Upwork Profile Optimisation IS NOT What You Think It Is

Upwork profile optimization is not what you think it is. Me and Prasanth had a conversation on Instagram and he asked me to review his profile, and then I asked him for permission to do it on YouTube and he agreed. So today I'm going to be going through his profile, telling you where he's making mistakes, to help him, to help you, to— and be importantly, to help me, because I've earned over half a million on this platform. And when it comes down to some of the things that in terms of the package that is put together on Upwork in general, there are improvements that everybody can make, and I regularly test them. So first I'm going to show you what's wrong, then I'm going to show you how you should structure it from earning half a million, and then you can look at some of the cracks maybe in my profile where I might be able to improve. Let's— so let's jump in. First, jumping straight out to me is the fact— Prasad, he looks clean, he has a decent profile picture, he has a video, and the video that he— when you press play on the video, he's recorded it from the same office. That is a win. That is a really good structure. But these things are not as critical as what you think they are. So for example, that video there will get watched X amount of times. You'll be able to see. But WordPress automation specialist, WooCommerce expert, Elementor Pro— I'm not really sure what you are. And there's more on this to come. With Upwork removing the specialized profiles, forced us into being in a position where really you have to laser in on one thing or spread yourself quite wide and hope that you can, you know, you have the power to be able to win jobs. But when it comes down to Prasanth— hi, I'm Prasanth— anybody who clicks on that is not gonna read it. That is a wall of text. And if I zoom back out so you can see it in the actual view, like what you're used to, it'll be a little bit smaller for you on screen. You can see what I mean. I'm a business owner who's coming here who's looking for a WordPress developer, let's say, right? Prasanth has listed every single thing that he's done since he was born inside of his Upwork profile, and he's doing it because he wants to show value to the client. He's trying to say, hey, I can do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Listen, I'm telling you now, after earning half a million on the platform and 6 million off the platform from other avenues of generating business in the PPC space, I can tell you that when it comes down to businesses and what they need, they search for a solution and then they choose the candidate without reading like War and Peace. So this could be condensed by at least 90%. That's the first issue. When it comes down to pricing, I always think pricing too cheap for me. $30 plus, like minimum $30 is fine. If you want to be competitive, you're trying to win jobs, you're going to have to take some small jobs. Prasanth is in that position. If you find yourself in that position, of course you're going to have to do the same, but ideally a little bit more than an average of $100 per job. And we're going to get something really important in a moment. So his title could be improved in my opinion. You're trying to be 5 different things at once. His average hourly rate is low for tier 1 countries, and that may or may not be a positive, but from my side, as being a specialist and, you know, top 1% Upwork Expert Vetted, it's a huge negative because you attract the lower price, the worst clients you attract. It's just a fact. So you condense your profile, hold up your mirror, look at what you're doing to your own actual sense, and think about yourself as a business who wants to take your services and what they see. And when Prasanth does this after watching this video, and you do it to your own profile, you're going to look at it and probably think, wow, actually I do write everything that I've done in my entire life about my, you know, school history, all of this. And I can condense that by at least 80%, literally strip it back to 80%. This looks a little bit AI to me as well, which is never good. Now, Prasimp's reviews are actually decent, but he's been on the platform for a very long time. There was 2018, he's earned $1,000. He's probably not been active for that entire time. That's just, you know, the way that it goes. He's— because evidently he would have won more jobs during that, the 4-year break and gap you can see here. But like, for this here, 5 days, $23, I mean I mean, after Upwork fees, it's nothing. And this is where you're working with bottom of the rung clients. And I don't mean it offensively, but it's true. Bottom of the rung clients. Now, portfolio. So profile optimization comes through this, and portfolios are a really important part of your ability to be able to showcase what you actually do. And it's something that is often missed. And the hidden value to Upwork profile optimization is this: we've just covered some of the issues. His reviews are decent, that's great, but you need to remember that Upwork indexes you. The client sets the criteria and then Upwork indexes you. So if you don't have a proper portfolio, which, you know, Prasanth seems to have inside of here, skills here for the different things. Again, that's heavy developer-based, different individual areas like website examples. I don't really like that website example because I don't think that's a high-quality website. Sorry, Prasanth, but I have to be straight with the audience and give the facts. And when it comes down to this site here, I mean, this looks a little bit better. There's a video attached to this which is another angle that you can take and links to the websites. But the point is, is that your profile should have a decent amount of profile optimization that's portfolio-based, that showcases your best case studies and work. It's exactly what I'm going to get to in my profile in a moment. Now, something I really want to highlight here is if you take a look at the skills section for Prasanth, there's a few areas again is where I think that Prasanth is not doing himself any favors. Now, Upwork does take your first 5 skills as a priority. So effectively he is developer heavy in terms of web development, but he has automation, Zapier, NAN, SEO cell. He has all these individual things inside of here. They are completely unrelated, but they're related in terms of what businesses want in this day and age. But however, you're trying to compete in a market with people who say focus strictly on no-code platforms like NAN and Zapier versus going all in on what you're actually specialized in. The trade-off is massive because you're telling the platform who to serve you to. Right now it's getting served a soup and nobody Need soup. I don't work. Then we have the product catalogs, and this is where Prasanth is causing himself an issue. This is good, he has a project catalog, fine. But if you look at the price of his projects, for me, if these packages work for him, listen, fine. He's got starter websites that are built in 2 days, standard websites that are built in 5 days, and advanced websites that are built in, in 10 days with 20 pages, plugins and extensions installed, 12 design customization, 4 revisions. He's setting himself up for massive failure. Now, people have bought these and been happy with what he's delivered. So well done, Prasanth, in terms of turning it into money. And this should be a showcase to people of how they can use these catalogs to be able to do that. However, if you actually think about what you are paying, the price-wise, to me, every one of these is— you can see that this Daniel G is a repeat client, and Daniel G evidently has found that he can get Prasanth to do high-quality work to his level of whatever he wants for a price which is just disgustingly cheap. And you should never undervalue what you have to offer and what you have to bring to the table, ever. You're not paid for the amount of time it takes you to do something, you're paid for the outcome. Never forget it, because that is the biggest lesson in all of this. So we've stripped down the profile. He's got employment history, there's no other experiences like LinkedIn optimizations. And I'm going to show you my profile up against it now. So we've seen this, this is my profile. My profile has obviously a lot more work experience, but that's one thing. The number one ranked Google Ads expert. The first thing somebody sees when they see me, when I'm boosting or when I'm doing is that I'm the number 1 ranked Google Ads expert. It just instantly triggers something inside of them. Oh, I want to work with the number 1 ranked guy. I want the top guy. I've tested this. I'm still testing this. Loads of individual things. Google Ads management expert, that title is working for me, but there could be a few different optimizations that I could do. But if you notice something now, and this is where it's really key, I'm set at $49 an hour. My true rate is significantly higher than that. But the thing is, is when somebody posts a job, on Upwork, and this is critical, please focus on this. When people post jobs on Upwork, they have a pricing category, and when businesses come to Upwork, they have no idea what something costs most of the time. So they set barriers to people that they want to invite at like $50, $40, $30, $60, $70. And the higher you go with your rate, the less you get. The higher quality, yes, because they're not— they're willing to pay the price. But having a rate which is somewhere in the middle that shows them that you're not cheap but also shows shows them that you have quality, and I can get away with it because of my earnings, is a little bit more difficult at the start. You probably do need to start a little bit lower, but play with your hourly rate. I do it all the time. Move it around. Cognitive— there's science behind this, you'll have to Google it. There's something with the number 7 that instantly catches people's eye. A lucky number 7, whatever it might be, Google it. I've read something somewhere, like in a book, but you'll have to find it yourself. I'm not here to do that. But what I'm telling you to do is change your Upwork profile. Find these things. Maybe deep research what numbers should be used. You can test your hourly rate using, like, I've just said 47, so why not 47.77? Let's see how that performs. This is a critical element of maneuvering you, because when people scroll through the job page, they see different things that stand out instead of the same old rubbish that is regurgitated, as I covered in my last video. If you haven't seen that, check that out after this one. I'll put it at the end because it seriously, this is critical. Now, when it comes down to this, we covered my title. Obviously I've got the badges, I've got the score. But when you look at my actual description, that is all it is. And you know what, I think it's a bit too long. It looks a little bit too texty to me now I've looked back at it again. This is why Prasanth's message was timely, because I was reviewing it anyway. But let's just check this out. I'm not trying— Prasanth is relatively new to Upwork, not time frame-wise, but— Hi, I'm Prasanth. I help businesses build, automate, and improve their online operations through development, workflow, etc. On the WordPress side, I specialize in Elementor Pro. I'm especially useful when you need both a website that performs and systems that keep it running with less manual effort. Mine starts with, I've managed $130 million in Google Ads spend and generated $1.1 billion in revenue for businesses from my Google Ads management services. Straight away I've led with something key. It's higher than that now, I should raise it. Then I've gone into, if your campaign performance is decreasing and you can't generate— and if your campaign performance is decreasing, you can't generate profitable conversions and sales and frustration is getting the better of you, I'm the guy who fixes is it? Straight away, in 2 lines, I've taken— given my value, and they're thinking, holy smokes, this guy's managed 130 million, 140 million, generated billions in revenue. That's in their mind. Then if your campaign performance is decreasing— 99% of the businesses that I take on come from clients where the Google Ads performance is decreasing. So I'm speaking back to my audience's fear that I already know that is inside of them in order to get them to reach out to me. Please do this to your profile. The first 2, 3 lines they won't even get past it. Like, when I get like to a little bit more about me, this can probably go. This is important. Few of these bullet points. Expertise can probably go. Trying to SEO optimize a little bit. Then I have a consultation. So the consultation, you should have every feature that Upwork has available, and the consultation is one of them. It's $250 for half an hour Zoom meeting with me to discuss PPC management. I get on calls for free, but if they want me to discuss strategy for their PPC, then they can book a consultation. This covers everything that the user needs, and I usually go above and beyond. But the point is, you have all this committed to quality. I've got all these great reviews, that's fine. There's a review in here, 3-star, everybody gets them. This was the guy that I mentioned who set out on a 3-month contract or agreement. I tell everybody, it takes time. The build was done, went through that process, he closed the contract after 3 weeks, paid me for the first month, left the review 2 years later. Don't leave your I'll put contracts open. Then you've got all of these fantastic reviews as like I get. But if I go through this again in this view, do you see this here? Click here, open me, click here, open me, click here. This instantly stands out. If someone, if someone gets down here to the portfolio, they're like, whoa, okay, these are, these are good. Like these are attractive to the eye. Now where I let myself down inside of here, you can see that I have this information. I have these documents that are created that are beautifully aligned that showcase the case case study. But when it comes down to the actual— the job, the job is to get them to click it, to see it. Where I failed here is I have good but not as big brands here. I should be leading with the biggest brands that I've worked with because that would help improve conversion rates. Now, inside of here, you will see a significantly more condensed skills list than what you saw on the other profile. There are a few things, you know, outside of this, but all of those are aligned to exactly what— basically what I do. There's nothing in there that I'm looking at that doesn't relate to it. GA4 is important. But maybe that is something that could go. But when it comes down to that, and my project catalog is an audit for $5, like I do audits for free. This area is somewhere where I'm really struggling because you can get reviews from LinkedIn from people who've never worked with you on Upwork, and they can give you profile reviews on LinkedIn. My last one, and the first one ever, and he actually asked me, was from Andy in 2021. When it comes down to doing this, you can go and get testimonials from all of your clients and build a massive page of high-quality reviews from people you've done jobs for are just equally as important and decision-altering for the client as physically possible. But simply by doing that, and I strongly advise, and me, some of the people I know I should have on my profile, that, you know, it should be important. And then you've got obviously the work history. So the things to take away from this: you have to hold up a mirror when it comes down to Upwork profile optimization, because you're probably like Prasanth and you're in a position trying to generate business and win projects.. Now you need a real profile that is condensed, that gives you the ability to be able to look directly in the mirror and understand where your shortcomings are. When it comes down to my half a million earned, I've changed everything on this profile. I've had things, I haven't had things. The changing of a title is not going to be the catalyst for a spark in improvement. You've got to close sales, you've got to price right, you've got to know how to finesse the algorithm, you've got to apply for jobs at the right time. But your Upwork profile optimization should simplistic. Give it all of the information about exactly what you do, nothing more, condensed as possible, written in a creative way like the example I gave you from my profile that actually makes people want to inquire with you. And it's that easy. It doesn't matter whether you've got $1,000 earned, it doesn't matter whether you've got a million dollars earned, and like some of my friends and, you know, peers who have got $2 million on the platform, it doesn't matter. What matters is what you appear to them like when they click on this page. Are you going to get a message or not? So I wanted to cover this for Prasanth. I wanted to cover it for you guys on YouTube to be able to go through these areas of, of what you need to do. When it comes down to a few other things, there are some bonuses. Boosting— you should be boosting. And when you're applying to jobs, obviously this is the thing: if you're applying to jobs and spending connects and your profile's not optimized, even if they view, you could get 1,000 clicks to your profile, nobody converts. Make your profile more condensed I like Prasanth's video better than my image here. I look like I'm in a choir, like I'm doing this. Like, when it comes down to Prasanth, his package is good with the video, but this, a little bit too wordy for me. But in comparison to this, emojis everywhere, looks like Disneyland. If you've enjoyed this video, like, subscribe. Check out this video, which was like a prequel to this really, where I go through from the business's point of view of what they want to see. That will help you. My name is Michael Elliott. I'll catch you in the next one.