Our first million rubles for upwork - personal experience

    Some time ago, I already wrote a post about how my team and I discovered the upwork project exchange.

    In July 2015, I organized an upwork agency, and in July 2016 I marked the first million rubles ($ 16,000 with a tail) earned by my agency on upwork. Of course, this is not much at present, but for our team it was a good help in the post-crisis year, not to mention the unique experience.



    We are often asked about the features of the agency’s work at upwork in particular, and about the features of working with Western customers in general, and in this post I would like to answer the questions that we are most often asked.

    Was it difficult to promote an agency on upwork?Not. In the western market, the same marketing laws apply as in the Russian one, with the difference that there was no economic crisis in the 14th year, customers are full, and well-fed customers who give far from the last are loyal customers. In addition, in my subjective opinion, Western customers are somewhat stereotyped, as if copied from Western marketing textbooks about their behavior.



    Again, everything is relative. At one time, in order to reach customers of a similar scale in the Russian market, we put incomparably more effort into marketing. At the upgrade, we only needed to competently fill out the agency profile and the profiles of contractors, and, of course, work on our English language.

    How many customers did we find on the upwind?We found 13 customers there. On average, one per month. The specifics of our team’s activities are such that at the same time we, in principle, cannot have more than 10 clients, about once a month one or two clients leave, and one or two come and stay with us for about a year. But that's not the point. The bottom line is that at the upkeep we found quite a few interesting clients with an interesting wallet volume.

    How many interviews does our agency have per month? On average, per month, I as an agent communicate in an interview with 10-15 potential customers with upwork. 80% of them remain dissatisfied with my level of English, and this does not upset me - I see this as a prospect for personal growth and the growth of our team. Of the remaining clients, I reject half myself for various reasons.

    What do I write in letters - responses to projects and what is their effectiveness? I always write the same letter to everyone: “Hello! We are ready to help you! ” I occasionally add: “We are certified such and such and have great / huge / colossal experience in implementing and customizing such and such a system.” The effectiveness of such letters is almost 100%. However, I write responses only to those projects that are really interesting to me and only to potential clients whom we are really ready to help. On average, I send 5-10 letters a month, in the first months I sent about 20-30. Now most of our interviews are initiated by potential customers.

    I think many freelancers and agents vainly crucify and talk about what kind of gun they have, when the client needs to shoot one sparrow from a slingshot. It is necessary to correlate the adequacy of the response to the description of the project and the level of the client. And it is better to write dryly and briefly, without giving the client full information about you, than to give out information that can frighten, but not attract. And Western customers are scared of what they call "overkvalifayd." They do not want to overpay for a specialist’s qualification that is unnecessary for their project and if they think that your qualifications are higher than necessary, they will think that they are overpaying regardless of your real rate, and if the rate in their opinion is low for your qualification, then they and they won’t trust you.

    Is Niche Choice Important?Choosing a niche is our everything. They often tell me: "everything went so smoothly for upwork because your niche has few competitors." However, I myself came up with a niche for me when I registered us for an upgrade. I studied demand, studied supply, and chose for us positioning in a niche in which at that time my personal experience was limited to one single project, made 4 years ago, and successfully forgotten, and my team had no experience in this niche at all. Now, after the lapse of time, this niche in the Russian market and in the western one has become the main one for us - we liked it, and the funny thing is: even among my close friends and colleagues, no one remembers that we were once engaged in a completely different area of ​​activity.

    To come up with a niche for yourself and positioning is what I advise the organizers of upwork agencies to do. Writing that you are specialists in php or c # is not about niche positioning. A niche is a customer problem that you are ready to solve. Our niche, for example, is the automation of customer business processes. Our customer is a customer who has a sales department. For the sales department, every second of delay in work, every extra click in the CRM system is lost money, and we are helping clients solve this problem. We often offer a tool for automation ourselves, and by and large it doesn’t matter to the client what kind of tool it is. However, often clients come to us precisely for the instrument with which we work - since it is now actively promoted in the West.

    Are Western customers different from Russian?Yes, and very significant. Firstly, they are positive and tolerant. So much so that it seems to be hypocrisy and hypocrisy. But the more I communicate with Western clients, the more I come to the conclusion that this is not hypocrisy, but a sincere breadth of soul. Secondly, they are honest. No, I do not want to say that in Russia we have to work with dishonest people. Not at all. It’s just that our Russian honesty and their - western - is honesty of a different order. For them, for example, it is unthinkable to hide taxes. It is inconceivable for them to violate pre-established rules or regulations. It is inconceivable for them to agree on a call and not come to it without warning at least a day in advance. They value the time of the contractor, really appreciate.

    An interesting case: once a client contacted us for upwork, and we entered into a fixed price contract for a certain amount, which should include 9 hours of consultations on the CRM system we are introducing. After receiving 5 hours of consultations, the client came to the conclusion that he did not want to implement this system at home and, accordingly, he no longer needed us as potential implementers. What would a Russian client do in this case? Well, it's not hard to imagine the options. In general, having learned about this situation, I mentally said goodbye to this client, and did not count on money for 5 consultations. I decided for myself that I would consider this an unsuccessful presale. However, the client cordially thanked us for the fact that we spent our time on him, for how much information was provided to him about this system, for how much time and nerves he saved as a result,

    Do you need spoken English for writing upwork or is it enough written? In our niche - yes, we need conversational. In any case, the task is set in writing - we do not take into task the tasks set only verbally. But all customers want to call, at least for an initial acquaintance, and also love when we call each other at the stage of acceptance, so that they can quickly show us some kind of bug.

    Spoken English is still our weak point - the only limiter, because of which at the moment our customers by 75% are still customers from the Russian market. But we are working on it. Constant practice with native speakers helps a lot.

    How is working with clients from other time zones built?I immediately warn in the first interview that we work from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m. in Moscow, and I am personally in touch from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in Moscow, and that no more than once a week we can make a general conference call no earlier than 8 a.m. Moscow and no later than 10 pm Moscow time. This is convenient for us, and our Western clients have to put up with this. Those who refused to work with us precisely for this reason did not exist (or did not admit). And to some extent, the fact that we work when they sleep is even better, especially when we need to adjust the system in which they are already active and which should not be inaccessible during their working hours.

    Of course, it can be difficult if on the same day you need to call Australia customers early in the morning and USA customers late in the evening. Therefore, for us, priority customers are customers from Europe, with whom our time zones differ slightly. We try to attract them when we are looking for customers outside of upwork.

    How, while working on upwork, to attract customers by upwork without breaking the rules of upwork?

    Until recently, it was very easy. The upwork profile is perfectly indexed by Google (if you did not set it in the settings so that it is not visible to unregistered users). In the upwork profile, you could place a link to your website or page with contact information. Potential clients could go to the site, contact the contractor by e-mail, and they could easily work directly with them (by opening the appropriate OKVEDs and a dollar bank account in advance, because, as I wrote above, it’s never possible to hide your taxes not a single Western client will go for anything). About as many English-speaking clients came to us in this way, as directly through upwork. I worked on the SEO-optimization of the text of our profiles, and they are on the 2nd page of Google on our target request.
    At the moment, upwork rules prohibit posting links to personal sites with contact information, and links previously posted in profiles are hidden. (Very sorry).

    Another option for attracting Western customers that has effectively proven itself in our niche is Facebook targeted advertising. We got an English-language Facebook page, where we occasionally post cases, on the page there is a link to our profile uplink so that potential customers can read laudatory reviews about us. We buy targeted advertising in English-speaking Europe for users with certain interests. It turns out about 1000r per lead - this is very cheap, given our average check, lead conversion and client’s life cycle.

    In general, it is not the gods who burn the pots. For those who still have not tried to bring their team to upwork, I advise you to try. At a minimum, you will meet interesting, competent, and positive people and a different culture.

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