MAKING YOUR PROFILE
- Write your profile in English
- Be truthful
- Do not inflate your skills or experience (if you can’t back it up, clients will not trust it)
- Your profile is one of your most important tools as a freelancer on Upwork
- It’s a place for you to show your skills and accomplishments
- A great profile helps you stand out to potential clients and boosts your chances of winning jobs
- Profile photo – professional, plain background, clear face
- List 2-3 skills in the Title, using straight line between keywords (i.e., Translator | English | French)
- Write 3-4 compelling paragraphs for the Summary with a focus on the first sentence because it appears in the client search
- Utilize all skill tags – used by Upwork algorithm when filtering (research the skill tags clients are using to search for talent)
- Add a Portfolio to demonstrate your knowledge and skills
- Demonstrate your skills and convey your expertise with certifications
- Set competitive rates, start low (but not too low) to build client success (research the rates of other freelancers doing similar work)
- Showcase all your skills, certifications, projects, testimonials, and professional experience to get maximum invites
- Optimize your profile with a professional profile picture, relevant experience, skills, projects, and past client testimonials
- Set your profile to Public
- Note that Upwork may change a profile to Private if:
- You’re an established freelancer and don’t earn money on Upwork for a period of two years or more
- You’re a new freelancer and don’t earn money on Upwork within 90 days of your first proposal, or you choose not to submit a proposal within your first 90 days
- New freelancers have a 90-day grace period to build up a successful stream of work before the profile visibility restriction begins
- You can still submit proposals even if your profile is private — you just won’t appear in search results
- Freelancer Plus membership is never set to private
- You can try to request that your Profile be reset to Public at https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003975967?request=t_private_profile
UPLOAD PROFILE PHOTO
- Profile pictures are small, so it’s important to have the face taking up a good portion of the frame.
- First things to try:
- Crop the photo to include only head and shoulders.
- Check the size of the photo.
- At least 250 x 250 pixels
- No more than 4000 x 4000 pixels
- Accepted extensions: .jpeg, .png
- Max size is 5 MB
- Choose a simple background
- Make sure that it’s a clear photo of yourself, and your face is clearly visible
- If you still can’t upload it, try clearing your cache and cookies and using a different browser
- https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016252373-Build-Your-Profile-Essential-Items
- https://www.upwork.com/resources/how-to-guide-perfect-profile-picture
HOW TO CREATE A SPECIALIZED PROFILE
- https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013750068-Create-a-Specialized-Profile#:~:text=You%20have%20the%20option%20to,look%20to%20clients%2C%20select%20View.
- You can create up to two specialized profiles in addition to your general profile
- According to Upwork, having a couple of specialized profiles can result in an average of 30% more job invitations
- Specialized profiles help clients find you and review your relevant experience
- Make it easier for Upwork to match you with more relevant projects
Specialized profiles allow you to:
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- Show off your expertise
- Optimize your profiles for multiple skill categories
- See jobs on your timeline that apply to you