I was living paycheck to paycheck, working 12 hours per day when I decided to quit my job several years ago. I had a loose plan, but no way of knowing if I would make any money because I was working so hard I didn’t have time to test my idea. I figured; “If I’m going to work this hard and still be this broke, then I would rather be poor working for myself than help someone else get rich”.

I struggled my first year as a Google Trusted Photographer, but it didn’t generate the income I needed because I had to do all the sales and marketing, and I wasn’t getting any leads because no one knew what street view tours were. No one was searching for Google Photographers, which made it a really tough thing to sell. That job taught me a lot of hard lessons including the incredible value of a warm lead.

I struggled for several more years after that, barely scraping by. I studied and tested just about every online business or passive income stream out there and I still wasn’t having the best luck. Through that process, I learned pretty much everything there is to know about online marketing and that lead to my first jobs subcontracting as a virtual assistant. I was finally working for myself, online, from anywhere I wanted. Through those jobs, I got an inside look at other online businesses that were already successful and making money. That’s when things started turning around for me because I got to see for myself what worked well, and what I would do differently.

After about a year of working as a virtual assistant, I was finding the almost daily meetings to be an incredible hindrance. The constant, middle-of-the-day interruptions slowed down my workflow, distracted me from my projects and kept me from exploring too far from a screen or wifi. Finally, I decided to take all of my experience and leave my life of subcontracting behind by seeking out my marketing clients.

The only problem was, how was I going to find clients?

I believed all the negative comments I heard about Upwork. That it was too competitive, that the clients were too cheap and that it was a waste of my time. But I had already exhausted almost every other option so I decided to try it anyway.

My first problem was that I knew no one would hire me without a review, but I couldn’t get a review without getting hired. So I reached out to some other business owners I knew to see if any of them needed marketing work done and if they would be willing to hire me through Upwork. Thankfully, one of them was happy to hire me and that one review opened the window to the life I had been trying to build for years; making a comfortable full-time income working for myself, from anywhere and on my schedule.

That first review changed everything. From there, the clients just kept coming. Within 4 months I had my first $1,000 month and I was onboarding clients at a rate of about 1 per week. Overall, I have averaged $6,900 per month, working less than a 4-hour workweek with the help of a team and an assistant who now does my meetings for me.

Upwork has been a complete game-changer for me, and it’s allowed me to travel for months at a time, buy a campervan, upgrade to professional camera gear, see friends and family whenever I like and start saving for retirement through practically passive income. AND, I did it without any blogging, networking, cold calling, social media posts, email lists, or a website.

That’s how valuable a warm lead from Upwork can be. 

Yes there are lower priced Freelancers on Upwork and YES Upwork does charge high fees but in my opinion, none of that should matter enough to stop you. If you want a successful online business the most important thing that you need to make real money is warm leads. So just think of Upwork as your commission-only salesperson. You only have to pay them when you make money and in my opinion, that's a pretty good deal. 

Here’s How I Mastered The Art Of Upwork.

I had already hired assistants on Upwork before, so I knew what it was like to use Upwork from the client’s viewpoint. I already knew my way around the site and I knew that most freelancers submit pretty awful proposals, they quote hourly rates without an overall cost for the project, and they don’t give estimated turn-around times, so I committed to removing those pain points for my clients. Having a client account also let me search for other freelancers in my niche and analyze their profiles.

After working as a virtual assistant and a photographer I already had a ton of experience in social media marketing, but by going niche and focusing on just one social media channel (Pinterest), I was able to eliminate most of the competition down to just a few other experts. That increased my chance of being hired and being invited to jobs.

I looked at the other experts in my niche and I combed through their profiles. I paid extra attention to any social media strategies they mentioned and added them to a list of deliverables I would be sure to include in my service. I also took note of what all the same freelancers in my country were charging so I knew how to price myself.

I assumed that I already knew pretty much everything there was to know about social media, but I wanted my service to include every single thing my competition was offering. So I invested in the best course I could find on my niche and took notes to make sure I was covering every single possible strategy for my clients.

Here’s the thing about projects from a client’s perspective. They don’t care what your hourly rate is as much as what the finished project is going to cost them. If you charge twice as much per hour but finish the job twice as fast, the hourly rate doesn’t really matter.

Clients just want to know how much the finished project is going to cost them and how quickly it will be done.

So after I was done analyzing the competition and taking courses on my niche, I created a standard package at a flat weekly rate. The client was paying a clear price for deliverables that I already outlined, which they loved. I recommend all freelancers outline their deliverables this way because otherwise, you can end up defending what you did all week and wasting time reassuring clients when you could be growing your business instead.

Another key thing I did was to make sure my service would be recurring. By charging a weekly management rate for my packages, my income became fairly consistent. My client numbers generally fluctuated around 12, but it never affected me too much because I was charging smaller amounts every week across multiple clients. The other great thing about Upwork is that it also works as your payment processor. All of my projects were set up so I could charge the clients automatically each week, without having to chase down late or missing payments.

I treated my early Upwork jobs as learning experiences to help me perfect systems and develop training materials. I used common questions to develop a welcome packet and FAQ for future clients. I used problems to develop new terms for my client agreement form. As I completed deliverables, I recorded my screen to show assistants how to repeat the process. From there I grew from one hourly assistant to 3, allowing me to focus on growing the business and starting other projects.