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Apr 05, 2022
5½ Ways Upwork Helped Boost My Solopreneur Career: Part 2
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Part 1 of this article described my initial steps on Upwork from getting the first projects and finding my first dream clients from Silicon Valley in 2015. My story took an unexpected turn when I realized what else can be achieved on Upwork! It happened when I started hiring other freelancers. And then there were a few more turns soon after.

From freelancer to solopreneur and Upwork client

By 2018 things were looking so good that I decided to scale up my offering on Upwork. My clients seemed to need more and they never doubted my capabilities. So, I took a conscious shift toward becoming a solopreneur.

Solopreneurship in short

There are clear differences between freelancers and solopreneurs. Freelancers handle (almost) everything themselves, i.e. you are your own marketing team, salesman, operations manager, worker, bookkeeper, and accountant.

 

Solopreneurs understand that when the value of the work is high, the business runs more efficiently when many parts of the business process are outsourced to others, e.g. specialists in their different fields such as accountants or for heavily execution-focused tasks such as manual testing in software development.

 

One of the most significant differentiators is the size of the work. Solopreneurs may take on big projects as agencies with in-house teams whereas freelancers typically execute chunks of work that match an individual’s workload only.

 

Many freelancers hope to get regular work from repeat clients or sign long-term contracts to get some level of stability in their lives (and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!), but for solopreneurs, the stability comes from the increased value and the ease of earning top dollars. Freelancers may have multiple sources of income, but solopreneurs, as they are indeed entrepreneurs running a business, have the relentless aim of creating new tracks of business within the core business.

 

To break it down, freelancers earn almost all of their income by trading their time for money, while solopreneurs have a much wider array of income streams. The primary aim of solopreneurs is to grow their business by taking strategic, planned steps of business development.

 

Building a network of Upwork freelancers

So, I became a bigger business. I made my first hire as a client on Upwork in 2018. I got Mart Willy Buriol to work with me on projects as my go-to 3D modeler. Another great designer I came to know and appreciate is Khumansinh Jethwa who started taking on all the 3D animation work I had in larger projects.

 

I once had an offline client in Silicon Valley whose speed demanded someone really good and really fast within a timeframe that I could not deliver because of earlier engagements. Naturally, I suggested searching for talent on Upwork. This is how I met Tomasz Kirsz in 2020 and my client hired him as a VR developer.

 

Sometimes, I got connected to great fellow freelancers via an Upwork client. For example, Jorge Reinoso; we’ve been working for the same client as early as 2017. Even at the time of writing this, we’re doing a VR project together!

 

At some point, I started taking on projects even though I knew I didn’t have all the skills needed. But I took them on and completed them because I knew I could find someone on Upwork to help me. For instance, without hiring Rakib Sharkar to help me understand how to use a certain 3D modeling tool, one of my prototyping projects would have faced weeks of delays.

 

But not all Upworkers were subcontractors of my projects. There were freelancers in completely different fields who came to my rescue when I needed extra hands. People like Elyza Espayos saved me days of work when I didn’t even manage to find minutes on my calendar!

 

To make solopreneurship work, you must make each of your work hours count for a lot to each of your paying customers. High business impact, great value. Your value should reach a point where a relatively small amount of worktime translates to real income that serves as a basis for your business.

 

As a result, my time spent on doing Upwork projects has reduced greatly since 2018 compared to 2015-2017, yet, the annual income has been higher in some years. That’s because of changing my niche and being able to deliver more to my clients together with other freelancers on this platform.

 

Sharing Lessons Learned

After all of the above being evident in my official Upwork track record, I felt the need to share all the knowledge I had gained and blogging felt like a natural thing to do.

 

Becoming CoachLancer

I started writing about doing freelance work online that was critical to developing a business that stands the test of time. CoachLancer.com was born in May 2019.

 

The articles resulted in many freelancers connecting with me on social media asking for tips. And tips they got! I’ve been consistently posting several basic and more advanced freelancing tips and tricks every week since starting CoachLancer. The reception has been positive (mostly, haha)!

 

This process of sharing tips and listening to newbie freelancers’ pain points, issues, challenges, and worries quickly became my second nature. The most typical questions fresh freelancers asked were:

  1. “I’m a fresh graduate with no experience, how can I start freelancing?”
  2. “I just joined Upwork, how can I get my first project?”
  3. “I’m sending lots of proposals, but I never get any replies. Why?”
  4. “How do I know who my dream client is?”
  5. “There is always someone cheaper getting the gig, so how can I win?”

Interestingly, I had never had any of those problems when I started, but I was able to offer guidance anyway. Not having a specialty or a specific client in mind turned out to be one of the most common stumbling blocks.

 

And it’s understandable, in a way. It’s hard to know these things when you don’t know what you don’t yet know. In particular, young freelancers who have so many things to learn have trouble defining their starting points.

 

I helped people where I could, and in return, many used their skills in helping me in some way, such as doing social media promotions, proofreading or editing my articles, etc. This kind of service-for-service deal is something even starting freelancers understand and can commit to. Quid pro quo works brilliantly between freelancers when both benefit!

 

Becoming a thought leader

As the numbers started to feed into my social media profiles this led to even more visibility.

This year, 2022, due to having a massive track record on Upwork, lots of activity on the Community Forum, great visibility on social media, and a blogsite of over 100,000 words of freelancing tips and loads of regular readers, larger organizations sought my expertise in freelancing.

 

Femi Johnson’s initiative to train 5,000,000 young Africans as freelancers was something I joined without hesitation. How could I resist the invitation to speak at an event with such a noble aim? Particularly when introduced to the audience of hundreds of new freelancers as “an Upwork superhero and a coconut guy” (please note the order… Upwork’s brand is still bigger than my coconut brand, which is perfectly fine).

 

An initiative like this has the potential of making a massive global impact as more and more people are able to put food on the table as online freelancers. Many of them will join Upwork and many will succeed too, I am sure, especially since they are being tutored and coached by the best Upworkers! Working on an initiative like this will be one of my highest priorities for many years to come.

 

Conclusion: 5½ ways

Well, that’s my amazing 7-year journey on Upwork so far. The long and winding story above demonstrates the multitude of roles the world’s premier freelance site can play in an individual’s career success.

 

To summarize, these are the five ways in which Upwork helped my business to grow and my career to progress; from freelancer to solopreneur and finally as a recognized thought leader. Through Upwork, I was able to:

  1. Find the best kinds of startup clients in Silicon Valley as well as multinational corporations
  2. Create a network of freelancers whom I worked with on bigger projects
  3. Shift my niche and build a high-value business as a tech consultant
  4. Increase my visibility on social media due to my great track record on Upwork
  5. Join an organization to educate young freelancers in Africa as a result of my own highlights and experiences on Upwork

If you thought that Upwork is merely a platform where freelancers come to trade their time for money, I hope this article showed you what more you can achieve here. There is much more to Upwork than many realize!

 

Build your reputation, build your business, forge new relationships, and turn your career in whichever direction you want. Who knows what unexpected twists await you!

Good luck with your Upwork journey.

 

No wait, I promised 5½ ways in which Upwork helped me, didn’t I? Well, the last half goes to Shamila Iyer who managed to do the impossible: edit and polish this story from bits and pieces pulled from the original CoachLancer articles.

 

Thank you, Shamila, and thank you Upwork!

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