How to make more money freelancing

Rates go up and down , clients appear and disappear, industry trends take over and then fade. It gets better: freelancers who do well get repeat business. Thanks again— Nadia. Did you bid high from the start? Rhonda Wells. Others enjoy seeing their coworkers every day, or find valuable mentors in their bosses, or just want to get out of the house and into grown-up clothes. Cherry-picking the data like that is just lying to your readers.

01. Set realistic expectations

Freelancing -be it writing articles, coding, design, editing, or whatever else kind of project is one of the first options most of look at when thinking about ways to make extra money online. There is no big investment involved and you can get started pretty much right away. Best of all, there are tons of sites that you can use to find clients and projects. Now, while this particular post was originally written as a guide for tl which is now merged with UpWorkthe ideas and strategies mentioned apply to almost any freelancing site you choose to go. So some of the details may have changed on the new site, but again, the core principles stays the. UpWork was known as Odesk up until last year or so.

1) Focus on high-value jobs

Going freelance is simultaneously exciting and terrifying, and worrying about freelance finances is a big part of that. It pays to be prepared — largely because once you start freelancing, a single company will no longer be regularly paying you. We asked those who’ve made the leap for their advice on how to make it work, and their advice ranged from everything from being organised, whether or not you really need to learn how to network to getting to grips with tax. Here’s what they said:. It’s therefore a good idea to build up at least three preferably six months of living expenses prior to going freelance. Also, have a plan to step back if things don’t work out. While that might sound negative, Mielke argues freelancing is anything but — as long as you’re organised and know how to network.

What You’ll Need in Order to Make Money Freelancing Online

Freelancing -be it writing articles, coding, design, editing, or whatever else kind of project is one of the first options most of look at when thinking about ways to make extra money online.

There is no big investment involved and you can get started pretty much right away. Best of all, there are tons of sites that you can use to find clients and projects. Now, while this particular post was originally written as a guide for eLance which is now merged with UpWorkthe ideas and strategies mentioned apply to almost any freelancing site you choose to go. So some of the details may have changed on the new site, but again, the core principles stays the.

UpWork was known as Odesk up until last year or so. But the company did some evaluations and wanted to start fresh, so they changed the name to UpWork. The site has much better features than its predecessor and it looks and feel modern.

Not only that, the company is buying other freelancing sites such as eLance and merging them into UpWork. The site allows individuals, organizations and businesses put up ads for ad hoc jobs. The jobs posted would reach many millions of freelancers registered with the website, and they in turn could do biddings on these posted jobs.

It is mainly associated with freelance writings jobs, but the kinds of jobs posted there vary a lot, from computer programming to Web designing, bookkeeping to accounting, etc….

Naturally, there will always be the usual entry barriers with a new environment. You will need to put in time and effort to get the momentum going but it is a full-fledged marketplace to find jobs, unlike crowdsourcing sites or a content farms, for example.

Usually employers would spell out the job to be fulfilled, with its corresponding terms, like timeframe, budget and specific requirements. The whole process is above board and interested providers would submit their proposals accordingly. As in the case of real business, the odds is on you to put up an outstanding bid to gain traction. This is more so here since you will be practically competing with millions of providers across country borders for the same job.

At the same time, it would be worthwhile for you to maintain positive employer-provider relationship, precisely because of the intensity of the competition.

While UpWork has made it easy for new members to sign up, I would advise that you do this part diligently. First of all, prospective employers would screen through your qualification with the keywords that you supplied during account setting. And if you come close enough, they would want to read your professional profile. The next piece of advice I want to offer is that you go for paid membership. The site offers real work opportunity and real monetary compensation.

Indeed, you are going to play for keeps and some level of commitment is called. Over here, there is this concept of free account called basic membershipwhich I think could be good for a freshie to try things. But the moment you decide to devote time on UpWork, the so-called free account will not work to your benefit.

I will expand on my reason why the free option is not viable for freelancers. But let us first build our understanding on the overall working on UpWork. Real work needs to get done in a real world. Employers put up job ads for work to be fulfilled. Some indications are furnished with regards to the job scope, time frame and budget. The actual amount of Connects you have would be subject to the kind of membership you sign up for and there is always this option to buy more if they are running low.

Decide what membership plan you would go on. Profile creation — This works similarly as your resume. First off, you can only enjoy 60 connects. But the things that will work against you is not just limited to this restriction:. It is their way to make sure that you know about the overall protocol of UpWork, about its working and payment.

After the test is done, you go straight back into your profile setting. This is my idea on effective profile on UpWork:. Employers want to know who they are dealing. You can see this in some way as some form of building trusted relationship, even to the employer and you could live a world apart. Keep in mind that your profile and headline are likely to be the very first things that prospective employers look at.

This is an excellent chance to put in a more expansive description of. Never type your overview in caps as this does not convince anybody that you are being professional in your proposition. You can always develop on it as you gain more experience. You cannot simply boast of self proclaimed skill sets to impress clients. How to make more money freelancing, UpWork will require you to take tests to verify your skills.

Often, employers rely on these verifiable skills as a reference, rather than word descriptions you furnish yourself as your credentials. While I am not a particularly strong advocate for systems dependent on test scores, I do believe that certain verifications could be useful for the employers, especially in the areas of computer programming or graphic designs.

Now you have to be extra specific in what you bring on board. Present offerings in bullet points style to make it easy for employers to know what you. You can supply a short description, but make sure that it is not just a duplicate from your overview earlier. On the other end, UpWork also allows you to verify references, and you should not miss out this chance as.

I believe the more you take the initiative to go the extra mile, the more you have the chance to exhibit your how to make more money freelancing and interest on the job, and this makes it helpful for the client to see you as a real person rather than just another bid.

I want to be clear on this one specific issue: your willingness to bid on anything that you are exposed to would not guarantee income or success. Be clear in your mind on the stuff you are really good at, and be diligent in reading through the job ads thoroughly.

The second pointer is stay vigilant and be on the lookout for jobs on daily basis. Never get into the habit of bidding numerous jobs in one single day and stay idle for the rest of the week to wait for the employer to announce the winning bid.

The objective is to supply a constant stream of bids over time, I will talk more about this later. The first step is to skim through all the potential jobs that may appeal to you and include them on a watch list to be visited again later. Add necessary notes on each job ad so you can keep track of your thinking when the jobs first struck you.

When you can afford to take a breather later on, go back to check on your collection of job ads. You would want to examine the kind of bids being submitted so as to derive on the average offered price on individual jobs.

Having said that, putting forward a sensible and reasonable proposal is just as important, if not more important than competitive pricing. I once submitted a bid that was twice as much as the indicated budget, and the employer decided to award me the job because my proposal was clearly superior to the rest. The point is that if you are convinced that you can handle the job excellently, perhaps better than what is expected from the employer, but less sure if you can do the job within budget indicated, there is no reason not to submit a proposal that exceeds the original budget.

Until you try, you will never find. I will touch on how to write convincing proposals in this article in the later. Imagine for now there is a project open to freelancers. Some freelancers have this misguided idea that if they prevail as the lowest bidders, they would get the job. If all the employer wants is to fish out the lowest bidder, he or she may not be the one that you want to work.

The following guidelines will work pretty much. I did not get into the habit of setting milestones until a while after my initial start. But as soon as I made it a practice to requests for milestone payments, job offers came more frequently. It would be a nightmare for the employer to award a project to a specific candidate, only for him to turn around and say that he or she can get started two weeks from award date.

A lot of employers see the benefits of such commitment and this in turn has pushed up my award ratio. And I say that as a current employer who frequently hire freelancers on UpWork. If it is handled competently, the client would have no reservation to mark the project as closed and leave you positive feedback and star rating.

If you screw up, you would naturally get a lousy rating and that can damage your reputation. There would be repercussions as your record would be out there for all to see, and prospective employers may just hesitate to award you with further projects.

But back to the positive side, the more good ratings you get, the more prominently you will feature as competent provider to the employers looking for people to fill work. As you progressively make a good name of yourself, you will see more opportunities to get invited to projects, instead of looking out for. In addition, you must consciously work to maintain good working relationship with high quality employers to intensify your chance of getting repeat work.

When your pipeline is filled up with repeatable work from a bunch of trusted customers, it is easier to gauge your cash flow month by month. It also frees you up from constantly looking out for work, as you will spend more time doing real work for real money.

The marketing and networking aspect of running a business is just as relevant to freelancers. Maintain constant communication. I have once gotten a job but switched offline outside the Workroom for the bulk of the project. Communication was done pretty much on email.

So when client did not pay up at the end of project, I argued strongly with the client and referred the matter to UpWork. But it decided to be on the side of client as there was no single record within the site to prove that client had been satisfied with the progress of the project. Get all your correspondences and files uploaded inside the UpWork Workroom to avoid such disappointment. But, any amount is only meaningful after winning the job. For every winning bid, UpWork takes out 8.

There is a built in calculator on the bidding section, so you can see how much is being included as you bid for new project. Here are a few tips to help you succeed as a freelancer, whether you choose to work on UpWork, or any other freelancing site like Guru or Freelancer. You may want to be more selective on the jobs bid for, but sustain the momentum.

Where possible, put in 3 to 8 good quality jobs on daily basis.

How to Make $30k Per Month on Freelancing and Upwork

02. Manage your overheads

If you have those characteristics, then you have the ability to make a good income via eLance. Terms of Use. Practice using your new skills by building the types of projects that you want to eventually be paid to work on. To make your profile stand out, focus on the value you add for clients. Thank you for sharing your experiences and advice! Notify of. Keep up the good work. Like most things in life, this will be a process. Great article! This one in particular is full of red herrings. Do you have any tips to know how to make proposals? It is absolutely doable to be successful on Upwork, I just think that many freelancers undervalue themselves and give up too soon. I have not tried this method. You also need to gain access to their passwords and brand style guide.