Just think. It is genuinely possible to make a living online. You might struggle to live on your online earnings alone for a while, but you can gradually build up your online income to the point where you can say goodbye to your dreary day job or welfare benefit.
I wrote in my last post about What is the Online Freelance Marketplace? The best known of the online marketplaces is Upwork.
This article is the first of three posts helping you to set yourself up and get your first Upwork gig. The first thing you will need to do is to set up your Upwork account.
Getting Started
When you first arrive at the Upwork Home screen, you will notice that it is mainly targeted at businesses wanting to contract freelancers. But, at the top of the screen, you will see a Become a Freelancer button. Click on that to begin the process to set up your Upwork account.
It will take you to a How it Works page, with tabs for If You’re Hiring, If You’re Freelancing and FAQs. If you want to, you can have a good read on the If You’re Freelancing tab (the default) which tells you all the benefits of signing up as an Upwork freelancer.
One of the critical pieces of information provided on this page are the service fees. You need to remember these when you pitch for gigs. You do have to share your earnings with Upwork. The percentage you have to share depends on how much work you perform for a particular client. You have to pay Upwork
- 20% of the first $500 billed to a client
- 10% of billings of between $500.01 and $10,000 to a client
- 5% of billings greater than $10,000.
Assuming you are happy enough with what you see and want to continue this process you should next click the Become a Freelancer button towards the bottom of the page.
Signing Up
You are now ready to start the sign-up process. As I already have an Upwork account, for this article I will set up a new account in the name of Andy Loader.
Enter your name and email address. This flagged my use of a Gmail address, but it still let me continue.
The form then asks you for your country and whether you want to hire somebody or work as a freelancer. It also asks you to confirm you agree to their terms and conditions and whether you (optionally) will accept emails from Upwork. On the same screen, you also have to set a password.
Once you have chosen to Work as a Freelancer, they additionally ask you for a Username and then ask you to enter a Captcha to show that you are human.
Upwork then asks you to check your email to verify that it is genuine.
Find the email they send you and click on the enclosed link. The first thing they ask you to do is to log in again. You initially see a Thankyou you are verified screen (it flashed by and I was unable to make a screenshot).
This takes you to the screen where you start to build your Profile.
I will continue how to set up your profile in my next post – part 2 of the Creating an Upwork Account trilogy. In that post, I will continue showing you how to set up your Upwork account.