal button.
And this is where it is going to show you and walk you through the proposal process.
You have the settings of the proposal up here.
You have the job details here with all the skills that they chose.
And then this is where you set up the terms.
And then this is where the additional details is, where all of the proposal actually is, the cover
letter and all of the questions that they asked.
So this is how you access this area of it.
And next, I will walk you through how you can send the best proposals possible so you can get noticed
and start landing clients.
So now, you know, some of the job search, best practices that I recommend.
If we go back up to the top and go to the home page to do a recap, you can find jobs in multiple different
places on the platform.
You can find jobs using the advanced search when you click on the magnifying glass.
You can find jobs that were posted recently in your News Feed.
And then you can find jobs by category on the left hand side, as well as your recent and saved searches.
So as you go on your journey and you start to look at different jobs that are good for you, I suggest
keeping your Upwork feed open throughout the day.
I like to do this because you can press refresh and then if you see a job that comes in and you were
the first one to be able to act, that increases your chances of getting hired by such a high percentage.
And it also helps you stay active on the platform.
It's amazing how many people post jobs every day and at all hours of the day because there's different
time zones people are posting from all over.
So there's always new opportunity rolling in.
And if you can get to people at the right time, once they posted the job and they're still excited
about it, that's when you can really start to stand out and have more success on the platform.
When you're searching for jobs, remember the things I just taught you don't waste time on jobs that
already have a lot of proposals and make sure you're only applying to jobs that are the best fit for
you.
Lastly, I showed you why Upwork Premium is worth the money because you have a behind the scenes view.
What other people are bidding and you can put yourself in the best position possible and always pay
attention to what type of client you're applying to.
So you can protect your reputation and start building your profitable profile.
So now you know how to find high Typekit clients on Upwork using all of Upwork search functionality.
I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll go over how you can send out the best proposal possible
to have success.