How to find freelance jobs with NO experience on Upwork

Introduction

What’s going on in the world these days is just crazy and unbelievable. Today in this blog post I am going to tell you how to find freelance jobs. You hopefully lead a better life. I’m doing this because I want to share my experiences and things I’ve learned over the years. I want to share ideas, thoughts, and ways that can lead you to a better life. I will guide you step by step on how to find freelance jobs on Upwork with no experience. It’s the platform that I am most familiar with so that’s the best I can guide you. I’m hoping that you can learn something from this blog. It will help you find work, motivation, and hope. I will take you step by step through how to find freelance jobs with no experience.

First Things

The first thing you need to do when you go to upwork.com is tell them you are a freelancer. At the top, they have a search bar that gives you the option to choose to find jobs or find freelancers in agencies. So you need to make sure that you’ve selected find jobs this way you tell Upwork that you are a freelancer and looking to find job opportunities. You don’t need to be logged in for this exercise. You can search on Upwork even if you don’t have an account. But I do encourage you to create one because you also get more filter options if you sign in. 

Select Filter

So Once you’ve selected Find Jobs at the top the next thing you need to do is select filters. Then there are a bunch of different options for you to choose from. So in this blog, I’m going to take you through each of them one by one. I will explain why you should select some options versus others. It’ll make it easier for you to find jobs when you have no experience as a freelancer. 

Job Type

So the first thing they ask you is whether you’re looking for an hourly job or a fixed-price one. Of course, you can choose either, but my advice is that if you have no experience and you haven’t done any freelance work on upwork before you choose the fixed price filter. The reason why I’m suggesting this is because in that case whoever is looking to hire you feels a lower level of risk. They feel that they are committing less to begin that relationship and they have less to lose in case they don’t find the working relationship with you works.

So even if it’s a small fixed price I suggest you go for this option rather than going for an hourly rate. Once you get more experience you can look for jobs that allow you to work under an hourly rate and that’s great. At the beginning, if you’re new to this believe me go for the fixed price. Once you do that you will see that the hours per week section becomes grayed out. Because of course, it doesn’t make sense to select more or less than 30 hours per week.

Hours Per Week

If you were to select hourly and you don’t want to work for a fixed price then I suggest that you select less than 30 hours per week. It’ll be a lower commitment for whoever is hiring you and make it easier for them to make that commitment and go for you. 

Experience Level

Now the second selection option that you have is the experience level. Here I suggest you go for entry-level and it doesn’t have to reflect your overall experience level. You might be somebody who’s done the same type of work outside of Upwork or not as a freelancer but as an employee of a company. You might have years of experience but when you start on Upwork or any platform it’s hard to prove that experience. From the beginning, you need to do at least a few jobs to show the level of quality you can provide which in turn proves your experience level. So select entry-level under experience level even if you don’t feel that you are such a beginner you are to upwork now.

Client History

The third selection area that you get is client history. Here you have three options no hires, one to nine hires, and over ten hires. Although it might seem counterintuitive. I suggest that you select the last two options. So customers that have had other previous jobs posted on Upwork and previous experience working with freelancers. I suggest you do not select the no hires even though it might seem more intuitive. Because you think well they’re just starting as well so it’s probably easier for us to work together. They probably find it easier to trust me because they’re also new to this. 

Failure

If both of you are new, that relationship has a much higher chance of failure. That is because neither of you will be able to set the right expectations towards the other business partner. That will end up in failure. It will entail a failed collaboration because without being able to set the right expectations. Then both of you will struggle, frustrated, and displeased with the collaboration. So of course, there could be exceptions, and one or both of you might be able to set the right expectations.

Collaboration

It will be a lot easier for you to start by collaborating with somebody who’s done this before. Because they’ll know exactly what their problem is and how you can solve it. If you have all of that clarity then you will be able to help them and deliver value. They’ll appreciate your work and they probably will hire you again. So trust me on this one and go for 1 to 9 hires and 10+ hires.

Client Info

Now the next selection area is client info and it’s related to payment verification. I think it’s a no-brainer here that you need to select payment verified. Unless they do have a verified payment method that is recorded on their Upwork profile you will not get paid or maybe you will but the risk is higher. So you want to make sure that you always select payment verified. So you don’t end up in a situation where you’ve delivered your work and you cannot get paid. I think that’s a pretty straightforward one. 

Number of Proposals

The next selection area is the number of proposals. This means basically how many other freelancers have applied for that job. You want to make sure that you select as few as possible. 

Competition

You want to make sure that you apply for jobs that have as low of a competition as possible. Because when somebody who’s looking to hire a freelancer has to choose between somebody who’s brand new at this and someone who has experience then they’re very likely to choose the person with experience even though they might be slightly more expensive than you. So I suggest you go for less than five if you can maybe you can try and go for five to ten. If you do then you need a good proposal but try and stay as low as possible in terms of the number of proposals.

Budget

The last selection area is the budget and I know you probably have high expectations. I know that you want to make money or not work probably everybody does who’s there right. My suggestion is that you start with a low-budget project. You might feel that you’re wasting your time and you’re not being valued for the level of quality you’re able to deliver. You might also feel that you’re better off spending that time doing something else and that’s probably true. But if you want to start on Upwork you need to gain that credibility and that trust. Building that trust with your customer has to start small. Somebody can’t trust you and give you a $5000 project if you’re just starting. Well if you were to hire somebody who’s just starting, you would probably want to test them first or start with a smaller project. 

Conclusion

I hope you find some useful information from this blog. So my advice is that you first select a budget less than $100. Then if you don’t end up with enough jobs in the search pool you can expand that to $500. So I think there should be enough opportunities for you to find something. Make sure to share with a friend as well who might also want to get started on Upwork. Looking for freelance jobs with no experience and they need a place to start but they don’t know where so maybe this blog helps them as well. Share it broadly because I would love for more people to have the courage to start freelancing.