How to Get Clients on Upwork as a Beginner, According to Reddit

It’s hard to be a beginner, especially when you’re freelancing. Finding your first customers on Upwork when the market is so oversaturated is a tricky task — but not impossible! To ease your life, we searched through numerous Reddit threads and collected experience-backed tips for finding clients on Upwork.

Tip #1. Match your job title to client offers

Before clients read your proposal, they look at a job title — and in some cases, the title can be a dealbreaker.

The principle is similar to looking for a full-time job — you don’t use the same CVs for positions requiring different skills. For example, if you’re a copywriter with some editing and SMM experience, your job title is “Editor”. If you apply for SMM-related Upwork listings, your client will ask themselves: “Why did this person who is not an SMM manager apply for this job?” and straight-up ignore you — you already presented yourself as an irrelevant candidate.

Upwork doesn’t allow multiple accounts — however, you can have one general and two specialized profiles, which counts as having several slightly different CVs under one account. For example, you can create a general “Editor” profile and two specialized profiles for responding to copywriting and social media-related jobs. 

Tip #2. Narrow down your niche

Here’s the problem — Upwork is incredibly competitive. Even experienced freelancers with great Upwork history and all the rest struggle with hires. It will get worse for you if you’re going to Upwork with broad skills like data entry. Everyone can do a little data entry; good luck with bidding against hundreds of people with reviews.

One thing that will make your life a bit easier is going for a narrower niche on Upwork. Forget data entry and other non-specific jobs — choose something like graphic design or copywriting. And, if you have a certain skill and some non-Upwork freelancing or in-house experience, narrow it down to a smaller niche. For example, I’m not just a copywriter — I work specifically with B2B digital products and software development agencies. That way, I only compete with the copywriters who have a similar career track and not the entire market. Also, choosing a niche allows you to be more selective about the jobs on Upwork and everywhere else.

Tip #3. Write good proposals

When you write a proposal on Upwork, keep in mind that your prospect will only see the first two lines of your cover letter in the preview — like this:

Most clients won’t read past these two lines, so you can’t afford to waste the space on “hi there” stuff. What you need to do is to stop treating your Upwork cover letter as a regular full-time job listing cover letter — these are different things:

• Don’t introduce yourself. The client already sees your profile with the job title, skills, yadda yadda. The profile acts as an introduction.
• Don’t write generic statements. Ditch the “I’m very enthusiastic about the job” or “I would be hyped to work with you on the project” — the client doesn’t care. 
• Don’t put your entire CV in the letter. For example, if a job is to write a blog article, don’t describe your entire copywriting experience with blogs, landing pages, emails, and social media posts. You can briefly mention your experience in writing blog articles like “I’ve been writing for [blog name] for 3 years”, but we suggest not wasting valuable space even for that.

Here’s what to do instead:

• Talk only about the job. When, how, and for how much money you will do it are the only things the client is interested in. 
• Be specific. For example, if the job is editing a blog article and the client shared a link to the source text, take a look at it beforehand and throw a couple of actual prepositions like “I will add this and this info, fix the logic here, and add illustrations for A, B, and C”. 

Write something along the lines of the following:

Ready to start working on the job on [date], can finish on [date] for [money]. I looked through the brief and have ideas like [suggestion1], [suggestion2], [suggestion3]. Worked on a similar project in [company name] and did [thing1], [thing2], [thing3], which brought results like [result1], [result2], [result3]. 

You can also include links to your past projects that are relevant to the job, but it’s optional.

Tip #4. Underbid at first

Okay, this one is a little controversial. Many freelancers think that dumping the prices for your work makes the market worse for everyone since the clients end up not wanting to pay more — and that’s reasonable. However, here’s what one of the Upwork hirers thinks:

So, when you have zero Upwork history, bidding below the client’s budget will make them more likely to hire you — and get you the said history. Once you have some completed projects on your hands, feel free to bid the full price. 

Tip #5. Get more reviews

Reviews are essential to succeeding on Upwork — they’re the only source of social proof and reputation within the platform. Even worse, you can get banned from working on the platform for negative feedback. And, if you have no reviews, getting more clients on Upwork will be a huge challenge.

Here’s how to get your first Upwork reviews:

• Ask your client to end the contract once you’re done with the project. You need this for two reasons. Firstly, having a finished job in your profile adds to your reputation — and incomplete projects are just hanging there. Some clients forget to end contracts on finished projects, so reminding them about it is good! Secondly, once they do it, the 14-day feedback window begins.
• Politely request a review. Don’t be too pushy about it, just ask for a rating once the project is completed both in real life and on Upwork. You can also explain how important reviews are for freelancers — it might work!

Tip #6. Invest in Connects

Connects are virtual currency on Upwork. You need them to submit proposals as a freelancer in the first place — but you can also invest in Connects for proposal boosting, which means more visibility, which means more chances to get this very job.

Yep, that sounds upsetting, especially for beginners — what do you mean I need to pay to not even get a job but merely compete for one? However, Reddit users suggest treating Connected expenses as regular business expenses like paying for the email marketing tool to work as an email marketer.

Bonus tip: Don’t rely on Upwork alone

Let’s get one thing straight: Upwork is a bid-style content mill, which implies you can’t rely on it as a source of stable income — even if you’re experienced in the niche. Such platforms offer rock-bottom prices and require investing in promotion just to get a single crappy gig — let alone the unreliable bidding system. 

And, unfortunately, changing the content mill won’t resolve the core problem — that’s just how mills work. For example, Fiverr users are struggling too:

Here’s what else to do to throw off the Upwork yoke and get your first freelance clients elsewhere:

• Send cold emails. Surprisingly, it’s still quite an effective way to get noticed — and I’m saying that from my actual personal experience. To make it work, send emails to a small segment of companies in the niche that’s very close to your prior experience, write very personalized messages to each of your potential clients, and include links to similar completed projects so your proposal has more weight.
• Do online networking. It’s especially vital for freelancers working in the B2B sector — LinkedIn can do a lot for you! By the way, the Solowise blog has an expert-reviewed guide on how to get clients on LinkedIn — check it out!
• Work on your social media presence. It’s particularly relevant to those working in creative and visual-focused fields — illustrators, designers, video editors, and so on. The clients that will actually pay you well are not looking for a, let’s say, wedding photographer on Upwork — they’re casually scrolling Reels or searching on Google. So, if you know how to get clients from Instagram, life will be a lot easier for you.
• Create a portfolio on a separate page. You might not feel like becoming a full-time blogger — and that’s okay. Not everyone needs a “personal brand”, and you can do well without one. However, some online presence will come in handy. It depends on your niche but you can benefit from a business card website or a portfolio built on a niche-specific platform like Behance, Dribbble, and so on. Even a simple page made in Notion can help!
• Go offline. With LinkedIn and stuff, it’s easy to forget how to talk to people in the real world. Meanwhile, in some industries, going to offline conferences and other business events can help you a lot with connections and further projects.

Wrapping up

While Upwork is not the place that will help you make ends meet, it can work as a starting point for your freelance career. Let’s do a little recap and remember how to get more clients on this platform as a newbie with little to no history:

• Match your job title to client offers and use Upwork’s “specialized profiles” if you want to monetize several skills on the platform.
• Narrow down your niche so you compete not with the entire market but its segment.
• Write good proposals — keep them short and relevant, suggest ideas for the project, and don’t treat them like a regular cover letter for a full-time position.
• Underbid at first — we get it, it’s not a good practice, but when you have no reputation on the platform, this will help you land your first orders.
• Get more reviews — simply ask your clients for them without being too pushy about it.
• Invest in Connects — treat it like a business operation expense.

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