for those of you that are new to upw work it's essentially a marketplace where businesses and individuals can find and hire Freelancers for a wide range of projects I have officially made $100,000 on upw work as a social media marketer I'm also a toprated Plus freelancer on the platform with a 100% job success score and today I'm going to share with you my top 10 crucial tips that have led me this far from writing your portfolio applying to jobs and crafting killer cover letters I'll also be sharing some hacks that I've learned along the way that will have a huge impact on your result and right at the end of this video I'm going to actually reveal my first cover letter that I sent on upwork that secured me my first job and how much that first job made me I opened my upwork account in September of 2021 I have just gotten married and moved to Jordan to be with my husband before that my only experience as a social media marketer was working with about three very small and local businesses in my area I was still just getting my feet wear in the world of social media and had very little experience now being in Jordan I had to think of new ways to get clients I needed a process that would allow me to do everything online because beforehand I would obviously go in store and meet these brands in person which of course for me was no longer possible one of the benefits of covid if you could even call it a benefit was that working online and meeting people through zoom and Google meets had become more socially acceptable after some YouTube videos and Google searches I discovered upw work it was truly a platform I didn't expect to have much success on because of all the contradictory reviews that I found on some people were saying it's a great platform to work on and then there were others that were saying it's so difficult to get clients on upw work and was a complete waste of time but being newly married unemployed and without client I didn't really have a choice that was my superpower I guess I was desperate I created an account and got to applying for jobs straight away my first tip that I would give you if you're beginning your journey on upw work I would highly recommend you take a look at other successful Freelancers in your Niche on the platform and take some inspiration from their account what kind of things are they seeing and how are they presenting themselves and their work on the platform of course it's important that you're not copying them but take note of their layout and their tone this really helped me at the start because upwork was a platform I was completely new to and had no idea how to use I was able to balance off the success of other Freelancers and have a more informed strategy when creating an attractive and interesting profile tip number two an approach I took early on as well was to be more friendly and chill rather than formal and professional it's always been my motto if you could call it that that friendliness and being approachable is 10 times more effective than trying to come across as professional at the end of the day they are just normal people on the other side of that screen no matter how well established and esteemed their business is they're still just another person that you're connecting to coming across as more friendly could mean using emojis in your cover letters or even your profile adding light jokes or being super positive and encouraging or talking with more passion saying hey instead of of hello those are just some examples the next few tips were what really generated a lot of success for me personally in my beginning stages on the platform the first being I offered a much wider range of services within my profession of course so as a social media marketer we offered copywriting video editing graphic design social media strategy plans hashtag research and a few others looking for me my husband and I both worked on the platform together from the same account so we had a wider range of skills between us the way I thought about it was the more things I could offer at that stage meant the more jobs I could apply for so if you're a copywriter for example try to be more Broad in your services you can offer copy for blog writing a copy for websites copy for social media content and so on tip number four which is another thing that I did which was apply for a ton of jobs in the beginning I bought a bunch of connects for around £50 connects are basically like points you need to apply for jobs and then I applied for loads and loads of jobs I'm talking about hours and hours applying for different roles you really have to grind in those beginning stages to get noticed on upw workk you need to put yourself in front of more people's eyes I think in my first week alone I applied for like 50 different jobs another really important tip for you for when you're applying to these jobs is if you're a beginner in your profession please only apply for jobs that are for beginners if you're a beginner copyrighter and you're applying for copyrighting jobs that are for experts you are going to be no match for the competition and more than likely your proposal is not even going to be considered as the experts that are also applying for those jobs are going to outdo You by far so please don't waste your connects on jobs that are way out of your leak tip number six and probably one of the most important ones that you're not going to want to hear but you need to is to grow on the platform pretty fast in those beginning stages you need to be cheap not too cheap but cheap enough most of the time when businesses are looking for Freelancers they're looking for Freelancers with experience they're looking at your reviews your success score and your credibility because a lot of the time it's pretty easy to get scammed on upw work so businesses are quite wary when looking for these types of Freelancers and obviously when you're starting out you're not going to have that so if you do want a chance to win over these clients you have to offer affordability instead because there are businesses out there willing to risk a lack of all the other things for an affordable service it may not feel nice in the beginning it didn't for me but it's worth it in the long run I started out by charging around $15 an hour for the first couple of months and now I'm charging $40 per hour which is probably due for an increase if I'm being completely honest and now I'm going to share my top tips for when you're actually applying to these jobs and writing your cover letters one thing that I found really affable and is a little bit of a secret but I'm going to tell you anyway is that I would start off all of my cover letters with the client's name when applying for a job you're often going to be able to to see reviews given by other Freelancers that have worked with this client and a lot of the time these Freelancers will mention their client's name in the review for example a freelancer might say John was a great client to work with he was super straightforward easy and fair if you see that same name pop up in a few of the reviews it's a pretty solid sign that that account owner's name is John so what I would do to start off my cover letter would be something like a hey John using someone's name adds a personal touch to your communication it shows that you've taken the time to address them specifically rather than just using a generic approach which a lot of people on op work do they just copy and paste cover letters onto different jobs for my next tip it should be pretty obvious but I've seen this mistake happen before is that it's super important your Reading and Responding to every single part of the job so for example a lot of jobs will require multiple things in their job post they might be asking for a video editor that can use Adobe Premier Pro and after effects and that are experienced in short form content it's a it's important that in a response to a post like that you clarify every single request that they make so your response should be something like I personally love short form content that's why I specialize in it and I have been using After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro for 5 plus years so it will be no problem for me to use them platforms another practice that I found super effective when I'm sending out cover letters is that I will have super personalized responses it's important to make the client feel that you're really passionate and super interested in that specific role more than likely they're a business owner that is super passionate themselves about their business so to also show that same passion and excitement for their business will almost always have a really positive response for example let's say that there's a client that has a clean Beauty brand and they're looking for a Blog writer and let's say that you like clean Beauty yourself you could really go in and say something along the lines on this job post really stuck out to me because I've been an advocate for clean Beauty for a really long long time I've converted my entire family to clean beauty products and I would love to work with a brand that I'm super passionate about myself and then you can give them a compliment I love how your brand uses minimal ingredients because I've always been of the opinion that less is more throwing in a little compliment always goes a long way for tip number 10 I really want you to open your ears because this is important information that I wish I knew when I started out let's say you've had a response from a business after you've sent out a cover letter let's say you get talking to them and there's a little bit of back and forth maybe you even go as far as having a zoom call with them but then suddenly after the zoom meeting or after some conversation they go dark and you don't hear from them again you're often left wondering if they like to or maybe they just found someone else for the role what I'd highly suggest for you to do is follow up with them just drop another message something like hey insert their name it's been a while since I've heard back are you still looking to fill this role if so I'm super interested a lot of the times it's not that they're not interested Ed in you it's that running a business takes a lot of time take it from me and sometimes these potential clients get sidetracked and busy and a lot of the time they will Circle back when they get a chance but the best part is when they do decide to come back to upw work your message is going to be at the top of the inbox list and your enthusiasm is going to shine through because you're still showing interest and you're super keen and eager I have signed a good five to six clients by just chasing them up weekly until they respond trust me this hack is is golden and now to show you my cover letter that landed me my first client on upwork which made me exactly $978 it was a social media design job for a very small skincare brand and this is what I said in my cover letter Hi and then I mentioned their name but I'm just blanking it out here I hope you're doing well and are in the best of health my name is Nyla and I'm a social media manager and content creator firstly I would like to say good luck on starting your business I wish you the best on the job post of this particular client they did mention that they're a new business owner I believe I am the most suitable candidate for this job role as I have the skills required and more I am able to create great content on Adobe premere Pro Photoshop and illustrator I have been using these softwares for over 3 years I can do graphic content and video editing you can check out my portfolio for my previous work I'm a native English speaker I remember they did also ask that they wanted a native English speaker and also have a ba degree in English and creative writing so I can be counted on for any writing task I always throw my degree in there it's just a little bit of icing on the cake I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your consideration Nyla at the end of my cover letter it always say something like I'm more than happy to answer any more questions you may have and then I'll say something I really look forward to hearing back from you I feel like it makes client feel more inclined to reply could be in my head I don't know but it works for me and then this client had a few follow-up questions that they wanted to ask so they asked me do you have access to Adobe Illustrator and you have experience using it I said yes do you have suggestions to make this project run successfully my response was to keep it creative and and unique I believe a wellth thought out strategy and execution is necessary for a start out business content needs to be well thought out and organized to fit the Brand's image mind you this was 2 years ago I wrote this I could do a much better job now but this is not bad content should also vary from information posts engagement post sales post and entertainment and then next question was what past project or job have you had that is most like this one and why I responded with I have experience working for an eye contact lens company I believe the role was similar as the target audience was women interested in beauty products I was in charge of running ad campaigns for this business and targeting a specific audience do you have any questions about the job description no so I did actually work for contact Lan company it was my cousin's company and I did some work experience there but you see how I just slid that in there not bad you know looking at this now it does feel like I'm answering a very exam style I definitely would do this completely differently now if I had the chance but it still got me the job so not bad it just proves you can be a beginner and still get clients ever since then I've worked with now over 31 brands on OFW and I've made over $100,000 on the platform one brand I'm still working with at the moment I've made over $40,000 with them and the other brands are in there tens of thousands and thousands I really hope you found this video useful if you like these tips and you want me to make more content around upwork and being a freelancer please let me know in the comments I'd be more than happy to do that if there's an interest for it and if you made it all the way to the end of this video please comment upwork 2024 in the comments below so I can see who made it to the end of this video and we can have a little chat in the comment section below as always please like And subscribe because I post content every single week until next time