#095: How to Land Good-Paying Clients on Elance and Upwork

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 95 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find the detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 95 here's a question I get all the time. Are Elance and Upwork and other online job boards a good place to find and land freelance work? And the answer is yes and no. It really depends on a number of important factors and it's certainly not for everyone. But some people have figured out a way to launch your freelance businesses with these platforms. And my guest for this episode is one of these people. Her name is Laura Pennington and she has a great story about how she used Elance to kickstart her business a few years ago, her freelance writing business. And she did this despite the fact that she had very little work experience when she went about it. She had no samples, no ratings or reviews, and no clear guidance on how to make it work. And in this episode she is going to share some very useful tips on how you can succeed on these sites, plus how to use them as a way to smooth out your income fluctuations if you're already an established freelancer. Again, these tools, these platforms are not for everyone, but there are some ways to make them work. And all I ask is that you keep an open mind. I think Laura is going to be sharing some great ideas here that many of you could put into use if you feel this is something that would be worth experimenting with. Hope you enjoy it. Hey Laura, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Thanks. I'm excited to be here.

So we're touching on something today that a lot of people kind of find a little bit taboo. But we. You have a very interesting story here and I think this needs to get out there and I think it's going to help some people. So before we get into that and the specifics, tell us about yourself because you have a really interesting story and I think that will set the stage very nicely for our discussion.

Sure. So I sort of fell into freelance writing when I was younger. I always wanted to be a writer, but didn't really know how to get started. And you know what? I would need to actually launch a business that could be really sustainable as a freelance writer. So in 2012, I was just looking for the opportunity to make some extra money. I had recently left My Position Teaching 7th grade in Baltimore City. I had really burned out in that job and was working in a corporate job at the time where I knew the 9 to 5 thing just wasn't for me. But it was a relatively safe place for me to work and have a career while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life and was just googling how to become a freelance writer. And came across the site Elance and didn't know anything about it. Couldn't find a whole lot of advice out there about how to make the most of the site. So I began a couple of months where I really made an effort in trying to land jobs on the site. My first month there, I submitted so many bids, and I think I ended up with $150 worth of projects. But I was thrilled because I had never been paid for my work before. It had cemented in my mind that this was a legitimate way to make money online. It was a real site and not a scam. Within the first three months of being on the site, I became one of the top 1% of writers on the site and picked up so much business that I was almost too busy. The company actually contacted me and brought me out to do a photo shoot, and my picture was on their homepage. Up until they just recently merged into Upwork. This year, I've had a lot of experience on the Elance and Upwork platforms, not only as a freelance writer, but also on the hiring end of things. Because of my connections at Elance, I've also worked with some Fortune 500 companies and other companies that need help hiring digital talent. So I've really sort of seen both sides of how to use Elance and have really become what the employees over there call us, a super user because of my familiarity with the site.

Wow. Yeah, That's a heck of a story. You have a very unique perspective. I've never seen anyone actually have both sides of that. So you get started, right, you land a couple of gigs. He said, $150 in, what, your first month?

Yeah.

Okay. What kind of work? Do you remember what your first assignment was?

I do. I'm actually a PhD candidate in public policy. And at the time, I had my master's in political science. And the first job I got picked up for was writing two blogs about the Affordable Care act, which was a really hot button issue in 2012 and still is. I had to submit a lot of bids to get that initial job. And part of that reason is because people who have an established reputation on elance or on upwork will almost always win out on the bidding process because they have experience and someone else has sort of vetted them by hiring them in the past. So it can take a long time to get your first job if you don't know what you're doing. But I sort of used the success with that project to spiral into other projects. And at the end of my three months of really giving it a good effort, I had met and surpassed my day job income. So I knew that it was really something potential. There was a lot of potential there for me to make money doing this full time.

That's crazy. So first month, $150. And in the next two months, really, I mean, you're able to surpass your day job income. And I get that right, because I see this all the time. We all do this. Like, if I go to Airbnb or some of these other places, if they don't have reviews, I'm pretty much passing on it. So they really are kind of counting on someone who's willing to take that chance. There's always somebody out there, and I guess that's what you're waiting for. Once somebody took a chance on you, you saw that it became a lot easier.

Yes. That is one of the most important pieces of advice I can give to people, because I see a lot of freelancers and writers especially, who give up too soon because they might submit 10 bids and they don't hear back on the client from any of them. And if you're not being open to how you can become better at the bidding process or how you can differentiate yourself from the people who may have more experience than you, it's going to be hard for you to get your foot in the door. And that first job, you want to really deliver on that first job, because if that person leaves you 5 out of 5 feedback, you have now opened the next level of of elance and upwork, where you can get many more jobs just because some other client has already hired you and said, yes, this was a perfect experience, I strongly recommend them. It's really that first job, or even those first couple jobs that make it a possibility for you to succeed. So don't blow it on the first one. It's really important.

And I know you may not know what the numbers were from way back then, but if you had to guess how many bids did you submit before you got that first one? And then once you had it, can you give us an idea of what that ratio was? I'm just talking about that first three months.

Sure. So the first couple of months, I know the first month especially, I probably submitted at least 30 bids before I got the first job. And then when I completed that first job and got positive feedback about it, that client hired me again. But then I also noticed that my conversion rate picked up up on other jobs as well. So the second month, I think I had something like seven projects that I was working on. It was really a big difference. Just having that feedback, that's a tremendous thing because when someone's going on a site like Elance or Upwork, they don't know you, they're a total stranger to you. And it can be really nerve racking to click yes, hire and pay somebody that I've never met before that also has no feedback. So. So getting that first feedback is really.

Really important in terms of pricing. I mean, I know that the tendency, and of course it makes perfect sense is to you're trying to get in there, you know, price it low, you're trying to get in the door. Did you find that as you started getting projects, were you able to raise your fees to levels that were kind of more in line with where you should be?

Yes, absolutely. So after I had some experience under my belt and I really found where my sweet spot was, which was working with attorneys and law firms, it was a lot easier for me to zero in on the projects that were the best fit for me and also increase my rate and say my rates have increased because there's higher demand for my services now. That was something that I used with my ongoing clients as well as potential new clients. I wouldn't give them the lower rates that I would have used when I was first getting started. A lot of the time people that are looking at Elance and Upwork will say, or sites like it will say, well, there's a lot of low end jobs on there. And it's true, there are, there are a lot of jobs where someone wants to hire you and pay you $5 to write a blog post and a lot of people will give up because of that. So sort of in combination with the fact that you sometimes have to submit a lot of bids to get a job and the fact that so many of the requests for proposals are just bottom of the barrel and people will give up, but there are also some amazing opportunities on there. So my second year on Elance, I got a $50,000 client on a five month writing contract. I submitted a bid, he sent me an email, we got on the phone, talked for 30 minutes, boom, done. So for me it was worth it. Even those other months when I'd had to work really hard because there are gems amidst those sort of low end jobs and those high paying, high value clients refer you to their colleagues and their friends. So it opens more and more opportunities, sort of the higher you go with it.

Now you mentioned that you started specializing on or started targeting attorneys and law firms. You kind of develop a niche there. Why those, why that target market?

Well, I think narrowing in on a particular group that you work with has so many benefits, not just for you, but also for the clients. So when you focus on a particular group of people or in a particular industry, you become more of an expert about the things that are happening, news wise and the various requirements and sort of the tone that people in that industry like writing for. I've also learned that not everybody can write about legal. It's kind of similar to medicine or really high end technical software articles. Not everybody really has that skill set and it's hard to cultivate, but it also allows you to establish yourself as the expert in a field. So after I noticed that more than 90% of the bids I was winning were small and mid sized law firms, I learned that I was the number one legal writer on Elance. And so I consistently used that in my bids. That was my opening line on every bid. I'm the number one legal writer on this site because a lot of times that's all the client needed to hear to know. This is someone who gets my industry. They understand what we can and can't say. They understand what my potential readers want to be looking at as far as content. So that really helps. It also allows you to just become really comfortable with the things that you write about on a daily basis.

So it wasn't something that you necessarily had a background on. It's just eventually landed one. Right. And then I give you that experience and then you were able to maybe land a second one and before you knew it, you had done a lot of them. Is that how it worked?

Right. I had worked for a couple of attorneys when I was in college, a personal injury attorney and I had helped her organize her research for trials. Whenever I would apply to a new job, I would think about what background did I have that could connect with this client. And it wasn't always legal or it wasn't always personal injury, but that was the case a lot of times because they knew I had some experience either in writing about that particular topic or in working with an attorney. In that way it was a lot easier for my conversion rates to go up because people just, they want to know that they're working with someone who's a professional and who has competent writing skills. And if you can show that to someone very quickly on one of these online job sites, they won't even waste time looking at the other proposals because they're already on the site, they know they want to hire somebody. So you just have to convince them that it's you.

Yeah, that's great. So you found a door and you went in and once you were in that room then it was just a lot easier, which is wonderful. So you mentioned that as one way to get those higher paying gigs, which is to narrow down your target market. Specialize in some way. What other tips or strategies have you found are key to actually making a decent living working in elance rep work?

I would say there are definitely two pieces of advice that I would recommend. The first one is saying no. And this is a luxury of when you build up enough of a business that you have recurring clients. So I have a group of clients who are always going to order content every single month. That means less marketing for me. It also means that I can say no. So even if you are an established writer or any kind of freelancer on these sites, someone will come along and say, oh, here's my low paying job, are you interested? And I just simply reply, no, I can't meet the budget specifications for this job. Or if it seems like someone who's difficult to work with, I'm going to say no right off the bat. It's really tempting for new freelancers to say yes to every opportunity because it's just so exciting that someone's paying you for your work. But you need to become a master at the red flags. That someone is difficult to work with you. So if they're sending you five emails before they've ever even hired you, if they want you to touch base every day and that doesn't really jive with your schedule, if they're asking for a discount before they've even paid you for one piece of content, those are some of the red flags that I look for and go, hmm, this client just isn't for me, I'm going to have to pass. So that's a big one. Saying no. It can make all the difference. And sometimes you have to say no to your current clients too. You have to fire clients and let somebody go who isn't a good fit. So that's definitely one of them. My second tip would be the materials that you submit to a client on a site like Upwork or Elance. I've noticed from being on the hiring end of things that people send way too much information. It's with the best of intentions, but if I'm hiring a graphic designer on Upwork and you send me 50 links to webpages with your work, I'm not going to look at all of them. I'm going to click on the first one, and if the first one isn't your best work, you're going to be passed over. The same goes for providing five and 10 paragraphs of an explanation of why the client should hire you. People want short, sweet and to the point, so no more than two paragraphs in your bid. You don't need to show this potential client every project you've ever worked on. They don't need your life story. They want to know that you have the talent and the professionalism to do their job and reach their target audience. I've seen so many people who will come to me and say, I worked with one woman who had been bidding on Elance for more than two years and had yet to convert one client. And I said, all right, send me one of your bids. Send me a screenshot. And I said, you are sending this client 30 documents that they have to download and open, and they're just not going to do that. It's so overwhelming when you're looking at 50 different bids and everybody submitting that much material. I submit one document to my clients, one PDF file or one live link to go look at the most relevant piece of work I have for that. And one to two paragraphs, tops. If you're doing more than that, it comes across as an oversell and it's just way too overwhelming.

That leads me, and that's great advice, by the way. That leads me to my next question, which is when you are putting a bid out there, it sounds like customization pays off, not just having kind of a standard template, making sure that you're customizing for the prospect. What do you have to advise there?

Yes, I definitely recommend all of the people that I work with who are sort of getting started on Upwork and Elance, and this is my own strategy as well. Put yourself in the client's shoes. So why is this client on Upwork to begin with? If they're indicating there will be certain triggers of emotions that they give away in their request for proposals. So, for example, one might be if the person says no plagiarism, that is a real clue that they've worked with someone who submitted duplicated work in the past. So how can you speak to that concern? You could say something specifically like, my work is always original. My work is guaranteed original. I courtesy copyscape for you because the psychological point of a client who is on upwork will vary a little bit, but they will often give you clues in their request for proposal, and tailoring it a little bit to them shows that you're not just copy pasting and bidding to every specific job. So I strongly recommend that you use something even if it's that their company profile is listed as being in Mississippi and you grew up in Mississippi. That's a great opening talking point for understanding their geographic location and the SEO that might work there. So always look for some point of connection where you can do more than just a generic proposal.

I love that. That's good. And I have. I've been on the other side a few times and I've been surprised by how few people do that. They just want to copy and paste and just work in the numbers.

Right, Right. Yep.

Yeah. So you mentioned another. Another kind of must do earlier in order for this to work. We talked about narrowing down your field, of course. We just talked about customizing your proposal. Any other kind of must dos, I.

Would think, specifically about your unique value proposition. And it's different for every freelancer. If you're not sure what yours is yet, spend some time researching your competition. When I first got started on Elance, I saw that the same couple of people were always beating me on bids. Well, what is it about them that they're always winning out over me? So I went and I read their profiles, I looked at their website, I signed up for their email list. I learned everything I could about those clients. And they would have different points of value proposition. So one was that they were always on time or early in their delivery. Somebody else had been a writer for 10 years. They found what made them different from everybody else and just zeroed in on that. Then when I started applying that same strategy, by talking about my experiences as a legal writer and purposely directing people to my profile to look at the feedback I'd gotten from other clients, it really worked like a charm. It made my conversion rate increase a lot.

Yeah, that's great. You got to let people know what makes you different, right?

Yeah.

I'm curious about your opinion on. Well, first of all, before I get to that real quick because I think we should have probably addressed this earlier. Tell us what this Upwork thing is. A lot of people are familiar with Elance. They might be wondering what is this Upwork thing?

Elance and Odesk have basically merged into Upwork. The premise of the site is the same. People post requests for proposals and potential freelancers will submit bids. Personally, I think Upwork is a little bit more difficult to use. They also take more of a commission from. From the freelancer's end, they take 10% and I think Elance was a couple of percentage points less than that, but it's just a little bit muddier. Hopefully that's something that they're going to clean up, but it's just their new version of sort of Elance and Odesk merged together.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, there's no more Elance or Odesk separately now. It's just all Upwork.

It is all Upwork. If you have open contracts on Elance already, they can stay open, but clients can no longer go in and post a request for proposals on Elance. They'll be prompted to go over to Upwork. So that's another thing that as a freelancer, that's some way that you can help the clients because they're likely not familiar with Upwork either because it's a brand new site. So if you can sort of guide them into the process of how it works based on your own experience or familiarity, that makes it a lot easier for people. I can't tell you how many of my clients just can't figure out how to fund escrow, how to release escrow. It's not intuitive, so it can be a little bit difficult to use.

All right, so let's talk about a couple of specific scenarios. And one is for someone starting out and I'm just curious, if you were starting today, is this still a strategy that you would pursue? Knowing what you know today, is this something that you would do starting today?

Absolutely. If you are in another full time or part time job where you are hoping to grow your business, I think it's the perfect transition site to use because it can be very nerve wracking to leave your full time or part time job and say, I'm going to become a freelance writer today and then you have to go out and win all of your clients tomorrow. So the strategy that I used was to build up to the point where I felt like I can consist of consistently replicate a particular revenue point every month. And then I felt like it was okay for me. To go full time with the writing. If someone was looking to become a full time writer without having experience on this site before, I'd put some effort into it. I would not rely on it 100% because I wouldn't recommend that for any writer. You know, you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket. And when I started out, I was very comfortable, conscious of the fact that, oh wow, 80% of my revenue is coming from Elance. What if the site crashes? And really focusing on how I could broaden that out to private clients and getting referrals from my ongoing clients and that sort of thing. So I think it really works as part of a strategy. If you're a new writer, what if.

You'Re an established writer, let's go to that group. And you, you're known, you have a portfolio, you're earning a decent income, but you also have those ups and downs and you're thinking maybe this would be a good way to kind of smooth those cycles a little bit. Would you recommend this for someone like that?

Yes, for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are some bigger companies that use the digital talent pools at Upwork to hire all of their developers, writers, designers, etc. So companies that I've worked for to help build out that team, Microsoft, TrueCar, they're major companies. Adobe also uses Upwork. So getting the chance to work for one of those companies and put that on your resume, that's huge, even as an established writer. And also it's really easy to earn money relatively quickly with upwork. So if worse came to worst and you're going, I need money by next Friday, you could go on over to upwork, land a couple of gigs, wrap them up and the money would be released to you six days later. That's the standard UPWORK hold. And it's a relatively quick way to generate some cash flow. So if you know that you're going to have a slower month, or if you're looking to just add some extra income a particular month, it can definitely make sense for established writers to go over there and get some experience.

Gotcha. Okay. And now do you think there'd be a danger of. Or is this a valid fear? Oh, I don't know if I want to do that because, you know, I have my website and I'm going to establish writer or copywriter. Do I really want to profile on upwork? Would that tarnish my reputation? Is that a legitimate concern?

I can see where someone would go with that line of thinking, but from my perspective, When a client is hiring you and they have no idea who you are, they might check you out a couple of places, right? So they might check your website, they might check LinkedIn, they might look at your social media and if they stumble across your profile on upwork and it's showing that you were active as of yesterday and you have clients who are leaving five star feedback, it shows to them that you're still involved in your freelancing business and it's just additional credibility. So it depends on how you use it to your advantage. If you're publicly posting that you're willing to be paid $20 an hour on upwork and then you're shocked when somebody comes to you and offers you a low paying gig, there's a connection there, an opportunity for you to improve your profile and, and have it read more of a high end or luxury client. But I think it can ultimately increase your credibility because unfortunately there's a lot of stereotypes out there and one of them is that writers are flaky or some of them are fly by night. You can't really find a lot of information about them online. So having this additional profile, if you use it right, can really help.

If you're established and you're trying to get that first gig right because you have no reviews, you have no ratings, what would you recommend? Now let's assume that I don't need, you know, the money in six days, but, but I'm trying, I'm trying to break in at the same time I'm trying not to. I'm used to doing a case study for fifteen hundred dollars, let's say. I mean, I don't necessarily want to try to bid a case study for a hundred dollars. Do you think that that's a, what do you think is the right approach in this situation like that?

Well, yeah, I definitely would not recommend bidding on the case study job where there's a lot of people who are just giving rates that are far too low. Because even if you do ultimately win the bid, there's definitely a correlation between the type of client who's willing to pay $100 for a case study and how they'll treat you as a writer on that particular project. So I might go the route of trying to find another job, like something that, you know, you can crank out relatively quickly. Someone's hiring you for a blog post, maybe they're only paying 40 or 50 bucks for it, but you know, you can do that in 30 minutes. You know, you can nail the qualifications for the project and get Five star feedback. Now you have five star feedback on your profile and you can go apply to every job with that in mind. So I would definitely just choose to start out somewhere smaller so you can get that experience and get that, you know, quality feedback and you can just roll that, snowball it into other jobs.

I like that. That makes a lot more sense to me because I think that would be a big fear is go after the projects that you do very well, that you do every single week. But what if all these people are lowballing it? What do you do? Of course you can accentuate your differentiators, but that might not still be enough for a lot of people. So I'm curious about something you mentioned earlier. In specifically the bigger companies, Fortune 500 companies, why are so many of them using Upwork?

Well, as you probably already know, I mean, freelancing is just experiencing a business boom. More and more companies are looking to use freelancers because they don't have to pay benefits. They don't have to have the person in their office working full time, they don't have to pay the real estate to have the office in some situations where they're entirely virtual. And from their perspective, they can get a really good deal using the cream of the crop on these sites. So they know that when they come to a site like Upwork, they'll typically have a project manager who does the recruiting and filling of their digital bench. And that might include one of the top three web developers on upwork out of everybody. And so they get the opportunity to work with someone who's really experienced and highly qualified. But it's going to be less expensive than them hiring someone who's a full time web developer. And then it allows companies like that too to break down their projects into smaller milestones. So perhaps if it's a blog writing project, their in house writers are overworked. Let's hire someone to do 20 blog posts a month. That way they know their costs at all times and they know exactly what they're going to get out of it. So I think it appeals to a lot of bigger companies, but they're still very new to this world of hiring contractors a little bit in this digital space. They're sort of getting their feet wet doing this too.

As you mentioned, they're looking for the top players. They don't necessarily want to mess around with people who don't really seem to have a lot of experience. They're not looking for the lowest bid.

Right. That's why you have to sift through these different jobs and try to find the ones that are really high quality. Because, yeah, there are going to be situations where you're going to be outbid because the client's bottom line is price alone. But if you're submitting a bid for a company like Microsoft, they're not looking for the lowest possible price. They're looking for who can do it in their voice, in their style and on time. Even for an experienced writer, that's a great credit to have on your resume and it's great experience and it's going to pay more in line with what you're used to being paid.

This is great. Laura. I guess in wrapping up any, any final advice and maybe specifically around, you know, somebody is kind of getting excited and thinking, you know, I really need to do this. What would you advise them to do? Like, what would be the first couple of things that they could do as quickly as possible?

So definitely create work samples. Even if you've never been paid to create something before, make your own. I made three writing samples on the fly and use those to get most of the first jobs that I worked on in my first six months there. So really just create something really compelling that shows your commitment to high quality. You can use the same couple things over and over again on bids. That is an investment that will pay off big time. Another thing I would do is make sure your profile is really well written. I see people who have profile with one sentence written in it, or they've got the opposite. They've got 20 paragraphs there. Too much information. Keep it short and sweet. You can use things to make yourself stand out. Like a video. Maybe you have a video of you talking about the approach you take to developing content or whatever it is you do. And being consistent would be my third tip because it's really tempting to give up. When you've submitted 10 bids today and not even one client is reaching out to you, that is a sign that there's something missing. So do some research. How can you make your bid better? Are your samples good enough? Are you not replying fast enough? And stick with it. Set a goal for yourself. This week I'm going to apply to 20 jobs or I'm going to spend an hour on upwork. Every day, you will start to see that paying off. If your work quality is good and if you've got the right elements in.

Your proposal and profile, that is excellent advice. Before we sign off, where can people learn more about you? How can they connect?

Sure. So I can be found@6Figurewritingsecrets.com and that's where I do all of my blogging tips about how to build your own digital team as a freelance writer, hiring virtual assistants, hiring other writers. And that's also where I do my coaching program. So I help new and emerging freelancers figure out how to navigate sites like Upwork as well as finding private clients to really build a sustainable and rewarding business.

Awesome. Laura, this has been great. Thanks for coming on.

Oh, thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. And I have just one announcement this week I'm about to open the enrollment process for my coaching and training program for established commercial writers and copywriters. It's called the 2X Project. If you're already earning somewhere around $30,000 and $80,000 a year, or of course the part time equivalent of that, I'll work with you in this program to double your income in the next 12 to 18 months to also have more time off and to work with higher quality clients. This is an income acceleration intensive that I started about actually about 19 months ago. 18, 19 months ago. And it's helped create some huge successes out there. People that I'm really proud of who have taken this and just really broken through income ceilings and as a result just change your businesses and in their lives. Again, this is for established writers and copywriters only who are already earning somewhere around 30 to $80,000 a year with a part time equivalent of that, but who also feel stuck in that range. They know they could do better. Maybe you've done better before and your business has just declined and you know you need to turn that around. I'm only going to have 12 spots available and there's an application process in order to ensure that we have a very high quality group. If you want to learn more, stay tuned for an announcement very soon. And if you're not on my mailing list, just make sure to get get on that list. So you'll get that notification about the enrollment you can get on my mailing list@b2b launcher.com you'll see the opt in form there on the right sidebar. So that's it for today's episode. Hope you enjoyed it and I hope you have an awesome day. Take care. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at d2b launcher.com.