How to Get Your First Client on Upwork

Getting your first hire on Upwork is always considered to be the most difficult aspect of the platform journey. When you have no money earned in your profile and zero reviews, you compete against experienced freelancers with extensive histories.

However, there is not a single highly rated Upworker who was born this way. You need to develop your unique strategy and break the cycle of endless frustration caused by no-experience syndrome. Below is your full-fledged guide on getting that first client.

Step 1: Profile Optimization for the Customer, Not for Yourself

Most beginners tend to write overly general and generic resume-style profiles. Nobody cares about your personal life story, what matters is whether you can solve the current business problems of the customer.

The Headline: Always make sure to use extremely specific titles. Rather than stating that you are a designer, mention the type of design you specialize in (“UI/UX designer for B2B saas startups”).

The Description: Start your profile with a good hook and use the first two sentences to explain the outcome that you bring (e.g. “I help ecommerce brands increase their email open rate by 25%”). Make your services visible by putting them in bullet points.

The Introductory Video: Profiles with intro videos are 4x more viewed. Film yourself presenting yourself, stating your expertise, and encouraging customers to book a quick call.

Step 2: Prepare the Spec Work Portfolio

It’s impossible to apply for a job without having past projects or samples to demonstrate your expertise. If you don’t have them now, invent some.

Mock Project Creation: Find either a hypothetical client whose issue you know how to solve or a real-life company with an asset in need of improvements (for example, an awful-looking website or a poorly written blog post). Make necessary improvements and use the “before and after” shots as case studies.

The Problem Statement: Don’t just attach one picture or write some text block. Add a quick problem statement and explain your approach and tools utilized – this proves that you can solve business issues.

Step 3: Write Highly Targeted Proposals

Upwork displays the first two sentences from your cover letter in the client’s dashboard once he or she receives your proposal. Therefore, if your hook fails to attract attention, chances are very low that your offer will be opened.

No Templates Allowed: Never start by saying “Dear Hiring Manager, my name is John and I am an expert in…”. Your name and profession are clear from your profile, there is no need to repeat it here.

Hook With the Problem Statement: Open with addressing the job description: “I have carefully reviewed the attached wireframe and found a number of potential issues with it that could lead to dropping of the user…”.

The Loom Tool: The best technique for attracting a client on Upwork is filming a 90 second personalized video using Loom.com and then posting the link in the first line of your proposal.

Step 4: The “Quick Win” Bidding Strategy

As long as your profile has no reviews, you should apply for jobs that will give you a five-star review easily to kickstart your Upwork algorithm.

Quick Turnaround: Search for small fixed price projects that require less than 24-48 hours.

Under 5 Proposals: Apply to job posts that were published less than 30 minutes ago with less than 5 proposals – the customer is still actively searching for the best candidate.

Price Competitively: Set a price that is lower than average (to compensate for the lack of previous work on Upwork), but not too low – no need to bid $5 for something complex. It indicates your bad professionalism.

Step 5: Over-delivery for That First Five-Star Review

After getting a project assigned, your goal is to secure five stars from the customer. Getting that five-star review means receiving the first element of your Upwork ranking.

Communication: Contact the customer upon receiving the assignment. Update him regularly while working. Deliver the product a little bit earlier than agreed.

Revision Handling: Complete the revisions without any hesitation.

Prompting: When you deliver the product, send this message: “I hope that you have liked the product I delivered to you. I would greatly appreciate leaving your comments on my profile – as an Upwork beginner, it would mean a lot to me”.

Golden Tips for Upwork Beginners

1) Checking the Customer’s Reputation: Prior to spending your precious connects, scroll to the bottom part of the job posting. Check if “Payment Verified” status of the client is active, as well as his reviews. Ignore customers who give mostly one-star or two-star reviews.

2) Don’t Ever Take Money Off-platform: If a customer asks you to transfer money to Telegram and to his bank account or PayPal, it is a big red flag. Taking payments off-platform will result in banning your account forever (since you lost protection from milestone payments).

FAQ: Frequent Questions

Q: Is it necessary to pay to get hired on Upwork?

It’s free to sign up for Upwork but to get a job you will need “connects”. When creating an account you get some amount of them for free but they are limited. Therefore, you will need to spend additional funds on getting more connects to be able to continue applying for jobs (one connect costs $0.15).

Q: How many proposals should I send to get my first job?

For a complete beginner, it typically takes from 10 to 30 carefully tailored proposals to get hired. If you’ve sent 30+ bids without any reaction, you definitely should modify your application approach or your profile.

Q: Is it possible to use Upwork even with no experience?

Sure. As long as you have a skill that you can demonstrate in your portfolio, you can attract clients and win a job offer over an experienced professional.

Conclusion

Getting your first Upwork client involves changing your mindset from being an applicant to being a problem-solver. By creating an impeccable mock portfolio and writing custom proposals with videos attached, you’ll soon find that your second client comes effortlessly thanks to Upwork algorithm.