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donkinmindie
Community Member

New To Upwork

HI there

 

I am new to Upwork.  I feel like I just spend money buying connects  and at this stage it's costing me more money than anything else. 

 

I realise that once you start getting work, it helps build your creditbility with clients and helps you get more work, but how do you start by getting your first job?

 

My skills are personal assistant/secretarial/admin support. I am super proficient with transcribing but haven't received any job offers thus far for proposals I've put foward?  I'm a basic member and can't see other bids, does this make a difference?

 

Can somoene please advise what I am doing wrong?  Is there information lacking in my profile? Does the fact that I'm in South Africa put people off?  I specifically put in my profile that I have a fiber line.

 

Please advise?

2 REPLIES 2
9b660019
Community Member

I'm not in your line of work and can't comment on the specifics of your profile or listed rate, but I can say you are not alone in your frustration.

 

I joined Upwork in mid-February. In my first four weeks I was awarded six jobs, despite having no job success score or history of good feedback. In the last six weeks (mid-March to end of April), I've only had two jobs despite consistently postive feedback and a 100% job success score.

 

Despite that, the "My Stats" page says I'm actually doing better than average in hiring compared to my peers.

 

What changed? COVID-19 caused a mass economic shutdown here and in many other parts of the world, resulting in a spike of freelancers looking for income at the same time most clients are trying to scale back operations as much as possible. More people competing for less work makes it that much harder for newer freelancers who don't already have regular clients.

 

The best thing you can do for right now is be persistent and keep sending proposals.

 

As for the plus membership, I recently tried it for a month. It stopped me from submitting a handful of proposals when I would have been grossly underbid, but I eventually decided to cancel it. By the math, you can get 30 additional connects per month for the same price without the membership - more than enough to be outbid on a few jobs and still come out ahead.

Thanks for the feedback Adam.  I'll just keep perservering then.  I suppose I did chose the worst time to join during Covid 19.

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