The more clients you have as a freelancer, the higher your earnings. But, while Upwork is one of the best platforms out there, it also has cutthroat competition. Freelancers flood the market increasingly, and clients prefer hiring familiar talents with loads of experience and star profiles.
So, despite this competitive environment, how can you increase your client base, especially as a beginner on Upwork? Here, we’ll give you some practical steps to boost your Upwork clientele, so keep reading.
1. Optimize Your Profile
It’s significantly easier to attract more jobs with an eye-catching profile that quickly piques clients’ interest. Applying certaintips to set up your Upwork profiledemonstrates professionalism, which builds client trust in your ability to do the job efficiently.
First, choose a professional single profile picture without distracting backgrounds, blurriness, or an unfriendly disposition. Next, ensure your headline communicates your best skills, then craft a compelling, unique overview that distinguishes you from the crowd. It should clearly show what you offer and give clients reasons to hire you.
Finally, endeavor to complete every section of your profile. Some sections may appear unnecessary, but a complete profile is more likely to appear on a client’s search results. Also, embed the keywords for your craft in your profile as much as possible.
2. Craft a Stellar Portfolio
It’s impossible to showcase the full extent of your talents in words, but this is the importance of your portfolio. It shows a sample of your abilities and is important for first-time clients to decide whether or not to hire you.
An excellent portfolio should contain your best works, describe the client’s problems and your solution strategies, and provide links or live visuals where necessary. For example, a content writer can showcase links to published articles, while web developers can show links to live sites.
Additionally, ensure you have a wide range of solutions and projects you’ve worked on. You can always display personal projects and volunteer work if you’re a beginner freelancer without job experience.
3. Identify and Carve a Niche for Yourself
In extremely competitive environments like Upwork, having a specialty helps you stand out from others in your field. By specializing in a niche, you can fine-tune your best service, thus distinguishing yourself as an authority in that area. Consequently, you can attract and earn the trust of top clients needing your particular service and increase your fees.
Identify a specific area within your career path that you’re exceptional at and enjoy. Then, continuously enhance your knowledge, practice, and display your work.
4. Apply for Jobs With Quality Proposals
Unless you’re a top-rated freelancer, you must submit proposals to get jobs. As this is the client’s first interaction with you, making a good impression is crucial to encourage further conversation.
Before writing, study the job description to understand the client’s needs, then tailor your proposal to proffer a solution. To better your chances, include some of the client’s details and words, but ensure you retain originality and don’t sound repetitive.
You should sound professional; however, avoid using unnecessarily verbose or unclear words. Instead, use simple, polite language, highlight your skills and experience, and remain inviting and friendly throughout your proposal.
5. Seek Out Projects
Job postings are a great way to keep abreast of available Upwork jobs, but you must know how to use them to attract the right projects for you. Upwork’s search filters automatically screen job postings according to your criteria. This way, you have a better selection of jobs best suited to you and your experience level.
Furthermore, being strategic aboutchoosing the right projects as a freelancerhelps you use your connections more efficiently. Remember, you have a limited number of Upwork connects, and it’s unwise to apply sporadically for jobs where you’re not the ideal candidate.
6. Deliver Invaluable Service
Most importantly, satisfied clients leave good reviews, which are highly important for your profile. We’ll look at that in detail shortly. Meanwhile, Upwork’s job-success feature also measures the client’s satisfaction with your work.
Poor ratings affect your ability to attract clients, as freelancers with high job-success scores are the most sought-after in the Upwork market. Also, a good score increases your visibility and likelihood of ranking on Upwork’s search results.
7. Request and Advertise Testimonials
Testimonials (or reviews) are fundamental for clients to establish trust before hiring a freelancer. There’s an alarming rate of scams online today, and every client wants to know that you’re trustworthy and capable of quality delivery. Positive testimonials also help to reinforce your profile and boost its visibility in search results.
While some clients will leave reviews immediately after you complete their job, others may need your prompting. There are severalways freelancers can request testimonials, but every request must be polite and direct.
8. Build and Maintain Professional Client Relationships
Open communication, quick responses, and solid client relationships are vital for good delivery. While attracting new clients, you also want to retain your old ones to grow your clientele.
Good relationships turn first-time clients into returning ones who continue to bring a stream of jobs your way. Clients who feel comfortable with you can better communicate their goals and desires, enabling you to do a more satisfactory job. This, in turn, translates into positive reviews, recommendations, and referrals.
9. Network on Upwork Events
You’re probably more inclined to ignore the invitations to Upwork events in your mail. But did you know attending and actively participating in these events can help boost your clientele? Utilizingnetworking tipswhen connecting with fellow freelancers can make you a candidate for collaborations and recommendations.
Top-rated freelancers typically get bombarded with invitations and have to turn down offers that fail to meet their requirements. But connecting with them through these events gives you a chance at such jobs.
Participate in Q&A sessions, ask engaging questions, and always introduce yourself briefly but interestingly. Also, approach any notable freelancers you resonate with and politely ask them to exchange contacts. You can always look your person of interest up on social media and directly message them.
10. Build a Social Media Presence
Upwork’s profile settings have certain features that allow linking to social media and websites. Employing this feature is paramount to attracting more clients and fostering trust and relationships with them.
When trying to get information about anyone, most turn first to social media, and Upwork clients are no different. Clients prefer to do a deep dive into freelancers before hiring them. Besides your profile, an active presence on thebest social media platforms for freelancersgives them an avenue to do so.
Avoid linking to informal or leisure accounts; stick to more professional platforms like LinkedIn. Your social media presence also doubles as your brand, and you want to show a reputable front.
Attract Your Dream Clients With These Tips
There’s no doubt that Upwork is a challenging platform, especially when you’re beginning your freelance journey. In fact, many get tempted to go for competitor platforms like Fiverr for an easier start. However, several reasons show that its pros far outweigh these obstacles. Diligently follow the above tips, and with consistency, you’ll have your dream freelance career in no time.
