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Some extra Upwork tips I’ve given to other students after reviewing their profiles on Upwork.
Increase your hourly rate if it’s low. For instance, $15/hour is too low. Cheaper prices actually don't get you more work on Upwork. Something many freelancers have trouble with. Upwork doesn’t like low prices. They make less money so they rank cheaper bids low in the list. Plus a price like that will automatically tag you as Entry Level. See the issue with that below.
Your profile is missing some real work examples that clients could base their decision on. Upload some portfolio pieces. If you don't have any, create them. Avoid using work from my course if they look same as mine. Many of my students are on Upwork and they're using the same work.
Try to create a more descriptive intro/bio. Do a rundown of services that you provide. Incorporate bullet points and emojis, they make it more personal and they bring attention to your intro. I don't mean laughing and facial expression emojis.
Upwork categorizes freelancers into three levels: Entry Level, Intermediate, and Expert. It asks you to select which level are you when you make the profile. Don’t select Entry Level. And if you did, change it to Intermediate at least.
When clients post their job, Upwork asks them to select what level of freelancers they want, and no one usually wants an Entry Level web designer. So this mis-match of level will rank you low in the list of freelancers who apply for the job.
Your profile is fresh without a job score and client reviews. Upwork will rank you low in the list of freelancers that bid on a job. First few clients are the trickiest to get because of this.
It takes a little time until you get a job score, some reviews from other clients. That's why I recommend to sort of "hack" that step and find some pro-bono projects through your network and bring them to Upwork so you can get those reviews and job scores. That's what I've done myself. I've done a landing page design for someone I knew and I asked them to do it through Upwork so I could get a review from them.
If you don't do that, then it might take more time until someone takes a chance to hire a brand new Upwork freelancer without any reviews and work experience on the platform.
Nowadays there are a lot of my students on Upwork that use the same portfolio site and the course projects. So there's a chance that a same client would receive bids from two of my students who are using the same work in their profile. From the client’s perspective this will look quite shady and they will pass you up.
So, don’t upload them if they look exactly the same as mine. If they are not recognizable compared to my version then it’s fine. That means the names (“Chat App”, “Team App”) and content of the site should be different too.