Say NO to Upwork as a Newbie Freelancer! Do this instead.
Looking to start your freelancing journey at Upwork? I want you to stop right now.
Upwork is going to hate this blog, but I am here to tell you that I never recommend Upwork as a platform when you’re a new virtual assistant. We’re going to talk about why I don’t recommend it and what you can do to find new clients.
If you’re not familiar with Upwork, Upwork is a popular platform that matches clients with freelancers.
You as a freelance VA can go into Upwork and look for different clients. Or in need of General Services, and you can pitch your services to that person.
Drawbacks:
1) Budget
Upwork is a very over-saturated market and what that means is they’re already hundreds of thousands of other freelancers around the globe who are pitching that same person that you are now.
If you’re a brand-new person, you’ve never used Upwork before. It’s actually quite difficult to get your work and your pitch in front of that person. That’s because you are up against thousands of other freelancers who are pitching the same thing, who may offer the same services as you, and who might even price themselves a lot lower.
Now if you’re a US-based virtual assistant, that can be very, very hard because most US-based MBAs are charging somewhere between 20 to 30 to 40 to even $50.
Now if you’re up at that higher bell curve, you’re very likely a specialize in something in demand and high paying. Well, I love that I talk a lot about specialization. It’s complicated and upward to land that gig, especially because there are virtual assistants around the world who can afford to charge $5.10, something around there.
I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing. I think there’s a lot of merit to the person who lives somewhere on the globe and can create a sustainable career in life charging $5 an hour.
But if you were that US-based person you’re living in New York City, $5 an hour isn’t going to cut it now.
2) It’s time-consuming.
This is still related to the over-saturated market when you are pitching somebody on Upwork, it takes a lot of time to pitch someone.
It’s not just that you e-mail someone and you’re like:
You: Here are my services, here’s how much I charge. I’m happy to help you. We can start now.
This is a whole process where you have to put together a tailored pitch for that person and pitches like that are very time-consuming. It might take 30 minutes to an hour or maybe even two hours to get your work together.
You might pitch that person and they might not even pick you. You might never hear from that client again and that sucks because you just wasted a lot of time out of your day when you could have been looking for a long-term client. It’s wasted. You can’t get that time back and you didn’t get anything out of it.
3) Upwork is quite difficult to land a job.
Let’s say you have what your pitch is. It’s quite hard to get when you’re new in particular because you might be competing against somebody who has 5-star reviews and you’re a newbie. There’s nobody there to validate what you’re telling them.
If you’re saying you’re a great VA, you don’t have a review to back that up. While I think upward. It was a great option when it first came out years and years ago. I don’t find it to be a very viable option in 2019. Here’s what I do recommend instead.
Alternatives:
If you’re a brand-new person, you don’t have any clients, or perhaps you’re just looking for more clients or more project work, there is a great free platform out there called LinkedIn If you’ve just rolled your eyes, please don’t switch this blog off.
LinkedIn is not a dead dinosaur like so many people think it is. LinkedIn has 500 million active users, and the best thing is all of them are there for business services, they’re already primed to be looking and connecting with somebody like you who can help them. In their business.
Now, I talk a lot about LinkedIn, so check out a couple about how to use your headline correctly and make money on LinkedIn. But right now, I’m going to give you a brief rundown of just a few quick changes you can make that will help put your profile in front of your ideal client.
- Check out your title:
Your title and your headline are the things that make you searchable on LinkedIn. If you’ve got a bad headline, now, a bad headline is something without the right keywords or you’re using words like administrative guru chances are nobody’s searching for the term guru. People aren’t going to find you, and that’s a major missed opportunity for you. I want you to use this formula alone. It’s your title that’s a virtual assistant. That is the thing that you do.
2. Add a phrase about who you’re targeting:
This middle part is your ideal client if you’re a virtual assistant who’s working with Mompreneurs. These are mothers who are specifically working at home and running their businesses.
I want you to write serving mompreneurs if you’re a virtual assistant whose adept at using Media I want you to write something like serving solopreneurs or startups seeking social media management and just the key here is to get very, very specific.
Think through for just a few minutes who it is that you want to serve in your business.
3. Secret sauce
I rarely see anybody else doing this. We’re all about more of this channel, and this is where I think you can take your LinkedIn profile from here to here and stand out from the crowd. I want you to add in this last part, the thing that makes you.
Better than the other VA that’s on my dead. To use that social media management example again, if you are somebody who’s serving solopreneurs for social media management, I want you to write why you’re great at it.
If you’re somebody who excels at Twitter, then you can do a growth hacker on Twitter if you’re somebody who understands Facebook then you can do something like Facebook or lead or Facebook Lead generations, Facebook client conversions, Facebook customers prospecting on Facebook, whatever it is that you do.
I want that to be your special sauce. That makes up your whole title that your headline. So, your job title, the thing that you do, virtual assistant, the middle part is the person who you are serving or the person who you’d like to attract on your profile.
And the third part is your special sauce. What makes you unique and great at your job? That’s just one component because when people search for virtual assistants on LinkedIn, your profile is going to stick out and they’re going to better understand who you are, and who you serve.
That’s who you work with, which kind of clients you work with, and what it is and how it is that you can help them. And when you were a virtual assistant, because let me tell you, there are like 500,000 virtual assistants on LinkedIn right now.
If a client is looking for a VA, who do you think they’re going to go to? The person that just writes I’m a virtual assistant or the person that writes exactly what it is that they’re doing? When I changed my profile with this formula, I had many clients come to me through LinkedIn; it was a game changer for my business.
Wrap up:
So, if you are going to work on something new to try to get new gigs, skip Upwork, save yourself time and energy, and put that time into working on your LinkedIn profile.
Changing your headline is a great way to get exposure, there are a lot of other components to LinkedIn and there are different things you can do to make sure that you are primed to get those job offers.
