Small Jobs vs Long Jobs

[ceefaeca]

It has been over 6 months since I actively started freelancing on Upwork. Due to some other commitments, I only spend (at max) 10 hours in a month working here. So far, I have no long term clients all my projects on Upwork completes within one month only

How do folks get long term clients here? Once I was interviewed for one job which was medium-length (3-4 months) but I lost it to one PhD economist, as most work I do is statistical programming, data science and modelling for quantitative social sciences. I see, some folks who just join Upwork and get one job stays on it for years, and their hours and earning amount both keep on rising. Others, who do fewer jobs but most of their jobs are kinda long term. 

Despite the thing I do is rare, here, when I post a job from my client account it is incredibly hard to find anyone (with any budget to be honest) who works with R programming and have time. And, I use R as my primary language to do these stuff.

How do folks approach the clients with long term jobs? I don't even see many jobs which are long term on my feed. 

[jr-translation · Accepted solution]

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Aru B wrote:

It has been over 6 months since I actively started freelancing on Upwork. Due to some other commitments, I only spend (at max) 10 hours in a month working here. So far, I have no long term clients all my projects on Upwork completes within one month only

How do folks get long term clients here?

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By working full-time as a freelancer which sometimes means 10 hours a day.

[ceefaeca]

I should definitely make some more space for freelancing. 

[2a05aa63]

To get a long-term job, you need to do some short-term jobs first. Every client will work with you for few days before they decide they want to work with you further.

Also, programming jobs might be long-term only if the website already earns money, or the client will just dry out before the job becomes long-term.

[prestonhunter]

Viacheslav is correct.

Clients have LONG jobs.

But first they hire freelancers on a test basis.

The clients DO NOT TELL YOU that they are hiring you on a test basis.

They give you some assignments.

They DO NOT TELL YOU that they are hiring other people. Or CONSIDERING hiring other people depending on how you work out.

The clients evaluate your work. Are you providing them with value? Do you help them achieve their goals? The freelancers who do those things are the ones they continue to hire. Sometimes with a completely new contract. Sometimes just extending the original contract.

The freelancers who aren't so great... They often don't even get told about the full project. Or the main project. So they THOUGHT that the project was a "small job." But it was really just a client being polite to them and not telling them that they didn't make the cut for the long job.

How many movies has Steven Spielberg cast Tom Hanks in? Lots. But he cast Richard Levin only once.

[colettelewis]

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Preston H wrote:

Viacheslav is correct.

Clients have LONG jobs.

But first they hire freelancers on a test basis.

The clients DO NOT TELL YOU that they are hiring you on a test basis.

They give you some assignments.

They DO NOT TELL YOU that they are hiring other people. Or CONSIDERING hiring other people depending on how you work out.

The clients evaluate your work. Are you providing them with value? Do you help them achieve their goals? The freelancers who do those things are the ones they continue to hire. Sometimes with a completely new contract. Sometimes just extending the original contract.

The freelancers who aren't so great... They often don't even get told about the full project. Or the main project. So they THOUGHT that the project was a "small job." But it was really just a client being polite to them and not telling them that they didn't make the cut for the long job.

How many movies has Steven Spielberg cast Tom Hanks in? Lots. But he cast Richard Levin only once.

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Preston, your example is not appropriate. If clients are going to hire a lot of people as you claim, they are not going to wait 30 years to find the right applicant.

Spielberg was at the start of his career when he cast Richard Levin (a 26-minute short and on an extremely tight budget) That was in 1968 and Richard Levin was already in his 40s.  

The first Tom Hanks movie with Spielberg was in 1998  in Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg would have been looking for a different type of actor (and it is highly unlikely that Levin would have applied even for a bit part in that movie). 

[kinector]

As Jennifer suggests, you might want to put in the hours if you want to get long-term jobs. You don't become an expert in anything (and here I mean the freelancing skill in general) by doing something once a week.

In general, if you have a career goal, the best way to get there is to focus on that goal, put in the hours, learn, and eventually get there. There are mandatory things that you need to do but might not take you any closer to that goal, so you just get those done well enough but quickly. There are no shortcuts, no tricks.

As Preston mentions, many clients who know how to use this platform don't advertise having long-terms jobs. They test and build a good relationship with the freelancer first. The long-term job is probably invitation-only with just 1 person invited. I do this regularly as a client.

The only thing not mentioned here is that personally, I don't see any point in even aiming for the goal you have (getting long-term clients). All this platform really does is making a match between the client's needs and the freelancer's capabilities (+ availability). I've never put more than 2 months of full day's work on any project, I think. Many projects just stretch over several months because of all kinds of dependencies on the client's side. Like one or two now are on hold because of Covid-19.

Aru, can I ask, what would you hope to get out of a "long-term" job on Upwork?

Better stats? Not really, unless you work more than 10/h week. You will get just 1 review instead of many... which in case of a problem is actually riskier for you, I'm afraid.

Security? Not really, the client can stop the project at any time without any notice and that's perfectly fine (just a little impolite, I guess).

If I did long-term projects, I would only lock myself down (and be stuck) with one client which would prohibit me from working with many others... since indeed this platform is absolutely fantastic (!) for making that sweet match with my dream clients. I prefer short and intense R&D projects or lightweight consultancy.

[ceefaeca]

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Mikko R wrote:

Aru, can I ask, what would you hope to get out of a "long-term" job on Upwork?

It is just I never experienced any longer projects, so I was wondering if I am lacking something somewhere. I do like to work with different clients, it is always fun interacting with many. I was seeing the profiles of people here, and most have few jobs too many hours, but in my case, I have more jobs than hours (because of many fixed-price contracts).

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Mikko R wrote:

As Jennifer suggests, you might want to put in the hours if you want to get long-term jobs. You don't become an expert in anything (and here I mean the freelancing skill in general) by doing something once a week.

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That is really true, but I only spend less time on Upwork. I joined Upwork just to get some exposure to different things. I started my freelancing career accidentally last year; due to being very vocal on public forums, people started contacting me for some projects. Then, later I joined Upwork. Most of my time is taken in those things + some career-related stuff but I guess Upwork is still an interesting place, as people come up with really nice projects mostly! 

Even I'd hate working with one client for a very long time since it didn't happen with me over here so I was just wondering if I am doing everything right.  

Projects which ends in a day are always good though!