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Alessandra's avatar
Alessandra B Community Member

Getting clients

Hi all hoping for some insight or ideas.

I joined in January and had awesome success within the first few proposals I submitted. I got a client but it did not work out. Took a chance on another worked with them for 5-6 months then got let go due to the virus.

I have been trying for over a month now submitting proposals. I have tons of customer service, sales, and administration experience. I know quite a few computer programs. I also have a great recommendation letter from my previous client. But I have yet to get any interviews or anything to the jobs I submitted to.

I am at a loss of what I can do better or different to get attention. I feel like because I was a new member at the time and for whatever reason were more interested.

I have to work from home due to some physical injuries I sustained so I am doing my best to find work on here.

If any one has any suggestions please let me know.

Thank you

Alessandra
7 REPLIES 7
Zoe's avatar
Zoe A Community Member

Hi Alessandra,

 

There's no doubt that the 1.5star review on your profile is going to hurt and that's going to be off-putting to clients. Would you hire someone with 1 job with such a low review and no feedback? 

 

You say you worked on 2 jobs, but there's only one listed....assume it was all in the same contract then?

 

The review is going to let you down big time. To help with some damage limitation on your profile maybe you can:

  • Respond to the review in a way that is not emotional, state the facts and disappointment that a contract went so wrong
  • I would pad out my profile as much as I could
    • Write about your previous jobs (employment history)
    • Add a portfolio including any work you've done for clients off Upwork
    • Think about creating a video to better get across who you are - it might help build some trust

I think it will be an uphill battle to come back from that, but it's doable. Suggest you look for fixed-price projects, suggest you don't fall into the same mistakes as whatever happened last time, and pitch very competitively for work until you can better your reputation on the platform.

 

Good luck!

 

Zoe

 

Alessandra's avatar
Alessandra B Community Member

I didn’t even see that but when I go in to respond it doesn’t have any option to do so. I’m actually very upset. They had terrible communication and would literally yell at me the first small mistake I made. How upsetting.
Zoe's avatar
Zoe A Community Member


Alessandra B wrote:
I didn’t even see that but when I go in to respond it doesn’t have any option to do so. I’m actually very upset. They had terrible communication and would literally yell at me the first small mistake I made. How upsetting.

Alessandra, there's no doubt that it is so disappointing when a job goes wrong, but these things happen. Some clients are unreasonable and some relationships just don't work out. It is also really difficult when things are made so public. 

 

You had some good tips in this thread from Robert and if you follow those I think you'll manage to sort it. Like I said - pad out the profile with all the great experience you have off-Upwork and keep going. Go for smaller projects - at this point reviews and delivering an excellent client experience is worth more than the cost of the job!

Good luck! Try not to let one client get you down - we all have bad experiences. 

Alisa's avatar
Alisa Z Community Member

Hi Alessandra, what you can do is ( and what I am doing too), try to get some smaller jobs, don't start at this point ( if you did) with bigger jobs. I am just a couple of days old here lol and I applied for over 20 jobs and got 2, but this is good, better that than nothing. Try to get a better reputation through these jobs and God willing you will soon start to be better. I think the best thing for someone new, or new old user is to start small to build up a reputation and then later on when clients see that you did good jobs too, that you try to apply for bigger jobs. I know it can be annoying and that it takes a lot of patience, but better that than nothing. I wish you all the best, don't give up 🙂 

Martina's avatar
Martina P Community Member


Zoe A wrote:

Hi Alessandra,

 

There's no doubt that the 1.5star review on your profile is going to hurt and that's going to be off-putting to clients. Would you hire someone with 1 job with such a low review and no feedback? 

 

You say you worked on 2 jobs, but there's only one listed....assume it was all in the same contract then?

 

The review is going to let you down big time. To help with some damage limitation on your profile maybe you can:

  • Respond to the review in a way that is not emotional, state the facts and disappointment that a contract went so wrong
  • I would pad out my profile as much as I could
    • Write about your previous jobs (employment history)
    • Add a portfolio including any work you've done for clients off Upwork
    • Think about creating a video to better get across who you are - it might help build some trust

I think it will be an uphill battle to come back from that, but it's doable. Suggest you look for fixed-price projects, suggest you don't fall into the same mistakes as whatever happened last time, and pitch very competitively for work until you can better your reputation on the platform.

 

Good luck!

 

Zoe

 


I recommend to never reply to a feedback, as bad as it may be. It looks petty, childish, unprofessional, and ultimately a potential client is not a referee between a freelancer and a previous client and will want to stay away from the drama as far as he can. 

Zoe's avatar
Zoe A Community Member


I recommend to never reply to a feedback, as bad as it may be. It looks petty, childish, unprofessional, and ultimately a potential client is not a referee between a freelancer and a previous client and will want to stay away from the drama as far as he can. 


Totally see your point.

 

I think if it's done right it doesn't look childish or unprofessional, but I don't disagree with you - and I have definitely seen cases where responding to feedback - Upwork, Google reviews whatever where it does the freelancer/business no favours at all.

Robert's avatar
Robert G Community Member

I would work on your profile for sure. [My stock answer]

 

I don't know what you put in your proposal, but I would suggest starting over with your profile.   Make the profile results oriented, not promise oriented. Tell how you have helped clients (or people you work for) in concrete terms, i.e. "saved a bazillion man hours", "increased turnaround time by 5 hours"... 

Clients only see the first few lines. Make it impactful. Take out the “who I am” sentence. The client knows who you are and you waste space.

I use my proposal as the cornerstone of how to get the work, not a static profile that someone has to seek out. I think of the profile in the same way as having a website somewhere it the web-world. I don't expect anyone to find me that way, never have.

 

For me, I don't see anything there that tells me how you can help me if I am the client based on your past experiences. What measure of success did you achieve? What monetary or resource impacts did you make, in hard values, not just "made things better". I read this a sales brochure, not a "why I am better than any other freelancer" statement.

 

Don’t expect to get all you work by just making a great profile and then waiting for the clients to invite you. Develop a high quality strategy on how your proposals will look and submit, submit, submit.

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