Speaker 1: So it is currently 4 47 a.m. I can't really fall asleep so I'm gonna do some work. I don't think a lot of people know what it's like to work so hard. You fall asleep at your desk even though you have a bed like right there. you might be more skilled or more talented than me you might be smarter than me but you're not gonna outwork me. Alright so big video today I'm gonna talk about what it's like to have a $40,000 profile on Upwork. I was kind of hesitant to kind of show my profile in my YouTube videos I guess for privacy reasons but I realized that my profile is public anyways and if you go on Upwork and literally just search up my name you can probably find me so I I thought just why not? It'll help me create a lot more content. Okay, so this is my Upwork. I'm using Safari right now because for some reason I can't log into Upwork on my Chrome. I messaged Upwork about it. They haven't responded yet, so I'm just waiting for that. But yeah, this is my page. Before I get into it, I want to reiterate that I'm not doing this to brag in any way or show off. I'm doing this because I want to show people that I'm not special in any way. I knew nothing, just like everybody else. I started from zero just like everybody else. And I got to here in a couple months. So this should, I'm doing this just to educate, to inform, maybe to inspire some people who wanna get started. All right, so in this video, I'm gonna talk about what it's like to have a $40,000 profile, and also some things that I've learned along the way. If you go on Upwork and just literally type in the search bar, like social media manager, I didn't even notice until I did this, but it's pretty cool. Oh, if you go to talent instead of jobs and type social media manager Like I'm literally the first guy to pop up like that's that's me. I Don't know if this is just on my profile But I went on my friends accounts and type the same thing and I showed up I'm either the top one or two or three so I think that's pretty cool. This is pretty much what my profile looks like My job score is only 83% so I'm kind of working on getting that back up again I'm still learning these things. I'm not perfect in any way a lot of people have higher job success scores than me But yeah, $40,000 in total earnings 81 jobs Like almost almost 1,600 hours worked. I have 27 jobs in progress These are some of the reviews my work So one of the best things I found of having a high earnings profile over time is this part right here. So if I go to my notifications you see this received an invitation, received an invitation, March 6th, received an invitation, March 6th, received an invitation, received an invitation, this is all still March 6th, received an invitation, March 5th, invitation, I could go down the list, invitation, invitation, invitation. Now a lot of people are like doing outreach on Upwork and that costs money to do which it cost connects but when you receive an invitation from a client it's free to apply so I could literally apply to the same job that you're applying to but I do it for free it doesn't cost connects to apply to a job where you received an invitation okay so another cool thing is not only am I receiving these you know invitations daily I'm also receiving direct messages so invitations are for people who want me to apply to their job but some clients don't even have jobs up and they just send me messages directly like every day you'll see that like I'm getting messages from people literally just this one sent me a job but and also I'm getting offers like I didn't I didn't apply to this yet I need to ask him to send some more details but I'm literally just getting offers no I didn't even get on a sales call I don't know who this is they just sent me an offer for 40 hours a week limit $15 an hour this person I need to respond but just sent me a message telling me that they want to work with me this person sent me an offer right away this person literally just sent me an offer sent me a direct message no outreach no response no proposals no cover letter no nothing yet this person's like a beauty queen pageant of Miss Colorado yes sent me a a direct message saying, hey, I want you to apply to my job or hey, can you help me out and hop on a call with, they're literally just asking me to hop on a call without me doing anything. I literally wake up and I get like five messages and then three invites to jobs. Like this, I need to respond. This person just reached out to me with some like research that they wanna do and they want to pay me for a 30, 45 minute interview. Like I'm just getting these messages daily. So like, look at this person right here. He says, hi, my name is Kristen. Hi, Thomas, my name is Kristen. I am the marketing director here at Lawyer.com. We saw your portfolio, we were so excited. Would you be willing to do a one-off project? Blah, blah, blah. It'll be a video edit. More details to come if you're interested. Let me know, can't wait to work with you. And I didn't respond yet, I need to respond, but there's literally not a warmer client than you can get with this. Like, this is the warmest possible call that I can get on with. It's gonna be so hard for me to mess up on the sales call with this person. I can literally just send them, or just send them a message saying, yeah, I'd love to work with you, let's hop on a call. We get on the call, like they're pretty much already sold. Look at this message. We saw your portfolio, we were so excited. Let me know, can't wait to work with you. How much warmer can you get? Like when I do outreach or when I'm responding to DMs, I talk to people like they're human and I'm human as well. I try not to sound like a bot. I try not to be too salesy. Just keep it simple. Talk like a normal human. I think that'll get you a lot farther. So I think that's one of the biggest benefits of having a high earnings profile is I'm not having to, even though I have a pretty low or not that high job success score, I'm not having to do as much outreach as I normally did. Some days I just don't even do it because I already applied to 10 jobs for free And I already booked multiple calls with these people. But yeah, I would say the most important thing if you're just starting out, have a good bio and have a good work portfolio. Again, I was hesitant to kind of share my profile because I was worried, I guess, of people copying me and stuff like that. But I realized that even if you were to just check out, first of all, like my profile is completely public. So my YouTube channel is literally named Thomas M and this is my upward name. But even if you were, I recommend just, like, don't copy what I have, okay? Because even if you do, let's say you do, you're a brand new upward profile, you just copy word for word what I have and whatever, and a client were to look at your profile and then look at my profile, they see that we both have the same exact bio, right? What are they gonna think? They're gonna think that you copied me. They're not gonna think that I copied you. It's gonna be, you know, the other way around. It's not gonna do you any good. I guess you can take this and kind of use it to, use it as kind of like a base to come up with your own, but come up with your own. Make your bio unique, make it stand out. Use other people, don't just use mine. Look at other social media managers' bio and see what they're doing. But this is what I found works for me. This is, I mean, you can take a look some of the content that I created and that I have in my portfolio but um yeah those are I guess the two more most important things the bio and then the portfolio all of the messages that I get the DMS that I get are from people who say that they checked out my profile and they love my bio what I said in the bio or they love they checked out my portfolio and love my work so yeah those things are very important you want to make sure that you're spending a lot of time on this. Another thing that I learned is the importance of reviews. When I first started out I didn't really take this too seriously but then I realized that it's very important and it actually matters. So my recommendation is try to get reviews from clients. It's important to really just ask the client for reviews. All you have to do is just literally ask the client hey or tell the client hey do you think you could take some time out of your day to leave me some feedback it'll mean a lot and most of the time they'll be okay with it if you did a good job and even just getting like one review is super important for your profile like a profile with zero reviews and a profile with one five-star review that makes such a big difference so what I would recommend start with easy jobs start with low paying jobs offer a low cost and then be exceptional at it and then at the end of the project ask for a review get that one review and then it'll make everything else so much easier trust me. Honestly I didn't even realize that I had 40k until like a couple days ago. I think growing from 10k to 40k is a lot easier to do than from going 0 to 10k. Growing from 0 to 10k I felt like took forever and when I got to 10k honestly it was like one of the most shocking things just seeing the 10k thing on my profile i thought it was really crazy but then when i got to 20k it was like 30k 40k i didn't even realize it until a couple days ago i checked and now you know i'm not so desperate to sign every single client i focus more on you know what the client is like and what the job is like instead of you know i have to sign every single client i have to get every single job i guess which is like a positive so if there's anybody struggling with that i know what it feels like trust me it gets a lot better just stick with it make sure your employment history is related to the service you're offering whatever somebody asked me about like the certifications part i don't even have any like i don't have any testimonials i don't have any certifications um nothing it's just i don't have any linked accounts diversity certification licenses don't worry about any of that i don't really think it matters or at least for me it didn't matter so if there's anybody watching this anybody looking to get started I'm telling you like you can do it like look at me look like I'm what am I I'm a normal dude look at look at my setup look at look at my computer look at my room this is this is as normal as you can get I'm not special I'm one of the top social media managers on Upwork and look at this is me like this is I'm what is what is this I'm I'm literally just a normal dude. I didn't know anything a couple months ago about this, about Upwork. I started from nothing, I started from zero, and I built my way to being one of the top social media managers on Upwork. There is no excuse for anybody out there. I don't care what your position is, there's no excuse. I'm just a guy. If I can do it, so can everybody else. Oh, I don't know where to start, or I'm afraid of this, or I have questions about this, or I wanna know everything about this before I get into it. Oh, I'll get started tomorrow or next week or next month. Once I have this ready, I'll get started. Just don't start then. Just stay where you're at, but don't complain because I'm working. Also, if there's anybody watching that I guess wants to ask questions or anything, leave a comment. I'll answer every single comment that I see on this video or send me a Instagram DM or whatever. I'm not gonna sell you anything. I have nothing to sell. Yeah, and I have talked with some people who reached out to me on Instagram. Someone told me that they wanted me to kind of go over the portfolio, creating a good portfolio and things like that. So I guess I'll make a video on that soon, but anything other than that, yeah, if you have any questions, let me know.