You’re all set to launch your online freelance career. The first step? Create your Upwork profile.
You know how crucial it is to “nail” your Overview, by writing a killer message that will blow away clients. You want this to be perfect. Right?
Umm…not so fast.
Without a doubt, your Overview is important. It shows potential clients what you’re all about. It should be filled with substance, and convey what you do in clear, simple terms. And needless to say, it needs to be polished, and mistake-free.
But perfect?
Your Overview may be the first thing you do chronologically, but that does not mean it should be your top priority.
Your profile is actually NOT what launches your Upwork career. Not by a longshot.
As a newbie, you have one goal: getting hired. Plain and simple.
You’re better off spending your precious, limited time on lots of other stuff before you work hard “optimizing” your Overview.
Let me explain…
Finding Jobs On Upwork
There are 2 ways to find jobs on Upwork.
- Search the open market and apply
- Get invited to a job
(There’s also something called “invite only”, which is more exclusive, but right now let’s stick to regular invites, which are open market jobs that you’ve been specially invited to, but anyone else can apply to as well.)
Newbies don’t get too many quality invites, because:
- They have minimal work history and reviews to impress clients
- They are lower in the search rankings, and harder to find
(You may get “mass invites” to jobs that have plenty of other invited freelancers, but those are usually not valuable, because the competition is too fierce.)
Now, since you can’t rely on invites, the way to build your Upwork career and work history is to scour the open market. And there are many great tricks to do this effectively, as we’ll discuss in future posts.
Essentially, you need to be aggressive.
You need to pore through the job feed for any job that may be relevant. You need to search at all hours of the day, to find jobs and submit proposals before others beat you to it.
And you need to stick with it in the beginning. Once you get your first 3 jobs, you will be in good shape. The first few are the hardest.
So right now, your success will come from applying for jobs. That’s the secret to go from “zero to sixty” on Upwork. Once you begin to cruise, you’re way more likely to get invites.
Now, in light of this, let’s get back to the 2 functions of your Overview.
Function 1: Singlehandedly Sell Your Service
This first function is to attract clients to invite you. If a client needs a writer, designer, editor, or Quickbooks expert, they will search Upwork, and may come across your profile.
How will they decide whether to invite you? A lot of it will be based on your profile and specifically, your Overview. Your Overview is your sales person, and needs to grab the reader and hook them in.
Which means it needs to be written in a careful, strategic way. After all, clients are looking through lots of profiles, and may not spend a long time on each one. Your Overview really needs to be powerful and knock it out of the park.
But as I mentioned, that’s only when you’re at the “invite” stage of your Upwork career.
Right now, as a beginner, the odds are you won’t receive many (quality) invites. You need to go “door to door” (so to speak), applying for lots of jobs, and throwing lots of darts.
Your Overview still has an important function. But it’s completely different.
Function 2: Be a secondary supporting tool
If you’re starting off, your Overview is only there to reinforce. It’s secondary.
In other words, you’ve already “wowed” or impressed clients with your proposal. You’ve shown them your samples. You’ve piqued their interest.
Now they will check your Overview, to learn more about you, and get to know you better. Your Overview doesn’t need to grab them. It doesn’t need to sell your services. It just needs to not get in the way.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you apply for a 9 to 5 job by submitting your resume to a company’s Human Resources Department. If they like your resume, they’ll call you. If they don’t like it, you’re toast.
Your resume is sitting in a pile of 50. It needs to stand out, or you will simply have no prayer.
Now imagine a different scenario. You attend a networking conference, and get to speak with someone who’s looking to hire a person with your qualifications. The two of you talk, and the hirer really takes a liking to you. You’re a perfect fit for the job.
This person then asks you to send them your resume. At this point, what will they be looking for?
They won’t need to see if you’re in the ballpark, or if you stand out above the other 50 applicants.
You’ve already shown them that stuff in person, which is way more powerful than on paper.
Your resume’s job is only to check your qualifications, and make sure that you are who you say you are.
It doesn’t need to SELL. It needs to convey the FACTS.
That’s a completely different function, and it doesn’t take you nearly as much time, energy, or strategy to create.
In other words, at this stage of the game, your Overview does not need to STAND OUT. At least not to that degree.
Right now your PROPOSALS need to stand out.
At this early stage, your Overview is not your sales person. Your proposal and samples are. Your Overview simply needs to reinforce what the client is looking to see–you are who you say you are, and your qualifications match what they’re looking for.
It’s INFORMATIONAL, not SALES, which is way simpler to write.
Believe it or not, some clients may never even read your Overview, at least not very carefully. If you WOW them your proposal and samples, your Overview will be a mere formality, and afterthought.
Your job as an Upwork Newbie is to scour the job feed for any job that seems remotely relevant to your skillset, and submit as many (quality) proposals as possible. And to spend time on each proposal, be creative, and get clients’ attention.
Once you get your first few jobs under your belt, and have some nifty 5 star reviews, you can go back and create an Overview that will blow away anyone who sees it and watch the the Invites come pouring in.
