Before getting into the detailed conversation for profile creation and its approval for UPWORK, consider few things mentioned below to achieve some goals in your life.
I need attention
Nowadays everybody needs attention? Your parents, wife, kids, Boss, etc. Everyone asks for 100% attention from your side and if you start to ignore anyone, people will start ignoring you. Same goes with this industry, whether we talk about, to get paid or getting a positive response from a newly created blog or green signal from a specific employer, getting visitors on your YouTube channel, everything needs hard work. If you take things for granted so you will never be successful at any stage of your life.
Literally, I have learned a lot in recent few days that hard work pays off. If you have a passion for your destination and willing to work seriously, you will definitely achieve the goals of your life irrespective of how complex they are.
The world has now changed. We have lots of competition. Previously a few years back, It was pretty much easy to get your profile approved on ELANCE or ODESK and you start working straight away and getting paid easily. Few freelancers, few clients, and the World was happy. But now a day’s more and more people are getting awareness of about earning as a freelancer on the Internet. Thousands of people are now approaching per day to get involved in this field. But this is the era of survival of fittest. You have to work hard with so much accuracy and in so many efficient ways to stand out in thousands of people around you with the same skills.
So getting back to your UPWORK profile, let’s start analyzing the way how we treat it wrong and how much we disobey the rules and regulations set by UPWORK, along with the solutions that I have figured out and got the approval form UPWORK.
01- The Email Address
What I personally rectified and searched over the internet and found a bit preference system of email addresses from UPWORK. They prefer the work email over the generic email. For example in my case, I acquire a domain kodegems.com and from that, I created an email ameen@kodegems.com. So, fortunately, this worked for me. But this does not mean that you cannot make your generic email from free services like Gmail, outlook, and yahoo. But here I am talking about the preference is one of the key factors to get approval.
02: Your Profile Title
UPWORK clearly states that they do not need such a long title for example “Web Developer – html-css-WordPress-php”. They need simple and generic Profile Titles that covers your skills decently. Like in my case, I am a Web developer, previously I wrote the same title as I have mentioned above. But now I figured it out the solution.
03: Profile Image
Profile image should be of minimum 250 x 250 in dimensions. Clear, front face, visible like mine. No group photos and side photos are allowed, in this case, your profile can be rejected straight away.
04: Overview
When a client posts a job he gets dozens of job proposals. Going through all applications and selecting the right candidate for the job is time taking task. Clients do not have time to read each proposal from top to bottom and make the selection, but if the first line of your overview impresses him and grabs his attention, will be constructive for you. Getting his attention, capturing his interests is the main key of your overview.
Do not start with Hi and Hello, because once you got a chance to do a job you will have plenty of time to greet the client. To the point, highlighting what are your strengths, what you can do and what sort of client you are searching for, are the keys to produce a good overview for your profile.
05: Filling up your Hourly Rate
Most of the freelancer while filling up the profile, undersell their services and it just because of not knowing their worth. They mostly think that if we going to rate low, we will have more chances to win the project. But this is not the case.
According to thefreelanceeffect.com
“A low hourly rate gives off an impression of low quality-work, and no one wants to pay top dollar for low-quality work.”
“By setting a higher rate, clients will inherently regard you as a higher quality freelancer… resulting in higher paid jobs.”
My Assumptions:
If you are setting your Experience level to
- Entry Level: $20-$25 per hour
- Intermediate Level: $25-$35 per hour
- Expert Level: More than $40 per hour
06: Setting up your Skills
When I get failed a couple of time for profile approval, one reason was not filling up the skills that are not very common. For example, as a web developer, I was previously going for the following skills. Web development, Web design, Logo design etc. These are generic and entire UPWORK is flooded with the following sort of freelancers so the UPWORK is not going to approve you anymore.
I figured it out to alter those skills to the uncommon skills but related to Website and most importantly, I filled out all 8 slots not going for only 2 or 3 skills.
07: Employment and Education History
The same process will be repeated by filling up your entire employment and educational history. Make sure you add all of your academic and professional details absolutely.
It’s just a Beginning
My article just about to end but believe me or not our journey of UPWORK is about to start. Profile creation and its approval is the first step and from here we have lots of challenges to accomplish in UPWORK.
Conclusion
Your UPWORK profile is just like a resume, which you are going to present your client. First Impression is the last impression, your profile is your first gateway to present yourself in front of him, realizing him that you can do a great job for him with a good price. One of my Physics teacher “Sir Safi Zakai” always told us that from only doing hard work you cannot achieve your goals but the hard work in the right direction is a must.
So what are you waiting for? Apply these steps and share your experience in the comment section below. Feel free to ask any query, I will love to answer them.