Strategies to Survive Competition on Upwork

[Nomad]

The first freelancing site I joined was Upwork (it was called odesk back then). The first job I got on Upwork was through a recommendation from a friend who was doing well on Upwork. She referred me to an employer. For a couple of years, I was fairly successful on Upwork and it was my number one source of online income.
Do you work on upwork, what strategies are you using to survive the competition?

 

[Grant]

I tried Upwork out a while back, I didn't like that you had to essentially lower your prices to even have a chance of matching with someone. I maybe had like one order on the site before I moved back to a site like Fiverr before ultimately taking my work off of there too. I think in order to be successful on upwork, you have to be willing to take jobs for less sometimes. The more work you put in, the better your ratings will be I'm sure. But for me, it's something that didn't work out for me, so I moved on.

But, if you have a talent that you can see making you lots of money, I say go for it, see what it's like and go from there.

 

[Nomad]

That's true, you will have to bid on a low price in the hope of getting accepted by the employer. When I was active on upwork, I have even written an ebook for just $30. But sometimes you also get good clients if you have a lot of positive reviews, for example, I once got article contract for $60.