Jane is absolutely right.
Many seem to join some of these freelance sites hoping to become a freelancer.
Actually, it works the other way round. It's those who are already good freelancers who come here and top the game. Being a beginner in everything means you end up in the biggest category of Upwork users: those who never see a single dollar.
Let's try to dodge that fate.
By joining a freelance site such as this one, you engage yourself in the GLOBAL COMPETITION. You must have a good strategy, decent niche, and definitely all the skills have to be in place BEFORE you start here. And even then, it is hard to find the way that works for you and you face the exact issues that Jane mentioned. Somehow, you have to beat the competition where your stats are at $0 and others have made hundreds of thousands on this platform alone.
A few years back I had some poor soul asking me if I could guide him to become a freelancer. I said "OK, what business you intend to do?" Then the guy asked for good resources to learn JavaScript on his own because he didn't pick computer science I'm school. 😬 Couldn't help that guy beyond posting the first link I found on Google.
You need three skills to make your business work out.
1. Your core skill that creates sellable results which depends on your domain (writing, designing, programming, etc.). This part is obvious.
2. Business skills, e.g. how to deal with paying customers, how to find them, how to get them actually pay money. Sounds like this is the part you're lacking at the moment.
3. Sales channel-dependent skills. On Upwork it involves some skill in profile and proposal writing, and identifying a good niche in the market, for instance. In the "offline world" it might mean being great at face-to-face networking, doing cold calls, or something.
You need to nail all three to have a fighting chance.
A personal example.
I started running my freelance business with gigs that I got through old connections and ex-employers, but got kind of stuck when I needed truly new clients in the offline world. Too many meetings, lunches, coffees etc. made me look for a more EFFICIENT way to get people to sign a contract. I wasn't in my element in the physical world which almost killed my freelance business before I even got anywhere.
The online world worked out much better for me as my background provides reasonably good writing and argumentation skills and I'm natural in making genuine connections by text chat.
So, all you really need to do is to identify the skill set that you already have and start your business with the sales channel that benefits from your natural tendencies. Then, your journey can start on a PRODUCTIVE path and you're more likely to avoid going back to the safe day job because freelancing didn't pay enough just because your sales process didn't reach high enough efficiency.
