Is UpWork Legit? How I Made a Living ($24-$30/hr) as a College Student

Working and studying at the same time is no joke. For those of you who are getting tired of temporary and unsatisfying jobs in the real world, welcome to the world of online freelancing!

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What is UpWork?

UpWork is a freelancing platform similar to Fiverr. It’s focused on hiring skilled individuals for contract work. You offer your skills to businesses for a niche you understand. The hours and schedules are mostly up to you.

You have to pitch to clients but occasionally, clients might also find you depending on how good you market your profile. The area of focus, feedback, and skill set will determine your pay. For great work, you can even earn bonuses from clients.

Can You Make a Living on Upwork?

Oh honey, I hate to say it but it depends. It depends, BIG TIME. The truth is, what you get out of this platform is what you put in. Your answer to the following 2 questions will determine with 70%* chance of accurancy your financial success on Upwork:

1)What service you offer, price range, competition, and what you specialize in.

2) Where you live in the world and how much the cost of living is in your local area.

*I’m joking, it’s not 70% – but those are very big factors though.

A friend and ex-employee of mine work on Upwork as an Amazon FBA consultant teaching small business owners about e-commerce in Asia.

Normally, in Germany, where the cost of living is very high and working on Upwork would not have pay for his bills. But he lives abroad in Hong Kong where the cost of living as a backpacker is a lot less expensive – in his case, he works for a suitable living.

How I Started on UpWork

At my university, the college grocery store was always hiring. The pay for state minimum wage ($8/hr) but money starved college kids gobbled up these jobs all the same. It was supervised and you needed to deal with  customers.

I was fortunate enough to have a laid-back computer lab tech job over the weekend with no supervision. I did that job for a semester while the $8/hr checks rained in, thinking I had beat the system.

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As a full-time student finding the time to make extra money was hard.

That was the case until I found UpWork (back then, it was called Elance.)

Because my lab job was so laid back and unsupervised, I had time on my hands to double dip into some freelancing.

My rate at the lab was $8/hr.

My official UpWork clocked rate was more than $22 per official hour that I worked. That meant I made $30+ double dipping on the job!

That’s pretty amazing for a college student with no official diploma.

My hourly was (I thought fair) at $12/hr but I definitely overestimated a little bit on my work speed since I work pretty fast, especially under pressure.

Prepare for a Slow Start

My specialty gig was under the general term of photoshop, autoCAD, freelance writing, and minor translation work.

I know what you are thinking! “Working online doesn’t work (pun intended), doesn’t pay, requires impossible skills.”

Freelancing is hard. I am going to admit that.

I know because I thought it too. To be honest, the first three or four times I tried to set up shop on UpWork, I was rejected. All I could really think about was how I didn’t have it in me. There were tons of lowball offers from places like India and Philippines who did shaky work, but for much less.

When I apply to eight or nine jobs my first time, I received no answer. You only get a limited amount of bids as a new worker. Ugh! Point being, it was hard at the beginning. That’s when most people quit and shut off that option.

But that’s a mistake. The reason it was so hard was that I was way too new. To everything! If you have no feedback or official Job Score rating, hiring managers won’t take a chance.

That is why starting on UpWork is hard. It’s like dipping into a cold lake. What helped was learning how to effectively 10x responses from employers and start getting work.

Is UpWork Legit?

UpWork the platform is not a scam. It’s been in business since 2003 and has an A+ BBB rating currently.

There are some* scammers on UpWork on both client and freelancer side. But the platform is generally highly trusted among hiring managers and it is possible to make a full-time income.

Always remember to BE EASY on yourself whenever you’re doing something for the first time.

Reviews and feedback is the cornerstone of UpWork. No feedback score is like having no credit score. You have to find someone who is willing to take a risk hiring you.

Then there’s the flipside.

Always deliver to a reputable hiring person with their own positive feedback.

Once I delivered the first draft and the brand new client tells me that they decided to put the project on hold for the moment…hmm >_>

But trying to find the first job – and eventually finding it and getting paid – was highly satisfactory.

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Upwork Payment & Fees

I love Upwork but you can definitely tell they want long term clients when long term clients are a rarer find. Of course, that depends on tons of factors that may not apply to you.

The fee for freelancers is 20% if you and your client transacted less than $500 (USD).

The fee drops down to a more respectable 10% once you cross over that $500 (USD) mark until $10,000 as long as it is with the same client.

That means you want to go for clients who offer long term contracts that will hopefully look to spend more than $500 or even $10,000 (USD) on hiring you. After $10,000 (USD) for a single client, the fee goes down again to 5%.

According to UpWork:

Hourly Time and Weekly Payments are based on the weekly billing cycle

Fixed-price Milestone Payments are available after the client approves the milestone and the five-day security period has passed

Bonus or Manual Payments are available after your client’s payment has been successfully processed and the five-day security period has passed

Payment is done with UpWork as the third party escrow. They hold some and/or all payment transactions for both parties until the client reviews the work and releases it. 

Upwork offers the following payment methods:

Direct to U.S. Bank (ACH) – Free

Direct to Local Bank – $0.99 per transfer

U.S. Dollar Wire Transfer – $30 per transfer

And these third party payment vendors:

PayPal

Payoneer

M-Pesa (Kenya only)

Things got much easier from the hard start. You WILL find work and make money if you keep it up.

If you are new, dedicate only a couple of hours to the platform, don’t have particular skills related to the field, or barely filling out your profile then you will walk away with little money.

Trying = Money.

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Tips on Working for UpWork

Something I learned during my time as a member of the Upwork community is that there are some smart ways to make your life easier and some tricks to boost the interest of potential clients.

(Note: they change depending on your field.) Even the expectations you should have and the potentialities of your time on Upwork depend on an extremely high number of variables, such as personal constraints and abilities.

The UpWork Basics

It takes 12 hours or more to have your account approved by UpWork. You will need ID or passport and they must manually verify it.

Give work away for free, stress to the hiring clients that you are brand new and you want to do it for some feedback.

Among other things, remember to post:

• Which service/niche you know
• Professional title
• Your profile photo
• Education level
• Employment history
• Level of language proficiency
•  Work samples
• Desired hourly rate
• Availability and general physical location + time zone.

Be Keyword RICH on UpWork. 

Hiring employers will be using keywords to find you. They will type keywords into the job role titles like “Logo Designer” or “Adobe Suite Expert” or even topics that concern the gig such as “Keto” or “Etsy.”

Fill out even things you like to learn about yourself, food, health, relationship. Even if it has nothing to do with your scope of work. 

I say this because there are sub genres to everything – I want to primarily hire someone for photography and Photoshop but I don’t just want a person who knows how to photoshop a photo…I want someone who HAS specialized experience in photo shopping pictures of food!

Having those keyword rich descriptions about your experience, hobbies, pesonality etc. will let you target a niche and have you stand out against other Upworkers who are simply “experienced with Photoshop.”

Job Score

You will only get the Job Score score once you are no longer considered a new member the community.

Job Score is important since it’s suppose to represent how well you are doing on Upwork based on different (and partially secret) variables.

The score is updated every two weeks, and it will go up and down like a yo-yo for no apparent reason.

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Makes you wonder if those variables were decided by some drunk…

Even if this score is quite fundamental because is what clients really first look at, keep going and give it a reasonable importance but also know you will work even if you don’t even touch the 90% percentile.

Make An Extra Effort

Again: Trying = Money.

Take advantage of all your bids starting out and build your feedback.

Clients like to see near perfect scores on tests for language and typing speed etc. Although it does not necessarily demonstrate raw talent (because you can always take them over and over). It’s still good to put the effort in so clients know you are serious about working.

Gaining trust is probably the first job at UpWork. Make an effort and push out those requests for contracts.

Spend time on those proposals. It’s just like any other job interview.

ALWAYS provide samples of work, even unrelated, it can’t hurt as long as they’re good.

Bill for a little higher and put out that much better work. If your client asks for 500 words, do 600 words. When the work is great, strong non-cheapy clients will come back.

Always Be Polite

When you write your proposals do it right. Be polite, ask questions and convince whomever you are talking to that they should hire you or that you actually are knowledgeable and professional. Even when the relation with the client comes to an end and the contract is closed remind them to think about you for future projects, thank them for the experience and be fair with the feedback.

Gain Learning Experience

There is so much I would love to say that a book wouldn’t be enough, but the good news is you will learn all of it from mistakes and successes.

Remember to be humble and perceptive: pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. My experience taught me that a bit of formality and extra politeness goes a long way.

Reliability and curiosity are always well perceived. Clients love a curious person because it shows you are interested in the project and want to do your best. More communication means less misunderstandings and less chance you have resubmit anything over.

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Play Psychology

It can be defeating when other people bidding for the same contract is coming in at a much lower rate.

But it’s important to understand how much psychology plays into the hiring process.

You can definitely get hired for the price you command and have a successful career on UpWork if you are confident that your skill level and customer service level is solid. Even if it’s just 1% or 5% better than other bidders coming in at 30% less for their rate.

People are willing to pay an extra premium, it’s not linear. Think about the example of first class vs economy flight tickets. First class gets twice the leg room but the cost is actually 6x of economy ticket.

The price is not the only factor in hiring clients.

If it is the bottom line for them then it’s probably OK they are not your clients. Freelancers have all seen this before: the cheaper the hire, the more they demand.

Conclusion

Whether you will decide to join the UpWork community or go for a similar platform like Fiverr, remember to learn the basic rules and the little tricks of your field above.

With that said, nothing is better than raw experience, find an extra hour a day to make the leap.

Maybe it won’t be your dream job nor a long-term one, but I promise it serves its purpose for getting you paid.

Worst case scenario, it is something more to add to your work resume, right?

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Make More & Take Charge of Your Money

6-Figure Income OnlyFans Masterclass: When Rose, top .1% of adult models on OnlyFans, reached out to me about her online course I was skeptical. Hundreds of course sellers & businesses want to work with me, I rarely say yes. But as I learned more about her humble background, OnlyFans modeling experience, her SIX figure earnings, 7+ year modeling experience, and mastery of how to succeed on OnlyFans, I was impressed. You can replicate her success too, check out Rose’s proven strategies on how to earn 6-figures on OnlyFans.

$5 Meal Plan: Meal planning can take loads of time, stress, and money you shouldn’t be spending. That’s where the $5 meal plan comes in. They will give you a customized meal plan, recipes, and grocery list to take the headaches out of meal planning. They have a free 14-day trial, risk-free and you can cancel anytime.

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