How I Make Money on Upwork.com

Upwork.com is a freelance hiring website that lets you earn money uh…at home, with just an internet connection.
Currently, I use it to make all my money.
Friends often ask, “How does it work?” and I type them a slapdash response on Facebook Messanger. So I decided to write one really good response and send that instead.
Benefits of Upwork:
(skip to the next section if you know what Upwork is already)
Upwork posts jobs in a variety of niches — I choose “Writing and Editing”, but there’s tons of “Programming” and “Data Entry” and probably other stuff you know how to do that I do not know how to do. Jobs get posted all day. Even in my low-traffic niche, it’s about a post per hour.
What sets Upwork apart from Craiglist is they insure you receive every client’s payment. This is huge. It’s hard to get ripped off on Upwork and it hasn’t happened to me (yet). When a client hires a freelancer, they deposit all the money to Upwork; Upwork holds that money until the client says you completed the work. The freelancer gets paid one week after finishing the job. If you submit the work, you get paid. If the client refuses to pay you, just submit a Help Ticket (more below) and tell them the situation. As long as you completed the agreed upon contract, Upwork will side with you.
Contrast that with Craiglist: you’re just working for some dude over email, hoping he’s honest and if he’s not — guess what buddy, you just wrote 25,000 words of hot and horny werewolf erotica for FREE! Finding out you got ripped off is a very demoralizing. Upwork solves this problem.
What’s the catch? They earn a commission on all of your jobs.
Before you get your money, Upwork takes a percentage of that money. The percentage is calculated depending on how much you’ve earned with the contractor. For the first $500 you earn, Upwork takes a 20% commission. Then, from $501–$9,999, Upwork takes a 10% commission. After you’ve billed $10k to a client, Upwork only takes a 5% commission.
Notice the logic here: Upwork incentivize freelancers to work with the same contractors over and over so other freelancers have opportunities to get the new jobs. The problem is, for low-billing gigs, it can take a while to reach $500. Jobs like these are perfect for freelancers, but sometimes you won’t make $500 in an entire year with a client. Maybe they’ll solve this problem, but for my purposes, I no longer apply to write short stories and just skip straight to novels — guaranteeing that by the second job, we’re down to just 10% commission.
The takeaway tip: once you’re established, look for jobs that make you more than $500.
How to Get Ghostwriting Jobs on Upwork
Since I’ve only done writing jobs on the platform, I only have authority to speak about how to get those — but I have a sneaking suspicion that the skill is transferable to other niches.
Obviously, step one is ,make an account. Once you do that, fill in all the details. Attach clips. Write a nice profile. Pretend it’s Linked-In 2.
Then — and this is important — take the basic skills exams. They’re incredibly easy but do well, score high, and work fast. Accuracy, speed, and percentile of answerers are all assessed. Without these tests you will get zero jobs because there’s a toggle to screen out people who didn’t take the tests.
This take an entire day. That’s fine. Take a break and come back.
Back? Awesome! Now look at the available jobs and see which ones you can do well. I write good fiction. I prioritize fiction jobs because those are the ones I do best.
Once you figure out which one you think you’ll be good at and then scour the search engine for them. Save searches with the best search terms for your niche. For example: I saved “sci-fi” “science fiction” “fantasy” “romance” “crime” “fiction” “novel” “ebook” and “short story.” Use the Save Search button early, then the feed shows you jobs you’d be interested in forever more.
Keep in mind: when you fav/heart/❤ a job, it saves that specific job by moving it to the Saved Jobs tab. You’ll use that tab a lot, too, but it is entirely different from the Save Search tab.
Proposals
Once you find a job, you must submit a bid and proposal for every job. There is no auto-apply option.