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How I Made Over $4,000 My First Month On Eance/Upwork

Update: Elance has actually now combined with Odesk to form. Upwork. The platform is basically the very same, and runs in the very same way. The suggestions listed below is still relevant. Excellent luck!


Remarkably, the world of freelancing had avoided me till just recently. It was by total mishap that I came across a site called Elance. — a kind of eBay for freelancers. Sustained by interest and a quickly declining savings account I dove in headfirst and was amazed at the earning potential of the online freelance market.

Below I’ll detail how I went from an empty Elance profile to making over $4,000 in my very first month working as a writer online, all without an ounce of freelance writing experience.

What is freelancing?

Freelancing resembles contract work. It’s generally marketing yourself as an individual, using your skills to organizations to do a task. You have no boss, no workplace hours and no public vacations. You work for yourself and it’s up to you to find work and pitch yourself to customers.

Elance is an online marketplace for freelancers. It’s a location where both freelancers can discover work and organizations can discover freelancers to work for them.

As a traveller freelancing is an ideal earnings source if you have any desire to take a trip long term and get out of the workplace you .need.

to begin constructing an independent income. You can work anywhere, anytime with simply a laptop and wifi. This is where sustainable long term travel starts!

How I began.

As quickly as I surfed on into Elance I signed up and developed a profile. I utilized to be an accountant, so naturally I beginning searching the jobs in the Finance section. A lot of were bookkeeping jobs and the kind of crap I disliked that triggered me to quit my job in the first place. Not only that, every job appeared to have hundreds of bids from Indian freelancers offering to do the job for $2 an hour. $2 an hour! I wouldn’t even endure Chatter Lady episodes for $2 an hour! If Blair Waldorf has actually received my fanmail yet …), (I question.

There I was, so quickly unimaginative and seconds away from clicking the huge red X in the top right hand corner when I caught sight of the Writing and Translation category. I vaguely remembered somebody informing me about individuals making a good wage working as a writer online and decided to check the listings out.

I had no idea what I was doing, but a lot of the tasks seemed intriguing and I understood I might do a good job. I turned to my best buddy (his name is Google) for a bit of suggestions. Basically all my searches about becoming a freelance author on Elance came back with the very same message Indians and Filipinos are highly experienced, more devoted, and spend 18 hours a day on this site bidding for literally every job that comes up. What’s more, they offer to do this work for $1 an hour. You merely can not contend. Ignore it

..Something about me is I’m incredibly persistent. When somebody tells me I can’t do something it truly frustrates me, and no matter how stupid it is I’ll usually do whatever I can to prove you incorrect.What!?

You said I can’t eat an entire bag of french fries through my nose ?! That’s it. McDonalds, now. You’re driving.

Bidding for jobs Every single job was being overloaded with lowball bids from India and the Philippines. I soldiered on, bidding for about 15 tasks and getting awarded exactly zero.

of them.

Without at least one feedback, there was no method that they might inform whether I was a rockstar writer or a complete illiterate moron. On every job that I bid for, the writer who eventually won the job had at least a couple of jobs finished and at least 4/5 star feedback I asked myself, what work do when they’re attempting to develop up clients?

They offer things away free of charge! The next 3 jobs I bid for, I decided not to write my normal I have an accounting degree and I’m a very hard worker and I enjoy an obstacle and I won’t let you down and please hang on while I think about something a lot more uninteresting to inform you. Instead,

I chose to do part of the job for free as my proposition.

My first job.

Accounting blog

The job publishing appeared like this

I had no concept what a ‘innovative quick’ or ‘SEO’ was. I still do not.

Accounting blog proposal

That didn’t matter to me because since accounting is my proficiency, I understood I might eliminate this task. If I simply wrote my normal I work really tough proposal I would simply look like another amateur writer with no experience, probably even a homeless one bidding from a taken laptop I also bid rather a high price. I bid $250, which amounts to $25 for a 250 word post. For a new freelance author that’s an extremely high rate. A lot of writers when beginning work for around $3-$ 5 for a 500 word article. Why did I do this? Simple– to stand apart. Purchasing psychology 101–.high costs give a perception of high quality. I’m from New Zealand where the minimum wage is $13.75 an hour. If I’m supposedly a qualified accountant ready to write for $3 an hour in a country where. any other job.

would earn me 5x that, then the client will probably conclude that something is off, i.e. that I’m a moron.

celebration dance

To my surprise, the whole thing worked perfectly. Within a couple of days I was granted the job and it’s awkward how happy I was. Lesson

Bidding high helps you stand out, and informs the client you’re not some desperate wannabe (even though you are). On this job I might see that most of the bidders were just bidding $3-$ 5 per post, and many were from India and Pakistan suggesting they most likely weren’t native English speakers. The highest quote on the task was around $300, so I bid simply under that, making me stand apart but not making me look extravagantly pricey.

feedback accounting blog

After 10 days I had actually completed the task, been paid $250 and got my very first feedbackI also need to tension that you.must.

get a 5 star feedback. A 3 star feedback is probably worse than having no feedback at all. How do you do this?Strive to be the best freelancer your customer has actually ever worked with. Send work prior to the deadline. Compose 700 words when you only required 500..

go beyond every expectation Then, make it clear you need.

a 5 star feedback.

Hey Joe,.

I’m pleased you liked the last short article. If, for any reason, there’s still a part of it you’re not rather 100% happy with, please let me understand and I’ll rewrite it until it’s precisely what you want I ‘d really value it if you might leave a.5 star feedback if there’s no additional work to be done.

for me on Elance. This would be so helpful in me protecting more work and continuing to compose. If you feel any aspect of my work wasn’t to 5 star requirement, please do not be reluctant to let me understand and I’ll do whatever I can to fix that..
Keep in mind, finding excellent writers on Elance is a complete headache for a lot of editors. Well established freelance writers earn approximately $500 an article, so for $20+ they do not tend to anticipate excessive. If you have actually been blowing their socks off with your professionalism and commitment to quality throughout the project, they really must have no issue leaving you the 5 star feedback you have actually requested.

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Indian job

The ball begins rolling.

Proposal indian job

After that everything became tremendously easier. With my first 5 start feedback behind my name I landed my next job a number of days later on. Here’s what the task posting appeared like

bidders

My proposal While I can’t see the other proposals, I can see who the other bidders are. There were 13 bidders for the job, which I have listed belowAs you can see,

of the 13 bidders 4 are from Pakistan, 7 are from India, 1 is from the Philippines, and 1 is from New Zealand (me). Assuming the job poster was searching for a native English speaker, he can pick either me or … me LessonDon’t get discouraged by a great deal of people low bidding on jobs. While numerous of them might be fantastic employees, Elance is renowned for having a great deal of English second language speakers sending poor quality composing that can’t be utilized. For this reason lots of task postings clearly request for native English speakers just. In this case I was the only native English speaker that bid, and ultimately I was granted the job. Surprisingly enough, practically every other bidder was likewise a Chartered Accountant and some had CFA’s/ MBA’s, making them even more qualified than I was ( most likely way smarter, too). They also were less expensive than me–.

my quote of $550 was far greater than the typical bid of $180.

, which enhances my earlier point of bidding high and not selling yourself short.

Attempting a various specific niche After finishing this job and getting another 5 stars, I chose to see if I might land a task beyond accounting and financing. I did this for fun more than anything else, and to get some experience in a different specific niche. Practically all my propositions went along the lines of My background remains in monetary writing however I can use my abilities to a range of topics … I strive blah …

I’ll enjoy to write the very first short article at no charge as a trial to see if it matches your audience.

.

Elance7

After submitting around 10 bids for travel posts, food articles, physical fitness articles, sports short articles and quite much any job that got noted, the one I got a struck on was a collection of articles for a mens way of life blog (hooray). 10 posts at $11 each. Approved, a significant paycut from my previous gigs, however was a task however and I really had a great deal of enjoyable doing it. Since the short article was outdoors my specific niche I needed to put a bit more effort in to make sure a 5 star feedback. I check out the clients blog site and a great deal of comparable blogs to get a feel for the ideal writing design, I made sure the writing was provided method before the deadline, and naturally I offered to rewrite it as often times as he required. Out of the 10 posts, just 1 required to be reworded, and he appeared really impressed with the workLesson.— You can land tasks outside your specific niche– you’ll probably earn money less and need to use a giveaway for the very first couple of, but it’s worth it for the additional experience and feedback. Research well and.

strive to send the highest quality work that your customer has ever seen

. Quickly you’ll have a great quantity of experience in different specific niches and have the ability to command higher rates.

  1. My very first big client.
  2. The next task I landed ended up paying me a fair bit more than the others. It was for writing Chartered Accountancy mentor notes, which is

A crap task that nobody wishes to do.

accounting notes

Requires an extremely specific skillset.

Elance99

Those are 2 active ingredients for a high paying gig. Here’s what the posting looked like

My proposal

In my proposal you’ll see that I made sure to resolve every requirement noted in his posting. What you can’t see in the screenshot is that the job budget plan was up to $5,000, so I understood he was willing to pay good coin for the ideal candidate. I spent most of the evening putting and investigating together the sample notes asked for in the posting, as I understood that would most likely be the deciding factor. I wanted to submit something remarkable. The customer emailed the next day saying how my proposition and sample notes had actually truly stuck out from the rest, and awarded me the job. The first task was a trial, which included composing a single chapter of notes for $230. I did whatever I could to make it the first set of fascinating accounting notes in the history of humanity (I failed, it’s not possible), and he later offered me a full 10 chapters, for which I negotiated a cost of $2,900.

Lesson.

— Do not be scared to hang around on your proposals– it resembles getting ready for a job interview. I’ve found that the clients who request particular samples in their listings are normally the ones that require authors with a really particular proficiency, and if you can provide on this the payday can be respectable.

Earnings for the very first month

Task 1: $250.

Job 2: $550.

Job 3: $110.

Job 4: $230.

Task 5: $2,900.Overall: $4,040 USD worth of work awarded in just over a month.

  1. Disclaimer
  2. While I handled to win all these tasks within a month, it really took around 2 months for me to finish whatever. This is since those were the deadlines I worked out. I did this since

I was taking a trip at the time.

I slouch.

I was probably working around 10-15 hours a week. Had I been dealing with them full-time this could have been easily completed in around a month.

I was making around $25-$ 30 an hour usually, which is not far from what I was making when working full-time as an accountant. The intriguing thing is, this is thought about peanuts for a writer! Numerous recognized authors earn closer to $100 an hour, some significantly more. While I’m a long method from those rates, the prospective itself is amazing.Things to keep in mind when starting on Elance

Bid for jobs within your knowledge.( especially for composing). This will be your best shot for producing quality writing and developing your feedback. If you’re an individual fitness instructor bid on physical fitness short articles; if you’re a lender quote on monetary short articles; if you’re a nurse bid on health short articles and so on. You do not necessarily need to be a professional– you might bid on parenting posts, travel articles; I’ve even seen a number of tasks for gamers to write articles and evaluations on Playstation games, so there really is something for everybody.

Take whatever tasks you can get at the start. With my first 40 bids I got awarded 3 jobs, and then I paid the $10 fee for another set of 40.

Do not limit yourself to writing — Composing can get dull, so it’s great to have something else to work on to offer yourself a break. Another great moneymaker is translation– if you speak several languages there are individuals that will pay big money for precise translation work.

Compose free of charge — It’s a fantastic method to practice your writing and if you do not get the task you can still add the piece to your portfolio. Even if you don’t win the job, convert the file to pdf and add it to your portfolio as Green tea article written for recognized health magazine.

Look at other effective writers See how their profiles are laid out and what they include in their portfolio. Look through their resume, their photo and the profile design in basic. Use this as a design for your own profile.Anyway, that’s how I started out in freelancing and I was quite satisfied with my outcomes. What’s been great about it is that I have actually established a brand-new stream of earnings that I can earn while travelling,.

which is constantly the goal for me. I’m sure there are lots of different methods that individuals use to freelance and if you’re willing to share I ‘d love to hear them! Also, I ‘d be keen to hear how the above techniques of mine work out for you if you choose to utilize them. I’ll probably compose another post on the topic in a few months, hopefully with a better and new method to show you all. Ideally this post has showed you that it truly is possible to earn money on Elance; possibly not millions, but enough to make it worth giving a shot. My obstacle to you

Establish a totally free account at Elance (Upwork).

Begin bidding like insane on any writing jobs you think you can do a decent job of. With some effort and a little bit of luck, you must be able to land at least one task.

Then, do an incredible task. Surpass each of your client’s expectations. Let them know that you’re committed to quality and will produce exactly what they require in order to get a 5 star feedback.

More Job/Career Ideas & Resources



Finish the task, earn money, demand a 5 star feedback and blow the payment on something to reward yourself.

Ready to start your freelance career? This in-depth guide shows you real proposals to real clients that have landed real jobs, complete with the tools and resources you need to get started.

Article source: http://www.brenontheroad.com/made-4000-first-month-elance/

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