Welcome to my Upwork profile walkthrough.
The goal is so you can understand what goes into a good profile.
What makes up every section of your profile and then how you can go ahead, take action and build your
profile out to the best of your ability.
Think of your profile as your online resume is where all of your work history is displayed.
It is where your cover letter, your photo, a video and different information about who you are as
a freelancer is displayed right off the bat.
One of the first things you want to do is either take or select a professional photo, and for this,
I suggest being in either business casual or somewhat professional clothing and also having a professional
background, whether that's just somewhere outside or a solid color background.
Because what you don't want is things that just look like a Facebook photo with other people in it or
not a professional background or clothing, because that is the message you are sending to clients.
So you want them to see you as a professional, even if you are a designer or someone that is more creative.
I really suggest that you still show some personality in your photo, but to make it as professional
as possible for your photo, you can edit it, and it will automatically give you this option to edit
it and crop it into a circle.
So there's no worries about that.
All you have to do is just pick a good photo and that will get you started off great.
And then you go in, you add your name, your location.
This is all set up as you build your profile, as you look over here.
This is where your job success score is located, as well as if you are a top rated freelancer.
So your job success score is the percentage of jobs that you had that resulted in a great experience.
What that means is the client gave you all perfect ratings.
So as you can see, I have this 100 percent job success score.
And when you start out, that's not going to be any job success score because you haven't gotten any
work done.
However, as you start to accumulate some projects and that data goes into Upwork, you will eventually
start to see your job success score increase.
Your goal is to have this as high as possible because this shows potential clients that every project
you work on, you get down to completion.
And that is why it is so important to only work with the best clients possible so you can get their
projects complete and improve the way your profile looks with your job.
Success score.
The top rated badge is only accredited to the top 10 percent of freelancers on the platform.
And I had this badge now for about two years and it's been worth all the time I put in to get it because
it really stands as a differentiator when clients are looking through different freelancers.
The top rated badge, combined with the job success score, is the ultimate credibility booster.
So as you go through your journey, remember this is your goal to get this as high as possible and to
eventually earn this top rated Upwork badge.
To learn more about these programs, go ahead to Upwork's help center.
They have a lot of information and exact details of what goes into getting these.
However, from a basic standpoint, just remember everything I'm teaching you in this academy is geared
towards getting you these accreditations.
As you go down, we're going to keep it on the general profile right now, and at the end of this lesson,
we are going to go over the specialized profiles.
So your general profile is where your online resume lives and then your specialized profiles are more
for specific skill sets you offer.
The next part of your profile is the title, and the title is meant to grab attention and tell potential
clients what you specialize in.
You want to make sure this isn't something generic or something unprofessional, and I like to use a
word like expert or guru or something in the title to let clients know that you are confident in your
skills and you are good at what you do.
Next, think of this as your cover letter section.
This is what they call your bio or your description and what you can do.
Here is edited this they give you a lot of room.
So as you can see, I have four thousand two hundred characters left.
However, this is what Upwork recommends, and this is what I also recommend.
So you describe your strengths and skills.
So in the first paragraph, you can see I describe what I provide, and I said I provide Google ad services
and I tell them to go ahead.
Check out my profile for all the good reviews I have.
So you're not going to start with this because you don't have reviews yet.
However, you do want to focus on what your strengths are, and then you can go into highlighting some
projects, accomplishments and education.
You have followed up by keeping it short and make sure it's error free.
So that's why I kept mine to three little paragraphs, and you don't want this to be a long essay.
No one's going to read that.
Keep it simple.
Describe what you offer, what your strengths are, and keep it short and sweet.
Below this, you have an option to display a video.
I highly suggest that you either film a video or include a video that you have because it helps separate
yourself from the pack for your video.
All you have to do is click it and you can decide what video you want to do.
And for me, I have a video of me promoting my digital marketing agency because in this video, I speak
directly to clients and I tell them what services I provide.
And I also show them how I can provide an ad just like this one in the form of a YouTube ad.
So you don't have to have a professional video filmed.
If you don't have one or don't have the budget, you can just film yourself speaking about your skills.
But the whole goal is to serve as another way to separate yourself from the pack because not everyone
is going to include a video here.
And as you start to add more and more to your profile, from your photo to your description to your
video, it all helps the client and potential clients get a feel for who you are.
And that's when business happens.
When someone understands who you are, they trust you and they want to give you a shot.
Below the video is where you have the ability to edit your hourly rate.
So this is what displays on your profile, but you don't have to necessarily charge clients this, so
you want to keep your hourly rate as high as possible based on the value that you can provide.
Under here, you will see the 20 percent service fee.
This just shows you what you'll actually get based on what your hourly rate is for that first five hundred
dollars that you bill with the client.
So, for example, if I have my hourly rate at 75 and I decide to go ahead and bill clients that rate.
I will end up getting paid 60 an hour for those first hundred dollars once it goes over that $500.
I'm then built at 10 percent.
Of that, 75.
So as you can see, this just gives you a little bit of an estimate towards what you will make based
on what your hourly rate is.
This is always changeable and you don't have to stick with this.
So remember, you want to come off professional and my rate being in the expert level range is pretty
much anything over 50 to one to two hundred an hour or so on that $75 an hour rate right now.
And I'm actually in the process.
I'm probably going to scale this up to 100 dollars an hour as soon as my experience continues to grow,
which you can see here.
Upwork then displays this.
So unless you have the premium freelancer plan and you decide to hide your earnings, your earnings
will be shown along with how many jobs and how many hours you've worked.
This is your online resume, so every job that you work on gets added to these totals.
So that's another benefit of using the Upwork platform because everything that you do is credible and
it's backed up by facts and numbers on Upwork.
This shows clients that you are the real deal.
Looking on the right hand side, this is where you can edit some of your settings, such as your availability.
I suggest to always keep this available because you want to stay in that Upwork algorithm.
Once you say not available, that is when they get you out of it, they don't show you to any clients.
And in my experience, it doesn't make sense to do that because you should always be open to offers.
Remember, you can turn them down.
But being open to offers is how you were going to be a profitable freelancer by always keeping your
pipeline full.
Next, this is where your profile link is.
And for this, if you have the premium plan, you can choose whatever link you want.
So for me, I just put my name in.
If you don't have premium, they give you this link based on your name and a series of different characters.
It also displays your location here, along with your language and for language, this is an important
note.
Always make sure to choose native or bilingual here.
You don't want to choose fluent because fluent actually means that you speak the language almost perfectly.
So if you're native and you're a native speaker, you speak whatever language that you provide perfectly.
You need to make sure you choose native or bilingual.
That's a little tip right there for you.
So as we go back over to this side of the page, this is a brand new feature, as you can see that Upwork
released where not only can you put in some of your most popular projects, but you can also add a photo
next to them, and this is built directly from the case studies that I will show you in a minute.
But this section is more of a way you can stand out to clients and show them what different packages
you offer.
So, number one, it helps stand out declines, because now your profile is even more built out.
Number two, it helps build credibility because you show them what services that you provide.
And number three, it helps qualify the clients because you can show what price that you start at and
go up to if you want.
So let me show you that this is what a custom project looks like.
And as you can see, you have all the flexibility here.
All you have to do is type in what you offer.
Here's where you connect that image up with one of your case studies, and I like to just keep it at
a starting at rate.
You can go up to the top end of what you charge.
But I like to keep it at the starting rate because what it does is it shows clients that I don't work
for under a thousand a month on a search engine marketing project.
This is how you can start to qualify clients before they even reach out to you.
You also have the ability to choose what categories they relate to.
And this all adds towards your profile strength in the Upwork algorithm, so I strongly suggest you
go in here, build out at least three custom projects you offer.
Add the description in and the related skill sets that it applies to.
As we keep scrolling down, this is the next part of your profile, which is your work history and feedback
section.
This is the most vital part of your profile.
I cannot stress how important this is enough.
You can sort it by all different ways.
Highest rated, lowest rated.
Largest projects.
And this is what you are going for, getting a plethora of five star reviews, thousands of dollars
earned on every project.
Quality reviews, clients that took the time to really sit down and write out how I help them.
I'm going to show you how to do this, and I'm going to show you how important it is to secure these
and how to do that.
All of these reviews go into the amazing profile I've built, and this is what gets clients to reach
out to me.
What they can do is they can go and not only see how much I've earned.
How much I charge an hour or a flat rate, for example, but they can also go in and click through and
they can see the perfect score I got, as well as the review I gave to the client so they can see that
I am a top rated freelancer.
I'm giving good reviews out there coming in both ways, and they can also start to see what kind of
projects I've delivered.
This is your ultimate goal is to get all these amazing five star reviews to have consistent work, and
this is really what stands out to a client.
Another great thing you can do is share this feedback.
So this is really cool.
Upwork has all these built in features for you to grow your profile because it's a win win when you
get more work.
Upwork makes more money as well, so they're they're there to help you get more clients.
They have all these tools set up, so as soon as you get any good reviews, go ahead and share them.
I always do this to my LinkedIn, to my Facebook and Twitter.
You go ahead, you share your good reviews.
And this is how you start to get yourself out there and promote your Upwork profile.
As you continue to scroll past the reviews section, that is where your portfolio lies.
So now is the time I suggest you go ahead.
You pull up that case study blueprint because it walks you through exactly how to create case studies,
reports and screenshots from your previous experience.
So these are created by you, and they don't necessarily have to be from an Upwork project that you
did.
The whole idea is to display any previous successes you've had as a freelancer or in a previous nine
to five position to encourage clients to hire you.
It also helps you stand out in the Upwork algorithm, so I suggest starting with at least two and going
up to four, it more ideal use the case study blueprint and you can build these out and this is really
what shows clients the work you've done.
So I have one built for all of the different packages that I have up here.
So as you can see, these link up.
So for my search engine marketing skill set, I made sure to do a full case study on one of my clients
that I got great results for for my e-commerce website development skill set.
I showed a redesign where I took someone's website and redesigned it on Shopify and turned it into a
conversion optimized machine.
And lastly, for my landing page and website development skill set, I showed how I took a local business,
put them on the map and got them set up with an echo optimized site built to drive leads.
Your goal is to have your profile built out to the best of your ability with as much information as
you can.
So when you go ahead and you follow this case study blueprint, all you have to do is click this plus
and it will show you every single step of the way.
So you add your project, you select what template, you add the details and you can preview it before
it goes live.
So once again, Upwork is here to help you every step of the way.
All you have to do is put in the effort and you can start building an amazing profile just like I have.
As we continue down, this is where you choose your skills, your skills are what everything on Upwork
is based on.
It will be what you show up for in the algorithm.
It will be what skills are displayed on your profile.
And it also determines what shows up on your Upwork homepage so you can choose up to 10 skills when
you build your profile.
And remember, these can always be changed right here.
But it's important to remember that this will impact your experience, so choose skills that you're
good at and that you can actually provide work on.
So I'll show you what that looks like here.
You can go in here, you can type in up to 10 skills, and if you want to change any of these, all
you have to do is just click the X and remove the tag.
So for these skills, what I recommend to do is to look at two main pillars of skill sets that you have.
And from there, go and add some specifics in.
So for search engine marketing, for example, I have Google ads, I have Google Shopping, Facebook
marketing, Bing Ads, search engine marketing.
And for my web design skill set, I have a website development, conversion rate optimization, SEO
keyword research, Google Analytics.
So as you can see, what it does is it breaks down my two main pillars of skills into different associated
skills within those.
As we continue to go down the profile, the next section is the certification section, and certifications
are a great way to stand out from the competition and build even more credibility with future clients.
Certifications are verified by Upwork.
So you have to provide the certification proof in an email, and they will verify that for you, which
adds another layer of trust to the platform.
So any certifications that you can get that are affordable, that makes sense for your niche or your
skill set you provide.
I suggest going for it because this is another area that a lot of freelancers skip out on, that it
just doesn't make sense.
A certification will benefit you in more ways than one.
Not only will help you build more trust with clients, it'll also help you stand out in the algorithm
more.
Also, it will help you build your skill set even further, because you should always be open to learning.
Never stop learning.
So even if you're good at whatever you do, go ahead and get some certifications.
It helps you even more.
The next section is your employment history, I suggest adding anything in here that's relevant for
me.
I added my agency experience because I own a digital marketing agency.
That's a Google partner company.
So it all relates to my personal brand for you.
You may want to cherry pick a couple of positions, internships or jobs that you had that relate most
to the skill set that you want to provide.
You only want to show projects and employment history that are relevant to what you want to provide
on Upwork, because this is just for the eyes of the client.
In your education history, here's where you can add any degrees or education experience you have.
And this is another area where if it's relevant.
Go ahead and add it.
I really suggest if you have any sort of degree, it's always good to put that in there.
For me, I have my marketing degree, so this is just another layer of credibility as clients continue
to scroll down my page.
It's just one credibility booster after the next.
And this is why having a profile built out to the fullest extent helped me get clients, even when I
didn't have any reviews yet.
The last section on your upper profile is your other experiences section, and this is where you can
add even more information to set yourself apart from the pack.
So treat this just like an extension of your employment history section so you can even save a project
that you were going to add to employment history and add it to the other experiences.
Once again, it's just another way to stand out, improve your profile more and ultimately build extra
credibility with anyone that's looking at your profile.
Now, let's hop over to the Settings section of Upwork, so I can show you how I suggest setting everything
up.