How Long Does It Take To Make Money on Upwork?

When I started freelancing back in 2011, it only took me How I Went From ‘Hello World’ to My First Freelance Client in 1 Monthone month to find my first paying client after I started learning web development.

Is that still doable? If you’re already experienced, then I’d say you can certainly find work within a month. If you’re a total beginner like I was, I doubt it. It’s a different world these days, for many reasons:

Tech has grown exponentially more complex.
AI is everywhere, from project descriptions to client messages to Upwork’s own algorithm.
There are more competitors.
The job market has changed.

Still, there’s no reason to despair. If you follow the principles below, you can make money on Upwork. It might take a little more time. You may need to invest a little more money. But you can do it.

How long do freelancers take to find their first client?

Through my teaching and consulting work, I’ve had a chance to talk to a lot of up-and-coming freelancers. Here are some recent examples.

A web developer who wanted to transition to technical writing took a full two months to find writing work. But, once he found work and got good reviews, he was able to find new clients quickly. In 2022, he tried freelancing to make money on the side. He failed. He told me that freelancing full-time is far easier. Focus matters.

An experienced full-stack developer found his first Upwork job in just four days. He spent $50 on Connects to be able to send more proposals. He received three responses from prospective clients and closed one deal for $75/hour. Ask him how to make a lot of money on Upwork and he’ll tell you to be good at what you do and present it with confidence.

A beginner web developer learned full-time for six weeks before starting to apply to projects. Once he started, he found a part-time project paying $18/hour within two weeks. Not much, but it’s still more than the wages in his country. I’m happy to say that my article on How To Make Money on Upwork With No Experiencehow to make money on Upwork with no experience helped him greatly.

For every freelancer who succeeds on Upwork, at least 10 fail. But, nearly all failure comes from not being persistent or adaptable.

The rules for finding your first client on Upwork

The experiences of many freelancers can be summed up into the following five rules:

The more experienced you are, the faster you’ll find work.
The more you’re willing to invest, the faster you’ll find work.
The more you can afford to be patient, the better paid that work will be.
The only certain way to fail is to give up.
The quality of your writing (your initial proposal, your client communication, your persuasion skills, your negotiation skills) is important in every case.

Keep these in mind if you want to make money on Upwork. It’s important to understand the difference between things you can influence (such as how you write proposals) and the things you can’t (such as how much experience you have at the moment).

Improve the things you can influence, persevere through the rest.

Strategies to grow your earnings faster

There are two things I regret about my first years on Upwork:

I didn’t build trustworthiness outside the platform (through a portfolio, a personal website, and a social media presence). While it’s forbidden to send external links to Upwork clients, you better believe they will Google you anyway. Control what they find on Google.
I didn’t pursue reviews and referrals aggressively enough. If a client didn’t leave a review on Upwork, I just went on as if nothing happened. Meanwhile, I was losing out on business through lower conversions and lower rankings in the Upwork search.

Build trustworthiness on and off Upwork. Make your Upwork profile as great as possible. Update it regularly. Build a website with a portfolio. Have at least one social network and share (fairly) professional content. Provide ways for people to reach out to you. You never know who’s reading.

Writing proposals to get clients on Upwork is good. But when clients start approaching you, that’s when your freelance business becomes really robust.

If a client doesn’t leave an Upwork review, ask them for one. After they leave a review, ask them for a testimonial you can put on your website.

If you work within a certain industry or niche, ask them for referrals. Do they have colleagues or partners who need similar services?

Upsell to existing clients. If you built a great landing page for someone, suggest building an online store. If you wrote four blog posts for them, suggest taking over their social media copywriting. The possibilities are endless. Two things are certain:

An existing client is more likely to hire you again than a new client.
It is easier to increase your rates with existing clients than with new clients.

Can you make money on Upwork without any of the above? Yes, but it will take longer to get the first client, and then it will take longer to grow your earnings.

Understanding the Upwork bidding system

Every successful businessman understands how taxes work, how much he pays for certain services, and the ROI on every investment.

As a freelancer, you are a business of one. If you choose to use Upwork as a service, you should have a grasp of how bidding works so you can leverage the system as best you can.

The Upwork bidding system uses Connects. Connects are essentially tokens that freelancers use to submit proposals. Each proposal requires a certain number of Connects, normally between 2 and 6. As a Basic user, you get 10 free Connects per month and can optionally buy more.

This system is marketed as an effort to reduce application volume while preserving quality. In reality, of course, it is a way for Upwork to force freelancers and agencies to spend money on more Connects. Agencies in particular are huge spenders because they have to send enough proposals to find work for all their subcontractors. But this doesn’t concern us right now.

What concerns us is the bidding system. You can increase the number of Connects in your bid so your proposal would show up top of the list for clients.

How should you use this system? Follow these principles:

Invest in Connects. You can buy 100 Connects for $15, then use them to find work. Playing with only your free 10 Connects is going to be exceedingly difficult for a beginner.
Go premium. You can upgrade to Upwork Plus for $20 a month and get 100 Connects per month, plus other perks (more on this below). It used to be possible to grow your Upwork with a free account. Now, if you want to make money on Upwork, you have to spend money on Upwork. Accept this reality and move on.
Pick carefully, then bid high. This is the crucial part. Instead of dispersing your Connects across a large number of projects, spend more time filtering the perfect projects, then bid high on them so your proposal would be noticed. Forget about automation in writing. How I Write Proposals That Win As Many Freelance Clients As I WantWriting great proposals is half the battle.

Is Upwork Plus worth it?

Upwork Plus members get access to insights on competitor bids, which allows you to view what others are bidding and strategically position your proposals. This is at least as valuable as the 90 extra Connects per month.

The image above shows my current membership profile. I have many unused Connects because I haven't been looking for new work for a while, and the Connects I get every month roll over to the next.

Upwork Plus also offers features to help freelancers build and maintain a strong profile. You can keep your profile active even when taking a break, thus reducing the risk of being delisted from the platform.

You can also hide your earnings for added privacy, in case you don’t want somebody to see them (like your local tax authority, or your wife’s divorce lawyer).

I’ve written more about Upwork Plus in Is Upwork Premium Worth It?this article.

Competition on Upwork

Upwork Plus doesn’t make the competition go away. It just gives you a tactical advantage in the bidding war. You still have to outshine other freelancers: with your writing, with your profile, and with your offer. But never compete on price.

I have good news and bad news.

Bad news: competition on Upwork is more fierce, numerous, and relentless than ever.

Good news: like any other group of people, most freelancers are mediocre. They copy-paste generic proposals (or generate them with AI), leave clients waiting, don’t project desirable traits, and don’t know how to close a deal. Most freelancers either don’t get work consistently or they get underpaid work. You can outcompete them by being a better writer, better negotiator, better salesperson, and being more persistent at it all.

Conclusion

We don’t want to be like most people. We want to find great clients who pay well and we want to work on projects that allow us to grow - financially, professionally, and personally.

The first client is the most difficult. After that, with the right skills and How To Find the Best Clients on Upwork in Three Stepssmart project selection, your earnings begin to snowball.