Andrea Lisi
New Contributor
I'm deleting my Upwork account to start over from scratch to prove the freelance market isn't as saturated as everyone believes. The reason you can't get work isn't "market saturation". It isn't "fake" clients. It isn't Upwork's algorithms being "mean" to you or that you're brand new and don't have any feedback or a portfolio. It's that you aren't doing the work to stand out and help people.
You can still go from $0.00 to $1,000+ per month or more and get your first taste of sales and entrepreneurship fast. But it won't happen by spamming applications hoping something sticks. It won't come from getting mad at Upwork because you feel entitled to gigs. It won't happen by doing anything other than helping other people get sh*t done.
So I'm going to delete my Upwork account in about a week when I finish work on my copywriting crash course. For now this thread is a placeholder. I'll video document progress through YouTube and post here, so if you want to tag along, feel free to watch this thread and maybe pick up some pointers that help you in some way.
Later.
I started following the forum in 2015 but never had the time to actually contribute.
Talking Upwork I guess my experience mught be useful, especially for those who are not native English speakers.
I'm Italian and when I read TMF for the first time two years ago I was a broke insurance agent... I had no clue whatsoever on how to start my entrepreneurial journey, no money, no background... but after reading the book I was damn sure I had to do it.
I decided I wanted to start online and work from home, I was already doing some translation work to pay the rent and the bills, but I found it boring and felt I needed to let my creative side emerge and still do some sales work, so I chose the copywriting road.
At the time i was just studying the classics and did not know there was any market in my country for this kind of skills, so I jumped on Upwork trying to get some jobs in the English-speaking market...
I actually did, mainly following Daniel Di Piazza's advice on video proposals...
...I even made some friends in his "Freelance Domination" community, some of them we even met around the world couple times..
It didn't feel right, though, it was just that I saw freelancing as the only viable intermediate way to get to actual entrepreneurship.
And after the first few bucks on Upwork (like, 30$ to write a buyer's guide) I realized "this doesn't make sense: too much competition, my English is not enough to compete with native speakers, something's gotta change.."
So in the meantime I started my own blog on copywriting in Italian, contacted some people on linkedin and got my first gigs outside Upwork...
still I got paid 40€ for a 1500 word article and less than 200€ for an entire funnel..
Well.. I saw these guys who hired me were even younger than me and making 10k/year from each client, so I thought... I gotta find my own clients, on a retainer.
I grew my blog, basically from social networking cause I still had no money to invest (but I was able for the first time to sustain myself and getting paid to learn..) and then, 6 months since I had left Upwork, I was ready to come back...
...but only to HIRE freelancers.
And God that felt soo good...
My inbound marketing strategy had started to pull off and I was discovering a market segment nobody had seen before, and from that in less than another year I built my first 297€ infoproduct, started speaking and getting paid to do it, and costantly raising prices for my services.
And I have a team of 4 people that I manage.
I mean, it sucks because I know the way it is now it ain't a scalable business yet.. I can't see big profits yet...
but I have a little budget now I can use to try entering other niches and start fresh with a more entrepreneurial and less freelance-minded attitude.
That's the best part... it's not easy but it's getting better each month, and even when revenue and profit may go down, I KNOW I can make it anyway...
I know I will never go back asking for jobs...
In the meantime I travelled to the US and to Africa and around Europe several times...
...and I mean, even though Upwork was a good learning experience, all the good things started happening WHEN I LEFT
and I built my own brand, platform and marketing.
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