Just wanted to share my experience in job hunting in Upwork for your inspiration

Just wanted to share my experience in job hunting in Upwork. I’ve been in Upwork on and off to be honest. Started using it May of 2016. A little background. I’m a backend web developer. Specializing in Laravel PHP Framework. I do not do front end tasks.

When I started in Upwork, like everyone else, I had zero experience, zero clients, zero hours worked. My only edge is that I have ample experience in the industry (company). My first thought was, how should I get started? What I was looking for is a client that would pay higher than the average companies here in PH. How would I beat those Indian Upworkers that asks for very low rates?

What I first did was to build up my resume. I’ve added all the related skills that I have for the job that I was hunting. Good thing that I have some personal projects lying around that I was able to build my resume from. It's like an additional portfolio aside from my industry experience.

The basis for my rate was my current salary in my day job. I tried to set it to that amount. I am a very picky applicant. I wanted to save my connects to the best Job Listing that best fits my skills. IT WAS NOT EASY!

Back in 2016, the connects aren't paid yet. So anyone can just apply to anything and just wait for their connects to run out and wait for the next cycle of connects to be credited to their account. It was very chaotic. Whenever you wanted to apply for an easy job there will already be 20 - 50 applications already submitted. If I would submit a proposal to that Job Listing, how would my proposal be noticed?

I needed a better plan.

I made use of the search filters: Hourly Expert - $$$ - client is willing to pay higher rates for the most experienced freelancers More than 30 hrs / week 3 - 6 months

I wanted to look for clients that: are willing to spend an hourly are willing to spend higher rate for the most experienced freelancers have long projects (for stability) fits my skillset

It then started to show lesser results (filters duh!!), It then started to show job listing with lesser proposals submitted since only a handful of clients met my filter and only fewer freelancers have the same requirement as I had.

Then I started applying. The main selling point for me was honesty. I added a disclaimer that I'm a backend developer and I'm bad at frontend tasks like HTML/CSS/JS. I can work with frontend tasks but it will take longer time and the client will just be wasting their money on me. It turns out that clients tend to like honest and transparent applicant.

The connects before was 60 per month. I used up all the 60 connects in a span of 1 week with no one replied to my proposals. I had to wait for my connects to replenish then started to apply again. Because of me having zero Upwork experience before, it was harder for me to sell my skillset.

But things soon paid off. You just need to be consistent. A client replied to my proposal. The skillset requirement was spot on. The rate was higher than what I was currently getting in my day job. And it was a long term project.

The initial negotiation was for a 10USD / hr job. I negotiated back and asked for a 13.88 rate so that I'd get 10USD after the 10% fee from Upwork.

BOOM! We had an agreement. That was the beginning of my Upwork experience. That was 2016, my rate already higher than when I started now with a different client.

I hope this would help others and inspire those people who needs inspiration.

Jobs: 8 Hours worked: 3,741 and counting