Detailed Notes
In this podcast episode, we delve into launching a successful freelance career on Upwork. Focusing primarily on getting started, a sort of Upwork startup guide for beginners. This guide draws from our wealth of experience. It provides invaluable insights and practical advice for freelancers aiming to thrive in the competitive online marketplace by sharing our expertise and firsthand knowledge.
Upwork Startup Guide
We guide listeners through establishing a solid presence on Upwork so they can use it to maximize their earning potential.
Exploring Upwork: Navigating the Platform
As Rob and Mike kick off the episode, they overview the Upwork platform, highlighting its key features and functionalities. They cover creating a compelling profile, navigating job listings, and client communications. They also offer practical tips that help freelancers make the most of their Upwork experience.
Decoding Job Listings: Finding Lucrative Opportunities
Rob guides listeners through the process of analyzing job listings on Upwork. He offers insights into how freelancers can identify lucrative opportunities and avoid potential pitfalls. One way is to understand client expectations. Another is to understand project requirements. In either case, this allows freelancers to decide which projects to pursue.
Maximizing Visibility: Leveraging Upwork's Features
Rob goes on to discuss the importance of maximizing visibility on Upwork. He shares strategies for increasing exposure to potential clients. Optimizing profile keywords is one strategy, and strategically allocating Connects is another. The advice provided is practical. It is for freelancers looking to attract high-quality clients and projects.
Empowering Freelancers for Success
As the episode draws to a close, Rob and Mike reiterate the importance of persistence. They also reaffirm the importance of professionalism and continuous learning in the freelance journey. By implementing the strategies and techniques discussed, freelancers can position themselves for fulfillment on Upwork.
Now, you can navigate the Upwork landscape with confidence and competence. The guidance provided in this episode helps freelancers. They can embrace that guidance. By doing so, freelancers can embark on a journey that leads to greater success and prosperity and allows them to advance their freelance careers.
We invite you to share your experiences and insights as we wrap up this discussion. Whether you’ve triumphed over project challenges or faced unexpected hurdles, your stories enrich our collective learning journey. Honesty, clarity, and proactive communication are the cornerstone of successful software development. Until next time, happy coding!
We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] or visit our website to share your thoughts and stories. Stay tuned for more enriching discussions in the episodes to come.
Upwork Startup Guide: Additional Resources * Starting A Project-Based Business – Interview With Jay Aigner - https://develpreneur.com/starting-a-project-based-business-interview-with-jay-aigner/ * Starting A Consulting Business From Scratch – Adrienne Johnston - * Finding Consulting Projects Without Cold Calls - https://develpreneur.com/starting-a-consulting-business-from-scratch-adrienne-johnston/ * Finding Consulting Projects Without Cold Calls - https://develpreneur.com/finding-consulting-projects-without-cold-calls/ * Upwork - https://www.upwork.com/
Transcript Text
[Music] let's see so today let's see one of the things I want to do is so maybe a two-parter we'll see we talked about last time about do about upwork and about just going through that process and so I think what I'm going to do is I'm GNA walk through a you doing a proposal sort of what it looks like and so it's like here's what it is here's what I like just go find one go fill one out talk about the whole process as I go through it and I think that hopefully will help because we've talked about a little bit but I think it's just easier to give an example and then of course to anybody that's out there watching going to get to do it uh get to see what it is and so so for a good break piece in between this if you think it's going to be two-parter um so we're let's see so figure about 20ish minutes from now if you go through the first part and we just before I think we either get into talking about finding jobs or going into actually submitting things depending upon where we're at timwi that might be a good break point and then flip it to the next one yeah we'll sort of see how it goes I fig we're going to wing it this is something I've done a lot so we're going to find out how well this winging it works this time around and uh so we'll just dive in we'll sort of like turn it on for the uh the audio part here and get that started hello and welcome back thank you so much today we are back for another episode of building better developers the developing our podcast I'm Rob he's Mike you don't see either of us but you're going to hear his awesome voice as well in just a moment want to jump ahead a little bit just say this episode is going to be uh an interesting one this one where you probably going to want to utilize the YouTube page a little bit is we're going to do some examples we're going to walk through upwork we're going to like using this is something I've used a lot something Michael's starting to use to go find work and so we're going to walk through the idea like a process of let's go find a project that's out there and let's put together a proposal and figure out what our Stu is around that and then kick it off and so it's just to give you a nice little example of something that we do some of the tools I've used because I have done gosh probably a thousand proposals or more out there over the years and uh before we get started though Mike go ahead and introduce yourself hello everyone uh my name is Michael Mage co-founder of develop andur also founder of Envision QA and like Rob said you know I've been trying to get in that work for a little bit here so we thought this would be a good exercise for us to go through together and try and flush out some of the tips and tricks that Rob's done over the years to find uh potential work to do on upwork all right so I'm going to talk through this we're going to see how well this goes I'm going to share a screen so those of you that are watching you actually get to see me share the screen and so we should see here now confirm for me if you will there's no rabbit you know there's nothing up my sleeve and there is an upward screen sitting there that is being shared right now correct yep there we go excellent excellent excellent okay so what we do when we come into something like this the first thing I do although I actually have a I've built a little app which someday I may walk through that as well it that um actually pings some of this I I pull from upwork and Guru and a couple other sites I pull stuff in and then I can sort of look through and it's not the it's not the full project or propos or job itself but it's enough to give me an idea of like does this look interesting is it and I'll pull things like the title a summary the rates and then you know maybe like if there's any restrictions like hey it's only people in India or something like that and I've got some filters around that as well so I can sort of like narrow that down this is going to be the much more painful way to look at this uh essentially uh because I'm going to go through this and this is just live I'm looking at jobs are out there we're going to go find one and we're going to walk through it now if you come to up work uh one of the first things I would do is build out a save search for yourself is just go in uh you can do you there's a bunch of stuff you can do with it as far as like what kind of job what kind of area so if I'd look at I don't know if this is actually going to show me that nope it's not oh wait am I you might want to make it a little bit larger um zoom in just a little bit let's see what I can do I'm not sure he likes that it is not a happy camper with that okay never mind uh let's see I'm actually you do Control Plus where you using Safari yeah yeah I'm doing that but you know what it's like I don't think it likes this this may be interesting because I don't think it likes it with um I'm G to stop sharing my stream screen real quick oh wait let me see what happens here I think it doesn't like let me get this screen up a little bit better and if I do that now let me try a share because I wonder if it doesn't like the share um because some things don't like that so let's see go back to share the screen uh let's just do this so if I do this so what you you'll see over here on the side and I may not be able to because I don't think oh well maybe it is so it may have just been something on that the browser was but what I would do is I would go ahead and set stuff up to give yourself just like because there's so many jobs out there uh particularly on upwork that I would just you know pick some of the stuff that's your common things that you're going to do to sort of limit it to something that makes sense to you um particularly like with your categories there's a ton of different categories out there um like here I've got some subs and things like that and so and this is my save so let me go back to uh I'm just going to go to the main one here so this is off of oh let's see Rob Rob default now for those of you on audio uh can you walk them through how you got to this screen to show the filters yeah it's it's really straightforward if you come in there's going to be fine work and that's your homepage basically you're going to do that and then you're going to be able to within that you there's going to be if you've got them there's going to be save searches otherwise you're going to be able to I think somewhere in here go into the jobs you might like and there is a little dot dot dot and you can edit your save searches or which is basically create one um there is some other stuff they've got in there I haven't played around with like but you can easily like for example I have us only and save jobs and some things so there are some filters around it it's it's your standard searching filtering type algorithms so you know won't spend too much time in that um let's see let me go with so I've got a save search which is my default which is essentially just like hey I want us only jobs intermediate to expert and you can see out to the side how many jobs are out there so here um there is looks like if I do us only there's like 11 1,160 jobs right now that are available at the intermediate level U so you can sort of figure out idea of like how this is going to shorten your how these filter items are going to shorten down your list so let's go ahead and so here's what I'm G to do when I do this is I walk through and I'm just GNA look at all right first thing and this is what you need to do this where you need to sort of figure out what are you uh what do you want to do what do you want to get into if it's the if it's your first job then you're going to be much more broad if it's something that you you've only got a certain amount of time then you're also going to use that to filter yourself down um so here are things like and you'll see stuff that's incredibly vague like web developer okay great well let's see we're in the process well here this is a good thing to show right here web development JavaScript HTML PHP web design uh that's possible uh let's see we're in the process of creating a comprehensive digital tool and resource Library AB enable users to effortly search and find industry specific tools okay this sounds like it could be good enough they've spent all of $200 so you know sometimes you're going to want you definitely are going to almost always going to want that payment verified um that means that they've actually done something and they're not completely new and they've got an hourly rate here that's 40 to 70 bucks an hour it's an intermediate I'm like all right let's take a look at it so we're going to click on this and that's going to give us something much more detailed and this is where we're really going look into what matters so it's going to be things like all right uh let's see website will offer userfriendly interface content presented in a card format similar offerings on behance we're looking to Skilled web developer with experience and reloom applications to bring this project to fruition I don't even know what Loom is so that is a punt so that's one that we can just move along full stack react developer experience in mongodb I don't really want to get into react so we'll keep on moving fillable PDF custom form could be but no Unity C no you kind of throw out as you're going through this go back up to the top for a second though uh that's second one so the full stack react developer so one other thing that's kind of interesting that I've noticed on these check out the budget it's $100 and then when you start looking into the descriptions you realize very quickly that this is like more than a couple days worth of work and the budget's going to be blown away yeah that's one of the things usually I'm going to start and that's I guess how I start and you can you can pick it however you want um that's the nice thing of my the tool that i' I built myself the little uh spring boot app is that I like I'll throw out smaller end budgets or certain things that don't make sense now sometimes they're just open and so you just have to figure it out but it's something like this if they said the budget is a hundred bucks yeah I'm not going to mess with it it maybe because it's even if it's valid even if it's a $100 project by the time I like put together everything it's it's not worth my time so unless it's something that's I could repeat that a thousand times okay then I do it but you know that's one of the things that normally I'm going to look more at like a topic first and I'll sort of work my way down into budget but that's those are your areas you're going to use to you know to throw some stuff out to to ignore things um and that's really what it is is figure out what where do you want to actually spend time so I'm sitting here scrolling through uh let's see so uh bedboard system for like here there's Visual Basic don't want anything to do with it uh shop developer no thanks uh developer agency needed for a survey budget 15 bucks no pass let's do jobs per page to 50 and now what we'll see is because I've been on this for a while there is well I guess there isn't here but what you will end up seeing as you're going through these and is towards the top it will be a um it'll say hey there are newer jobs note they've got their little RSS feed so you can always which is what I use for my um so I can pull my save search out which I use for my little app so you can you can use that to actually see these um they're not let's see let me see if I can go can I click [Music] um yeah so if you'll see oh wait I'm on this let me go to ah I don't want to get too far into this uh but what you can is you can take a look at the RS feed it is there's a lot more text there there's a couple of things that are going to be it's not going to be as easy to read um but if you want to scan or if you've got a nice little RSS reader you might want to do so uh so let's continue to go through here uh smart developer for Integrations connecting stuff oh that could be really cool hourly 10 to 15 bucks an hour no not going to do that and again this is you know something I'm not a big fan of and you can to help yourself out you can sort of Thumbs and sort of throw it off your list I what I will do at times when I'm using this actually using upwork is I'll put a heart on the things that look like they could be useful um so let's see looking for excellent zebra scanner to lamp no freelance Swift no WordPress developer no Arduino no let's see Unity no 3D rendering for Sheet Metal no build Excel or access uh acceler access database no this this is an interesting thing um this is brand new as you look at so this is something you're going to know so to help you out so payment unverified they haven't spent any money this guy gal company whatever it is is probably pretty new to this and they're they're sitting there saying hey we are a low voltage contractor in a Seattle commercial Market we're using different forms Excel to track projects which is somewhat inefficient duh I build a project flow log Excel to combine all these functions it includes a dashboard on one sheet to display the data from very large look at this uh from a uh a very large table on another sheet but I need to do more than what I'm able to program in VBA so either need insist in completing it in Excel or move to access so this is a this is an interesting one um because these guys are new this is where I'm going to look at some things so now I haven't seen anything really that's told me necessarily it's not good uh it's intermediate which is good enough uh I'm usually going to look at intermediate Advance depending on what you want intermediate Advance or beginner is probably going to help you uh particularly now if I don't have a a rate then or you know something that they're looking at a budget then it's going to help me figure it out also okay less than 30 hours a week one to three months um they've got a nice little PDF which you're going to want to look at but here as I go this is where depending on and I I think it's able to everybody if you scroll down you're going to be able to see some more information including their their qualifications so for example here they want the location to be Washington and it'll give you a nice little red exclamation point to be like hey you're not in Washington or at least in my case I'm not in Washington so you can and if you do if you propo put a proposal out to these they'll say hey by the way you have something that you are lacking that they want do you still want to do it so you can and you could I could try to like sell them out of it but in this case I'm not going to uh what we can see one of the things I'm going to look at though let's say they were local or you know that it was that wasn't an issue I'm going to look at this so there's only a few people have put a proposal out it was last view by a client only two hours ago they haven't interviewed anybody and of course this whole project just got posted two hours ago and then this bid range is awesome because it tells me roughly what's out there so far so there's been a couple proposals and I know that at least one was 35 one was 75 and then the rest of them average out to 54 so if I'm trying to figure out what is this going to support I may I may be able to and it's particularly depending on what you want to do you could lowball it and you can say oh you know the lowest 35 I'm GNA go 34 or 30 or something like that or you know you may want to just hit the average sometimes I do that depending on what that project is and then sometimes it's like you know what that I can afford or they can afford the rate the high rate is still within what I'm expecting and so I'm going to do that now you do have to watch this is where this is a numbers game so in this case this is a good example we've got 35 to 75 and the average is almost dead in between them now sometimes what you're going to see is you'll see a low that's you know let's say 35 the high could be 5,000 but the average is going to be maybe 36 so you know that somebody put something out there that was really high and everybody else is down at that low so this is where hopefully you can you know you have enough math skills that you can figure out where is sort of the median and you figure out where are you going to fit within the proposals because that's something you're going to want to if you're going to be on the low end then you can sell it that way and say hey this is you I can do this cheaper than most people I don't know why they think it's going to be so expensive here's what I can see make sure you're clear on it too though that you're not lowballing yourself into a situation where you didn't understand the problem I've seen that more than a few times where you'll have a you know the average is 100 the low is 20 and you're thinking whoever put that 20 in was not paying attention they probably didn't figure it out I see a question hey Rob um so one of the interesting things about this uh I actually have experience in doing things like this scroll back up for a second cuz I think there's something that uh unless it's in that PDF they let left out some critical information yeah so VBA can mean anything uh they mention access they mention Excel they do not mention if this is Office 365 they do not mention if this is uh office uh what 2003 2002 whatever the last physical version is uh the VBA thing is slightly concerning because that makes me think older versions of office uh overall though the pricing the bids for this is about right uh the other thing I don't see here that is potentially could lead to the three-month issue is they might want you to actually build a access interface they may actually want you to build the reports we actually want you to build the UI to get into those uh into this data uh so there's a lot to this that's unknown so something else to be kind of cautious of yeah we'll get we'll get a little bit more into that when we can actually find one that's a little more worth chasing down um because I'm GNA go ahead so we'll punt on this one because it's it's what actually I guess what I was going to say with this one is this this is not in my for example for me it's not in my wheelhouse but because we we can do XL we've done and stuff like that but we really don't want to so if somebody comes to me and says hey I don't care even at whatever the top rate is we need you for 30 hours a week to do this and we just want you to work on Excel we're going to say we're going to pass probably because unless there's something they've got that's a a followup that's going to make a sense that's not something we want to get into and if we want to go Excel to access again this is where there's you know this is not something that has a ton of dat of details to it so I don't want to get into something where I'm going to worry about you know whether we get into spending a lot of times putting requirements together and then end up wanting to punt anyways um but what we can do and what I have done with a couple like this is sort of skirt the issue a little bit and I say hey I get what you're running into I understand that you've got you know you've got it you're using Excel it's not working it's not scaling and you want to go to something else you're thinking access well and I just did this where I said you know access would be fine except for the problem is is that everybody I know that I've moved to access has ended up moving on the a little further down the road has moved to a web application and so I'm going to sell them on hey how about we take your Excel spreadsheets we put it into a nice web application that way you can you've got access to it from everywhere you don't have to worry about issues you know about all the issues of of multi-users now you do want to look at some of this stuff because they've got like all these little data markers and this flow log and some things like that that they're talking about so you may need you may have to do something very complicated for the web for a website you may have to have some very complicated reports but that's how you get that that conversation started as well so let's move along a little bit here and see because I would love to find one uh you'll see these sometimes answer my questions related to Java spring API development there will be and this is like estimated budget 30 bucks if you're just starting out there are decent amount of projects that are there that are really not a project it's like hey spend I need somebody to spend a couple hours with me on a zoom call to go over this technology or how do I do that or explain this it thing and if you're starting out those are great because what you can do is you can it's not a big investment you you know you get to interact with the customer you get a practice on putting together a proposal it's probably going to be a fairly you know it's not going to be very cost worth like let's see I wonder if this will tell me a uh if I do a uh oh so it's 10 connects so that's like it's not super cheap but um so maybe the the connects that you're doing which is you have to have a certain you know each proposal you're going to throw a certain amount of points at it um these are great for building out your uh basically your your credibility your you know your your wrap sheet basically here of hey there's some projects I've done and these are successful particularly what you want to do with these is though come in and make sure that you get that like Five Star feedback that it's somebody that's that will work with you on that and you may even say hey I'll give you you help you out a little bit well you know this normally would be maybe beyond your budget but I'll work in your budget just so one I can help you out two you can help me out with some feedback so things like that don't uh don't just immediately throw them out because you're like ah I don't think that's really a good fit for me it may be something that's a great way to build up your uh basically your you know your background on this site so moving along let's see setting up domain I'm just going to be scrolling for a second here I'm GNA try to see if I can find something looking for what I do is I'm looking usually for U keywords for example WordPress if I'm going to see WordPress and like I want it out I want to get away from word I'm not going to bother can I jump on a wig wig site automation usually is pretty interesting let's see I'd like to Link Card information between multiple cards and Boards or maybe a one card can do it all uh currently card is generate on a board copied another so this probably wouldn't be too bad uh it's like guessing it's going to be a small project though uh the process generates quotes that I need added to the original card so you can take a look at this and see what they're doing um something that yeah it would be potential but I don't want to dive into it as an example for us so what I will do is I'll hard it and I may come back to that at some point take a look at it uh let's see web design anything is web design I'm not a web designer so I'm not going to do it I can build one but don't want to unless I really you know unless it's part of like a bigger piece uh website revamps unless it's a you know backend this is going to turn out to be let's see WordPress edit and update SEO I stay away from that redesign a company website senior backend let's see uh this was posted seven hours ago MySQL LEL PHP web development JavaScript uh let's look at that a little closer let me uh interject for just a moment so before we get far down the rabbit hole finding one to actually apply to let's step back one level because I don't think we actually talked about when we create an account with up work what you need to actually make these proposals I know you mentioned connects but what is a connect and why don't we talk about that briefly and then wrap this section and then start the next one okay um yeah this so one of the things with upward different sites are each of the sites are a little bit different how they do it the way upwork works is you have a uh you have a subscription and with that subscription you get what they call connects and I think it's I forget what it is off the top of my head but I think it's like you get 100 a month or something like that and what happens is every time you submit a proposal there's a certain connect number of connects that are required for the proposal typically um I think most of them I see I think 16 seems to be the typical number so that means that you know for a regular for your typical uh monthly subscription I think you get like five proposals you can put together now you can buy more they're um I think they're like 15 cents a piece something like that if you want to buy more and you you need to think of it as like advertising points or something like that because that's basically what it is is the more connects you have the more proposals you can put and you can also as we'll see um when we get into doing proposal we'll go into that a little bit more about the details about like where those connect where you can leverage those connects to maybe like bump yourself up and be a little bit more uh more visible to the customer that that wrote The Proposal and so that's that's really your key there is you're going to get in you're going to set up your account you're going to have a profile and that that's something the profile side of it I think we'll probably cover another time and we've talked about a little bit in your your general branding kind of stuff you're going to have it's that kind of thing it's almost like a LinkedIn profile or anything else where you're probably going to want a picture of yourself they have an opportunity for videos it's what are your skills what's your sort of like your your vision what's your tagline some things like that so that you can say this is who I am uh and and try to wow people uh so actually I'll show you real quick because I think I can do well okay I'll go find that in a minute yeah because one of the nice things about when I created my account was it allowed me to go out to LinkedIn and it pulled in all my job history from LinkedIn that I had posted out there and then it allowed me to actually fill in gaps on that so that that is one nice feature that they allow let's see I wanted to see where is let's see it's probably in settings if I go to profile profile my profile profile set my profile let's see if that's gonna give me what I want there we go so I don't need that ad so you're gonna see stuff like hey who who are you you give it a name that's like a a useful name there's a check mark because I've verified that I've gone through the ID check stuff which they do um your job success matters so you want to have jobs and you want to have a good success rate you want to there's a couple of different ratings bonus tags uh things that you can get um I think they'll show your totals I think they're all pretty much available so you can see like hey they've done you know they've been around for a while or they're brand new you can talk about here's some of my Basics like here's sort of my General pitch of a couple of lines um you can use connects to boost your profile which just basically says if somebody's doing searches that's going to bump it up a little bit more how available are you what are your languages license skills background stuff like that and then they give you some work history so that's like the the short and the quick and dirty of your profile a lot of this is stuff that you want to go through oh this is my public view let's see if I public view then I'll see that you know here's what it is here's who here's who they are here's their uh feedback that they've got uh some portfolio if you've got specific you want to highlight some of your skills that you can that's limited to 10 catalogs if you've got some specific projects that you want to put together certifications and it gets into like you know again sort of like your LinkedIn kind of stuff and that will bring in the nice thing is it can bring a lot of your stuff in from LinkedIn so I do want who I don't want that I want to go back [Music] to work and I'm GNA try to jump down because I want to get to something so we can talk about one real quick before we jump we sort of wrap this one up to as a nice little Cliffhanger uh let's see so I'm want to grab one well you know what I'm going to do is is we're going to probably wrap this one up on the audio because it's not very visually it's not very useful but from the audio side we'll wrap up this episode of podcast we're going to turn it into another one which surprise surprise is going to be us walking through doing a proposal uh on sort of some of the the details the wording and some of the things that we want to we want to consider when we're putting one together uh that being said you can always check us send us any information questions all that kind of good stuff at info developer or.com if you've got requests for some specific topics if you know you can always check us out on the podcast you can also check us out on our uh YouTube page out at develop or which is d v l p r n r so there's like you know it's just that l&p or right next to each other that being said we'll wrap this one up let you get back to your day so go out there and have yourself a great day a great week we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
let's see so today let's see one of the
things I want to do
is so maybe a two-parter we'll see we
talked about last time about do about
upwork and about just going through that
process and so I think what I'm going to
do is I'm GNA walk through a you doing a
proposal sort of what it looks like and
so it's like here's what it is here's
what I like just go find one go fill one
out talk about the whole process as I go
through it and I think that hopefully
will help because we've talked about a
little bit but I think it's just easier
to give an example and then of course to
anybody that's out there watching going
to get to do it uh get to see what it is
and so so for a good break piece in
between this if you think it's going to
be
two-parter um so we're let's see so
figure about 20ish minutes from now if
you go through the first part and we
just before I think we either get into
talking about finding jobs or going into
actually submitting things depending
upon where we're at timwi that might be
a good break point and then flip it to
the next one yeah we'll sort of see how
it goes I fig we're going to wing it
this is something I've done a lot so
we're going to find out how well this
winging it works this time around and uh
so we'll just dive in we'll sort of like
turn it on for the uh the audio part
here and get that started hello and
welcome back thank you so much today we
are back for another episode of building
better developers the developing our
podcast I'm Rob he's Mike you don't see
either of us but you're going to hear
his awesome voice as well in just a
moment want to jump ahead a little bit
just say this episode is going to be uh
an interesting one this one where you
probably going to want to utilize the
YouTube page a little bit is we're going
to do some examples we're going to walk
through upwork we're going to like using
this is something I've used a lot
something Michael's starting to use to
go find work and so we're going to walk
through the idea like a process of let's
go find a project that's out there and
let's put together a proposal and figure
out what our Stu is around that and then
kick it off and so it's just to give you
a nice little example of something that
we do some of the tools I've used
because I have
done gosh probably a thousand proposals
or more out there over the years and uh
before we get started though Mike go
ahead and introduce
yourself hello everyone uh my name is
Michael Mage co-founder of develop andur
also founder of Envision QA and like Rob
said you know I've been trying to get in
that work for a little bit here so we
thought this would be a good exercise
for us to go through together and try
and flush out some of the tips and
tricks that Rob's done over the years to
find uh potential work to do on
upwork all right so I'm going to talk
through this we're going to see how well
this goes I'm going to share a
screen so those of you that are watching
you actually get to see me share the
screen and so we should see here now
confirm for me if you will there's no
rabbit you know there's nothing up my
sleeve and there is an upward screen
sitting there that is being shared right
now
correct yep there we go excellent
excellent excellent okay so what we do
when we come into something like this
the first thing I do although I actually
have a I've built a little app which
someday I may walk through that as well
it that um actually pings some of this I
I pull from upwork and Guru and a couple
other sites I pull stuff in and then I
can sort of look through and it's not
the it's not the full project or propos
or job itself but it's enough to give me
an idea of like does this look
interesting is it and I'll pull things
like the title a summary the rates and
then you know maybe like if there's any
restrictions like hey it's only people
in India or something like that and I've
got some filters around that as well so
I can sort of like narrow that down this
is going to be the much more painful way
to look at this uh essentially uh
because I'm going to go through this and
this is just live I'm looking at jobs
are out there we're going to go find one
and we're going to walk through it now
if you come to up work uh one of the
first things I would do is build out a
save search for yourself is just go in
uh you can do you there's a bunch of
stuff you can do with it as far as like
what kind of job what kind of area so if
I'd look at I don't know if this is
actually going to show me that nope it's
not oh wait am I you might want to make
it a little bit larger um zoom in just a
little bit let's see what I can do I'm
not sure he likes that
it is not a happy camper with that okay
never
mind uh let's see I'm actually you do
Control Plus where you using Safari yeah
yeah I'm doing that but you know what
it's like I don't think it likes this
this may be interesting because I don't
think it likes
it with um I'm G to stop sharing my
stream screen real quick oh
wait let me see what happens here I
think
it doesn't
like let me get this screen up a little
bit
better and if I do
that now let me try a share because I
wonder if it doesn't like the
share um because some things don't like
that so let's see go back to share the
screen uh let's just
do
this so if I do this so what you you'll
see over here on the side and I may not
be able to because I don't think oh well
maybe it is so it may have just been
something on that the browser was but
what I would do is I would go ahead and
set stuff up to give yourself just like
because there's so many jobs out there
uh particularly on upwork that I would
just you know pick some of the stuff
that's your common things that you're
going to do to sort of limit it to
something that makes sense to you um
particularly like with your categories
there's a ton of different categories
out there um like here I've got some
subs and things like
that and so and this is my save so let
me go back to uh I'm just going to go to
the main one here so this is off of oh
let's see Rob Rob default now for those
of you on audio uh can you walk them
through how you got to this screen to
show the
filters yeah it's it's really
straightforward if you come in there's
going to be fine work and that's your
homepage basically you're going to do
that and then you're going to be able to
within that you there's going to be if
you've got them there's going to be save
searches otherwise you're going to be
able to I think somewhere in here go
into the jobs you might
like and there is a little dot dot dot
and you can edit your save searches or
which is basically create one um there
is some other stuff they've got in there
I haven't played around with like but
you can easily like for example I have
us only and save jobs and some things so
there are some filters around it it's
it's your standard searching filtering
type algorithms so you know won't spend
too much time in that um let's see let
me go with so I've got a save search
which is my default which is essentially
just like hey I want us only jobs
intermediate to expert and you can see
out to the side how many jobs are out
there so here um
there is looks like if I do us only
there's like 11 1,160 jobs right now
that are available at the intermediate
level U so you can sort of figure out
idea of like how this is going to
shorten your how these filter items are
going to shorten down your list so let's
go ahead and so here's what I'm G to do
when I do this is I walk through and I'm
just GNA look at all right first thing
and this is what you need to do this
where you need to sort of figure out
what are you uh what do you want to do
what do you want to get into if it's the
if it's your first job then you're going
to be much more broad if it's something
that you you've only got a certain
amount of time then you're also going to
use that to filter yourself down um so
here are things like and you'll see
stuff that's incredibly vague like web
developer okay great well let's see
we're in the process well here this is a
good thing to show right here web
development JavaScript HTML PHP web
design uh that's possible uh let's see
we're in the process of creating a
comprehensive digital tool and resource
Library AB enable users to effortly
search and find industry specific tools
okay this sounds like it could be good
enough they've spent all of $200 so you
know sometimes you're going to want you
definitely are going to almost always
going to want that payment verified um
that means that they've actually done
something and they're not completely new
and they've got an hourly rate here
that's 40 to 70 bucks an hour it's an
intermediate I'm like all right let's
take a look at it so we're going to
click on this and that's going to give
us something much more detailed and this
is where we're really going look into
what matters so it's going to be things
like all right uh let's see website will
offer userfriendly interface content
presented in a card format similar
offerings on behance we're looking to
Skilled web developer with experience
and reloom applications to bring this
project to fruition I don't even know
what Loom is so that is a punt so that's
one that we can just move along full
stack react developer experience in
mongodb I don't really want to get into
react so we'll keep on moving fillable
PDF custom form
could be but no Unity C
no you kind of throw out as you're going
through this go back up to the top for a
second though uh that's second one so
the full stack react developer so one
other thing that's kind of interesting
that I've noticed on these check out the
budget it's $100 and then when you start
looking into the descriptions you
realize very quickly that this is like
more than a couple days worth of work
and the budget's going to be blown
away yeah that's one of the things
usually I'm going to start and that's I
guess how I start and you can you can
pick it however you want um that's the
nice thing of my the tool that i' I
built myself the little uh spring boot
app is that I like I'll throw out
smaller end budgets or certain things
that don't make sense now sometimes
they're just open and so you just have
to figure it out but it's something like
this if they said the budget is a
hundred bucks yeah I'm not going to mess
with it it maybe because it's even if
it's valid even if it's a $100 project
by the time I like put together
everything
it's it's not worth my time so unless
it's something that's I could repeat
that a thousand times okay then I do it
but you know that's one of the things
that normally I'm going to look more at
like a topic first and I'll sort of work
my way down into budget but that's those
are your areas you're going to use to
you know to throw some stuff out to to
ignore things um and that's really what
it is is figure out what where do you
want to actually spend time so I'm
sitting here scrolling through uh let's
see so uh bedboard system for like here
there's Visual Basic don't want anything
to do with it uh shop developer no
thanks uh developer agency needed for a
survey budget 15 bucks no pass let's do
jobs per page to
50 and now what we'll see is because
I've been on this for a while there is
well I guess there isn't here but what
you will end up seeing as you're going
through these and is towards the top it
will be a um it'll say hey there are
newer jobs note they've got their little
RSS feed so you can always which is what
I use for my
um so I can pull my save search out
which I use for my little app so you can
you can use that to actually see these
um they're not let's see let me see if I
can go can I click
[Music]
um yeah so if you'll see oh wait I'm on
this let me go
to ah I don't want to get too far into
this uh but what you can is you can take
a look at the RS feed it is there's a
lot more text there there's a couple of
things that are going to be it's not
going to be as easy to read um but if
you want to scan or if you've got a nice
little RSS reader you might want to do
so uh so let's continue to go through
here uh smart developer for Integrations
connecting stuff oh that could be really
cool hourly 10 to 15 bucks an hour no
not going to do that and again this is
you know something I'm not a big fan of
and you can to help yourself out you can
sort of Thumbs and sort of throw it off
your list I what I will do at times when
I'm using this actually using upwork is
I'll put a heart on the things that look
like they could be useful um so let's
see looking for excellent zebra scanner
to lamp no freelance Swift no WordPress
developer no Arduino no let's see Unity
no 3D rendering for Sheet Metal no build
Excel or
access uh acceler access database no
this this is an
interesting thing um
this is brand new as you look at so this
is something you're going to know so to
help you out so payment unverified they
haven't spent any money this guy gal
company whatever it is is probably
pretty new to this and they're they're
sitting there saying hey we are a low
voltage contractor in a Seattle
commercial Market we're using different
forms Excel to track projects which is
somewhat inefficient duh I build a
project flow log Excel to combine all
these functions it includes a dashboard
on one sheet to display the data from
very large look at this
uh from
a uh a very large table on another sheet
but I need to do more than what I'm able
to program in VBA so either need insist
in completing it in Excel or move to
access
so this is a this is an interesting one
um because these guys are new this is
where I'm going to look at some things
so now I haven't seen anything really
that's told me necessarily it's not good
uh it's intermediate which is good
enough uh I'm usually going to look at
intermediate Advance depending on what
you want intermediate Advance or
beginner is probably going to help you
uh particularly now if I don't have a a
rate then or you know something that
they're looking at a budget then it's
going to help me figure it out also okay
less than 30 hours a week one to three
months um they've got a nice little PDF
which you're going to want to look at
but here as I go this is where depending
on and I I think it's able to everybody
if you scroll down you're going to be
able to see some more information
including their their qualifications so
for example here they want the location
to be Washington and it'll give you a
nice little red exclamation point to be
like hey you're not in Washington or at
least in my case I'm not in Washington
so you can and if you do if you propo
put a proposal out to these they'll say
hey by the way you have something that
you are lacking that they want do you
still want to do it so you can and you
could I could try to like sell them out
of it but in this case I'm not going to
uh what we can see one of the things I'm
going to look at though let's say they
were local or you know that it was that
wasn't an issue I'm going to look at
this so there's only a few people have
put a proposal out it was last view by a
client only two hours ago they haven't
interviewed anybody and of course this
whole project just got posted two hours
ago and then this bid range is awesome
because it tells me roughly what's out
there so far so there's been a couple
proposals and I know that at least one
was 35 one was 75 and then the rest of
them average out to 54 so if I'm trying
to figure out what is this going to
support I may I may be able to and it's
particularly depending on what you want
to do you could lowball it and you can
say oh you know the lowest 35 I'm GNA go
34 or 30 or something like that or you
know you may want to just hit the
average sometimes I do that depending on
what that project is and then sometimes
it's like you know what that I can
afford or they can afford the rate the
high rate is still within what I'm
expecting and so I'm going to do that
now you do have to watch this is where
this is a numbers game so in this case
this is a good example we've got 35 to
75 and the average is almost dead in
between them now sometimes what you're
going to see is you'll see a low that's
you know let's say 35 the high could be
5,000 but the average is going to be
maybe 36 so you know that somebody put
something out there that was really high
and everybody else is down at that low
so this is where hopefully you can you
know you have enough math skills that
you can figure out where is sort of the
median and you figure out where are you
going to fit within the proposals
because that's something you're going to
want to if you're going to be on the low
end then you can sell it that way and
say hey this is you I can do this
cheaper than most people I don't know
why they think it's going to be so
expensive here's what I can see make
sure you're clear on it too though that
you're not lowballing yourself into a
situation where you didn't understand
the problem I've seen that more than a
few times where you'll have a you know
the average is 100 the low is 20 and
you're thinking whoever put that 20 in
was not paying attention they probably
didn't figure it out I see a
question hey Rob um so one of the
interesting things about this uh I
actually have experience in doing things
like this scroll back up for a second
cuz I think there's something that uh
unless it's in that PDF they let left
out some critical
information yeah so
VBA can mean
anything uh they mention access they
mention Excel they do not mention if
this is Office 365 they do not mention
if this is uh office uh what 2003 2002
whatever the last physical version is uh
the VBA thing is slightly concerning
because that makes me think older
versions of
office uh
overall though the pricing the bids for
this is about right uh the other thing I
don't see here that is
potentially could lead to the
three-month issue is they might want you
to actually build a access interface
they may actually want you to build the
reports we actually want you to build
the UI to get into those uh into this
data uh so there's a lot to this that's
unknown so something else to be kind of
cautious of
yeah we'll get we'll get a little bit
more into that when we can actually find
one that's a little more worth chasing
down um because I'm GNA go ahead so
we'll punt on this one because it's it's
what actually I guess what I was going
to say with this one is this this is not
in my for example for me it's not in my
wheelhouse but
because we we can do XL we've done and
stuff like that but we really don't want
to so if somebody comes to me and says
hey I don't care even at whatever the
top rate is we need you for 30 hours a
week to do this and we just want you to
work on Excel we're going to say we're
going to
pass probably because unless there's
something they've got that's a a
followup that's going to make a sense
that's not something we want to get into
and if we want to go Excel to access
again this is where there's you know
this is not something that has a ton of
dat of details to it so I don't want to
get into something where I'm going to
worry about you know whether we get into
spending a lot of times putting
requirements together and then end up
wanting to punt anyways um but what we
can do and what I have done with a
couple like this is sort of skirt the
issue a little bit and I say hey I get
what you're running into I understand
that you've got you know you've got it
you're using Excel it's not working it's
not scaling and you want to go to
something else you're thinking access
well and I just did this where I said
you know access would be fine except for
the problem is is that everybody I know
that I've moved to access has ended up
moving on the a little further down the
road has moved to a web application and
so I'm going to sell them on hey how
about we take your Excel spreadsheets we
put it into a nice web application that
way you can you've got access to it from
everywhere you don't have to worry about
issues you know about all the issues of
of multi-users now you do want to look
at some of this stuff because they've
got like all these little data markers
and this flow log and some things like
that that they're talking about so you
may need you may have to do something
very complicated for the web for a
website you may have to have some very
complicated reports but that's how you
get that that conversation started as
well so let's move along a little bit
here and see because I would love to
find
one uh you'll see these sometimes answer
my questions related to Java spring API
development there will be and this is
like estimated budget 30 bucks if you're
just starting out there are
decent amount of projects that are there
that are really not a project it's like
hey spend I need somebody to spend a
couple hours with me on a zoom call to
go over this technology or how do I do
that or explain this it thing and if
you're starting out those are great
because what you can do is you can it's
not a big investment you you know you
get to interact with the customer you
get a practice on putting together a
proposal it's probably going to be a
fairly you know it's not going to be
very cost worth like let's see I wonder
if this will tell me a uh if I do
a uh oh so it's 10 connects so that's
like it's not super cheap but um so
maybe the the connects that you're doing
which is you have to have a certain you
know each proposal you're going to throw
a certain amount of points at
it um these are great for building out
your uh basically your your credibility
your you know your your wrap sheet
basically here of hey there's some
projects I've done and these are
successful particularly what you want to
do with these is though come in and make
sure that you get that like Five Star
feedback that it's somebody that's that
will work with you on that and you may
even say hey I'll give you you help you
out a little bit well you know this
normally would be maybe beyond your
budget but I'll work in your budget just
so one I can help you out two you can
help me out with some feedback so things
like that don't uh don't just
immediately throw them out because
you're like ah I don't think that's
really a good fit for me it may be
something that's a great way to build up
your uh basically your you know your
background on this site so moving along
let's see setting up domain I'm just
going to be scrolling for a second here
I'm GNA try to see if I can find
something looking for what I do is I'm
looking usually for U keywords for
example WordPress if I'm going to see
WordPress and like I want it out I want
to get away from word I'm not going to
bother can I jump on a wig wig site
automation usually is pretty interesting
let's see I'd like to Link Card
information between multiple cards and
Boards or maybe a one card can do it all
uh currently card is generate on a board
copied another so
this probably wouldn't be too bad uh
it's like guessing it's going to be a
small project though uh the process
generates quotes that I need added to
the original card so you can take a look
at this and see what they're
doing um something that yeah it would be
potential but I don't want to dive into
it as an example for us so what I will
do is I'll hard it and I may come back
to that at some point take a look at it
uh let's see web design anything is web
design I'm not a web designer so I'm not
going to do it I can build one but don't
want to unless I really you know unless
it's part of like a bigger piece uh
website revamps unless it's a you know
backend this is going to turn out to be
let's see WordPress edit and update SEO
I stay away from that redesign a company
website senior backend let's see uh this
was posted seven hours ago MySQL LEL PHP
web development
JavaScript
uh let's look at that a little closer
let me uh interject for just a moment so
before we get far down the rabbit hole
finding one to actually apply to let's
step back one level because I don't
think we actually talked about when we
create an account with up work what you
need to actually make these proposals I
know you mentioned connects but what is
a connect and why don't we talk about
that briefly and then wrap this section
and then start the next
one okay um yeah this so one of the
things with
upward different sites are each of the
sites are a little bit different how
they do it the way upwork works is you
have a uh you have a subscription and
with that subscription you get what they
call connects and I think it's I forget
what it is off the top of my head but I
think it's like you get 100 a month or
something like that and what happens is
every time you submit a proposal there's
a certain connect number of connects
that are required for the proposal
typically um I think most of them I see
I think 16 seems to be the typical
number so that means that you know for a
regular for your
typical uh monthly subscription I think
you get like five proposals you can put
together now you can buy more they're um
I think they're like 15 cents a piece
something like that if you want to buy
more and you you need to think of it as
like advertising points or something
like that because that's basically what
it is is the more connects you have the
more proposals you can put and you can
also as we'll see um when we get into
doing proposal we'll go into that a
little bit more about the details about
like where those connect where you can
leverage those connects to maybe like
bump yourself up and be a little bit
more
uh more visible to the customer that
that wrote The
Proposal and so that's that's really
your key there is you're going to get in
you're going to set up your account
you're going to have a profile and that
that's something the profile side of it
I think we'll probably cover another
time and we've talked about a little bit
in your your general branding kind of
stuff you're going to have it's that
kind of thing it's almost like a
LinkedIn profile or anything else where
you're probably going to want a picture
of yourself they have an opportunity for
videos it's what are your skills what's
your sort of like your your vision
what's your tagline some things like
that so that you can say this is who I
am uh and and try to wow people uh so
actually I'll show you real quick
because I think I can do well okay I'll
go find that in a minute yeah because
one of the nice things about when I
created my account was it allowed me to
go out to LinkedIn and it pulled in all
my job history from LinkedIn that I had
posted out there and then it allowed me
to actually fill in gaps on that so that
that is one nice feature that they
allow let's see I wanted to see where is
let's see it's probably in
settings if I go to profile
profile my profile profile set my
profile let's see if that's gonna give
me what I
want there we go
so I don't need that ad so you're gonna
see stuff like hey who who are you you
give it a name that's like a a useful
name there's a check mark because I've
verified that I've gone through the ID
check stuff which they do um your job
success matters so you want to have jobs
and you want to have a good success rate
you want to there's a couple of
different ratings bonus tags uh things
that you can get um I think they'll show
your totals I think they're all pretty
much available so you can see like hey
they've done you know they've been
around for a while or they're brand new
you can talk about here's some of my
Basics like here's sort of my General
pitch of a couple of lines um you can
use connects to boost your profile which
just basically says if somebody's doing
searches that's going to bump it up a
little bit more how available are you
what are your languages license skills
background stuff like that and then they
give you some work history so that's
like
the the short and the quick and dirty of
your profile a lot of this is stuff that
you want to go through oh this is my
public view let's see if I public view
then I'll see that you know here's what
it is here's who here's who they are
here's their uh feedback that they've
got uh some portfolio if you've got
specific you want to highlight some of
your skills that you can that's limited
to
10 catalogs if you've got some specific
projects that you want to put together
certifications and it gets into like you
know again sort of like your LinkedIn
kind of stuff and that will bring in the
nice thing is it can bring a lot of your
stuff in from
LinkedIn so I do want who I don't want
that I want to go back
[Music]
to
work and I'm GNA try to jump down
because I want to get to something so we
can talk about one real quick before we
jump we sort of wrap this one up to as a
nice little
Cliffhanger
uh let's see so I'm want to grab one
well you know what I'm going to do is is
we're going to probably wrap this one up
on the audio because it's not very
visually it's not very useful but from
the audio side we'll wrap up this
episode of podcast we're going to turn
it into another one which surprise
surprise is going to be us walking
through doing a
proposal uh on sort of some of the the
details the wording and some of the
things that we want to we want to
consider when we're putting one together
uh that being said you can always check
us send us any information questions all
that kind of good stuff at info
developer or.com if you've got requests
for some specific topics if you know you
can always check us out on the podcast
you can also check us out on our uh
YouTube page out at develop or which is
d v l p r n r so there's like you know
it's just that l&p or right next to each
other that being said we'll wrap this
one up let you get back to your day so
go out there and have yourself a great
day a great week we will talk to you
next time
[Music]