How to Get Higher Paying Clients on Upwork
Do you keep getting low paying clients and aren’t sure how to break free of that? Here are some things you need to think about.
Many beginner freelancers give up because they set up a profile on Upwork, start applying to jobs and the only bites they get are from clients looking for cheap work. When they realize they can’t compete with freelancers in other countries with $10/hour rates, they quit.
But I can tell you first-hand that there are a LOT of high paying clients on Upwork as well. There are many many many 6-7 figure freelancers on Upwork working with large brands.
So how do you break the ceiling that you’ve been stuck at?
Let’s pretend you’ve been freelancing for a few months already, or maybe a year or more, and you have a lot of skill in the service you’re selling. Maybe you’re a really good graphic designer but you never get invites to the higher paying jobs, or you never hear back from jobs you apply to. Maybe you’ve been earning $30/hour and would love to earn $75.
First, you need to change your hourly rate on your profile.
If you think you’re worth more, don’t think that a lower rate makes you more competitive. Many clients deliberately ignore freelancers who have rates under a certain amount because they assume it’ll be low quality work.
Higher rates give the impression of higher value BUT your portfolio and past experience needs to justify it. Because if you don’t have any proof that you’re worth $75/hour when the client digs further into your profile, then it’s going to be harder to convince someone to pay you that.
So here are some things you need to build out, to support a higher rate:
A strong portfolio proving that your work is good.
If you’re providing a visual product like a video or logo designs, include your best work.
Testimonials from past clients.
If you’re new to Upwork and don’t have many reviews yet, find testimonials from past clients or anyone willing to defend your work and get a quote from that and put it on a web page or a PDF and then attach that to every proposal you write.
Good testimonials are key to being able to attract higher paying clients. Those clients will look past you if you don’t have any past clients giving you a good review.
A portfolio that is results oriented as much as possible.
Don’t just say you’ve created 100 videos, say your 100 videos have led to over $100,000 in revenue for small businesses.
What IMPACT did your work have on your client’s business? And if you don’t have those numbers, ask your past clients and going forward make sure to track that data.
Because then you easily pitch a higher rate and even pitch flat rates much easier because you can tell them that this video will cost $1,000 and then show them that with a past client you did a similar video for it helped increase their leads by 50% or it directly brought in $5,000 in sales.
Now that $1,000 investment seems much more doable when the client sees the path to the return on their investment. High paid freelancers always focus on the results their work has on a client’s business, not just getting the task done.
This is where you need to get savvy with how business works. You need to do this for your own business to start, but too many freelancers don’t take themselves seriously as a business and they don’t seek to understand what business owners care about.
If you can really understand what your CEO client wants, then he or she will be much more likely to hire you because you get the bigger picture, you’re not just showing up to make a video or write a blog post and get paid and leave.
You know how your work can grow their business. That’s the only reason they’re hiring you. They don’t care about just having a video made, they want to grow their business and impact more people.
When I get on a sales call with potential clients, the main thing I focus on is figuring out their business goals behind why they want to start a YouTube channel or start creating videos for social media.
Why do they want that? What’s the end goal?
And when they talk about it, I relate and I understand their business goal behind it and they can see that and it helps me stand out against the freelancer who is just pitching their service but doesn’t see how it connects to growing that client’s business.
So watch videos about business. Even if you never intend to grow your business beyond a one-person-show, you need to understand the type of business your target client is trying to grow so you can get in their head and understand their motives.
So that’s your quick but very important tip for today.
If you want to get higher paying clients on Upwork or just in general from anywhere else you must
Have a strong portfolio of examples of your best work,
Have positive testimonials from past clients or anyone who has benefited from your work even if it wasn’t paid, and
Approach your sales conversations talking mostly about the impact your work has on businesses and how they can have the best results.
If you have tips to share on how to get higher paying clients or have questions about your own situation trying to get better clients, let me know and I’ll continue to create more content for you!