🟢 How to be top 1% on Upwork within the first 24 hr of signing up

What if Upwork isn't as competitive as it appears? What if it doesn't feel like 🤮?

Ryan Walsh 🟢

Feb 24, 2024

(4.5 min read)

a man in a green hoodie who is typing on his laptop and smiling. He has a gold trophy nearby.

This is post #16 out of 105 that I’ve committed to writing in 2024.

Getting into a rhythm. 💪

You might recall my post on Feb 6:

🟢 27 days in, I fold?!

Ryan Walsh 🟢

Feb 6

Read full story

Not having income is scary.

I’d say it’s even scarier than I anticipated.

My plan had been to keep kicking butt at my full-time software engineering job and start this newsletter on the side and figure out an online business over the next year or two.

NOT take a leap and go all in.

But I got laid off in December.

So here we are.

Plan B was to see if I could figure out an enjoyable and profitable business quickly.

I already know unenjoyable ways to A) find a new employer1 or B) start a business.

But I don’t want an enjoyable life.

So I’m holding my standards high.

But Plan B (which was less of a plan and more of a wish) ran out of time.

So now we’re at Plan C:

Find a fractional job as an engineering manager or senior software engineer to earn enough money to cover basic expenses while I take as long as I need to figure out a business.

I looked at various online platforms for fractional engineering jobs, and they’re nearly empty.

I think the supply of talent (people like me looking for jobs that require only 20 hours a week) far exceeds the demand for that talent.

Employers still almost always want to hire people who work 40+ hours / week.

And even those job boards are more sparse these days.

So Plan C (a long-term fractional senior software engineer role) might not pan out.

I’ve been wondering:

What would Plan D be?

I’ve known about freelancing marketplaces like Upwork, but they’ve felt like 🤮 to me.

Freelancing in many ways is even worse than working a full-time job.

No benefits AND you’re constantly chasing new work? Ugh.

Sites like Upwork are packed with engineers who advertise LOW hourly rates.

($5 an hour?! Are you kidding me?!)

And you don’t even get paid for the many hours you spend applying for countless jobs!

And those jobs are not long, stable ones of 6-12 months but instead last only days or hours.

NO THANKS. HARD PASS.

So I was excited to learn in a recent class that maybe I didn’t have the full picture.

Let’s imagine for a second.

(See my recent post where I presented an alternative to the way people typically finish the sentence “If it sounds too good to be true, then it ______ ______.”)

What if Upwork is actually far less competitive than it appears?

What if you can apply to fewer jobs?

And those jobs are longer, more stable ones?

And you can earn $100/hr?

What would it mean to you if you could somewhat easily turn on a faucet of clients when you need to make some extra money?

For me, that could be a big deal.

Right now, I’m at $0 income in my business.

I wouldn’t have intentionally chosen to abandon my full-time income before gaining momentum in my business.

That’s a big financial risk.

Being able to attract part-time clients at will would allow me to reduce some of the pressure.

Being desperate in the short-term blocks you from your best mindset for designing what you want for the long-term.

So you need to reduce risk.

🙌 Do you want to get featured in a future issue? Let me know.

How to Thrive on Upwork

I took these notes during the class, and I haven’t tried them yet (but might try in the next week or two).

The key is to earn a badge on your profile that says 100% Job Satisfaction.
Once you have this badge, you’ll look so attractive to clients that you’ll have much more success when applying for jobs.
Harvard MBAs lose out to 17-year-old kids who have this badge. For real.
To earn the 100% Job Satisfaction badge, you just need to have 2-7 jobs where the client loved your work.
You can get this badge on the very first day you start working.
The trick (for your first day) is to apply for time-sensitive jobs where the clients are desperate, and the jobs are easy.
Toggle to US-only (and use a VPN to do so if you’re outside USA).
Try search terms like: urgent, available, proofreading, email, “mobile app testing”.
For example, many of the easiest jobs are ones where someone is about to press Send on an email going out to 20,000 recipients, and they just want someone else to proofread the email first as a final check.
Of course, everyone wants these jobs.

So you need to apply within the first 5 minutes that the job gets posted.

You will not need to hustle this hard after you earn the badge.
Weekends are toughest because of supply/demand.

Most clients are only posting new jobs on weekdays, but most freelancers are checking for new jobs on weekends.
If you really want to optimize, you might create your account on Wednesday (just to get the basic profile up). Then on Thursday, hustle to win and complete enough jobs to earn your 100% Job Satisfaction badge.

Friday, find a more substantial “real” project to do on the weekend, if you’d like.
How can you be the first to apply for a new job?

Keep refreshing the site. Don’t rely on a browser extension, since those lag.

Maintain a file of pre-written answers.

Paste one of those templated proposals, and customize it for the client.
If you don’t have the badge yet, how could you “win” the job?
Make your proposal client-focused.

Rookies blab about themselves. You’ll stand out if you focus instead on their situation.

Ask thoughtful questions. (This proves your awareness and your ability to care about and understand what is important to them strategically.)
Mention that you have the Upwork app installed and that you respond quickly.

(Remember, what they’re MOST interested in right now is that you’re available now. THIS is your strength.)
Bid in the middle of the client’s provided price range for the job. Or maybe higher.

Price tends to be a proxy for quality.

Businesses worry more less about a few dollars here and there than they do about accidentally working with someone terrible.
On your first day, spend almost zero time writing your Upwork profile.

Nobody will pay attention to it anyway.

Just make it sound like you’re a generalist who can help with whatever they want.
Later, once you’ve earned your badge, you’ll create several different specialized profiles so that you can apply to the jobs that you actually want (the more lucrative ones).
One last secret tip:

Whenever providing your Upwork client with anything, do it via Google Drive, granting permission via their email address.

(DON’T make the file public.)

Later, other people in their company will inevitably stumble onto the file and request permission from you.

This is a great opportunity for you to ask whether they’d like more help. You can land new jobs without even applying.