Our first million rubles on upwork - personal experience
Some time ago I already wrote a post about how my team and I discovered an upwork exchange for projects.
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 upwork by my agency. Of course, this is not much at the present time, but for our team it was a good help in the post-crisis year, not to mention a unique experience.
We are often asked about the features of the agency’s work on 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 are most often asked of us.
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Was it difficult to promote the agency to upwork? Not. The same marketing laws apply in the Western market as in the Russian, 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 in some way stereotyped, as if copied from the Western marketing textbooks in the features of their behavior.
Again, everything is relative. At one time, in order to reach customers of a similar scale on the Russian market, we invested incomparably more efforts in marketing. At the apvork, we only needed to correctly fill in the agency’s profile and contractor profiles once and, of course, to work on our English.
How many customers have we found on the apvork? We found 13 clients there. On average, one per month. The specifics of our team’s activities are such that at the same time we, in principle, cannot lead more than 10 clients, about once or twice 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 apvork we found quite a few interesting clients for us with an interesting wallet volume.
How many interviews per month does our agency have? On average, per month, I, as an agent, talk to interviews with 10-15th 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 perspective 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 and all write the same letter: “Hello! We are ready to help you! ”Occasionally I add:“ We are certified like this and have great / huge / enormous experience in implementing and customizing the system of such and such ”. 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 those potential clients whom we are really ready to help. On average, in a month I send 5-10 letters, in the first months I sent about 20-30. Now most of our interviews happen on the initiative of potential clients.
I think many freelancers and agents crucify for nothing and talk about what kind of gun they have when a client needs to shoot one sparrow out of a slingshot. It is necessary to correlate the adequacy of the response to the project description and the level of the client. And it is better to write dry and short, without giving the client complete information about you, than to give out information that can frighten, rather than attract. And Western customers are frightened by what they call an "overclocking". They do not want to overpay for a specialist qualification unnecessary for their project and if it seems to them that your qualification is higher than necessary, they will think that they overpay regardless of your real rate, and if they think the rate is low for your qualification, then they are and will not trust you.
Does niche choice matter? Choosing a niche is our everything. They often say to me: “everything went so smoothly on your upwork, because there are few competitors in your niche”. However, I myself came up with a niche when I checked in at the apvork. I studied the demand, examined the offer, and chose positioning for us in the 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 expiration of time, this niche in the Russian and Western markets 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 once engaged in a completely different activity.
Coming up with a niche and positioning - this is what I advise the organizers of agencies to do upwork. To write that you are experts in php or c # is not a niche positioning. A niche is a customer problem that you are ready to solve. Our niche, for example, is the automation of client business processes. Our client is a client 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 this is the problem we help our clients to solve. We often offer automation tools ourselves, and to the customer, by and large, it doesn’t matter what kind of tools they are. However, clients often come to us precisely for the tool with which we work - the good of it is now actively PR in the West.
Are Western clients different from Russian? Yes, and very significant. First, they are positive and tolerant. So much so that it seems like charm and hypocrisy. But the more I communicate with Western clients, the more I come to the conclusion that this is not hypocrisy, but sincere breadth of the 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 theirs - 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 phoning and not to come to it, without warning, at least a day. They appreciate the time of the contractor, really appreciate.
An interesting case: once a client approached us on an upwork, and we entered into a fixed price contract for a certain amount, which had to include 9 hours of consultations on the CRM system we are implementing. Having received 5 hours of consultations, the client came to the conclusion that he did not want to implement this system in himself and, accordingly, the need for us as potential implementers had disappeared from him. What would a Russian client do in this case? Well, it’s not hard to imagine options. I, in general, having learned about this situation, mentally said goodbye to this client, and did not count on money for 5 consultations. I decided for myself that this will be considered an unfortunate presale. However, the client warmly thanked us for spending our time on him, for how fully provided him with information about this system, for how much time and nerves saved him in the end, wrote us a laudatory review, paid for the full amount of the project , closed the contract and left.
Do I need to work on upwork spoken English, or enough written? In our niche - yes, we need conversational. In any case, the task is set in writing - we do not take on tasks assigned only orally. But all clients want to call, at least for an initial acquaintance, and also like when we call up with them at the acceptance stage so that they can quickly show us some kind of bug.
Spoken English is still our weak spot - the only limiter, because of which at the moment our customers are 75% of the number, all the same they are customers from the Russian market. But we are working on it. Constant practice with native speakers helps a lot.
How is work with clients from other time zones built? I immediately at the first interview warn that we work from 9 to 18 in Moscow, and I am personally in touch from 9 am to 9 pm in Moscow, and that no more than once a week we can make a general conference call not earlier than 8 am Moscow and no later than 10 pm Moscow time. It is convenient for us, and our western clients have to put up with it. Those who refused to work with us for precisely this reason did not exist (or did not confess). And to some extent the fact that we work when they sleep is even better, especially when we need to tweak a system in which they are already actively working and which should not be unavailable during their working hours.
Of course, it can be difficult if on the same day you need to call early in the morning with clients from Australia, and late in the evening - with clients from the USA. Therefore, for us, priority customers are customers from Europe, with which our time zones differ slightly. It is them that we try to attract when looking for clients outside of upwork.
How, working on upwork, attract customers past upwork, without breaking the rules of upwork?
Until recently, it was very easy. The upwork profile is perfectly indexed by Google (if you don’t set it up in the settings so that it cannot be seen by unregistered users). In the upwork profile it was possible to place a link to your website or page with contact information. Potential customers 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 settlement account in the bank, because, as I wrote above, I never hid your taxes no western client will go for anything). Approximately the same number of English-speaking clients came to us in this way as directly through upwork. I worked on SEO-optimization of the profiles of our profiles, and they are on the 2nd page of Google issue on our target request.
At the moment, the rules of upwork prohibit the placement of links to personal sites with contact information, and links that were previously placed in profiles are hidden. (Very sorry).
Another option to attract Western customers, which effectively showed itself in our niche, is targeted advertising on Facebook. We started an English-language Facebook page, where we occasionally post cases, on the page - a link to our profile aprovka, so that potential customers can read eulogistic reviews about us. We buy targeting ads 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 customer life cycle.
In general, not the gods burn pots. Those who still have not tried to withdraw their team on the upwork I advise you to try. At a minimum, you will meet interesting, literate and positive people and a different culture.
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 upwork by my agency. Of course, this is not much at the present time, but for our team it was a good help in the post-crisis year, not to mention a unique experience.
We are often asked about the features of the agency’s work on 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 are most often asked of us.
')
Was it difficult to promote the agency to upwork? Not. The same marketing laws apply in the Western market as in the Russian, 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 in some way stereotyped, as if copied from the Western marketing textbooks in the features of their behavior.
Again, everything is relative. At one time, in order to reach customers of a similar scale on the Russian market, we invested incomparably more efforts in marketing. At the apvork, we only needed to correctly fill in the agency’s profile and contractor profiles once and, of course, to work on our English.
How many customers have we found on the apvork? We found 13 clients there. On average, one per month. The specifics of our team’s activities are such that at the same time we, in principle, cannot lead more than 10 clients, about once or twice 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 apvork we found quite a few interesting clients for us with an interesting wallet volume.
How many interviews per month does our agency have? On average, per month, I, as an agent, talk to interviews with 10-15th 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 perspective 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 and all write the same letter: “Hello! We are ready to help you! ”Occasionally I add:“ We are certified like this and have great / huge / enormous experience in implementing and customizing the system of such and such ”. 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 those potential clients whom we are really ready to help. On average, in a month I send 5-10 letters, in the first months I sent about 20-30. Now most of our interviews happen on the initiative of potential clients.
I think many freelancers and agents crucify for nothing and talk about what kind of gun they have when a client needs to shoot one sparrow out of a slingshot. It is necessary to correlate the adequacy of the response to the project description and the level of the client. And it is better to write dry and short, without giving the client complete information about you, than to give out information that can frighten, rather than attract. And Western customers are frightened by what they call an "overclocking". They do not want to overpay for a specialist qualification unnecessary for their project and if it seems to them that your qualification is higher than necessary, they will think that they overpay regardless of your real rate, and if they think the rate is low for your qualification, then they are and will not trust you.
Does niche choice matter? Choosing a niche is our everything. They often say to me: “everything went so smoothly on your upwork, because there are few competitors in your niche”. However, I myself came up with a niche when I checked in at the apvork. I studied the demand, examined the offer, and chose positioning for us in the 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 expiration of time, this niche in the Russian and Western markets 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 once engaged in a completely different activity.
Coming up with a niche and positioning - this is what I advise the organizers of agencies to do upwork. To write that you are experts in php or c # is not a niche positioning. A niche is a customer problem that you are ready to solve. Our niche, for example, is the automation of client business processes. Our client is a client 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 this is the problem we help our clients to solve. We often offer automation tools ourselves, and to the customer, by and large, it doesn’t matter what kind of tools they are. However, clients often come to us precisely for the tool with which we work - the good of it is now actively PR in the West.
Are Western clients different from Russian? Yes, and very significant. First, they are positive and tolerant. So much so that it seems like charm and hypocrisy. But the more I communicate with Western clients, the more I come to the conclusion that this is not hypocrisy, but sincere breadth of the 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 theirs - 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 phoning and not to come to it, without warning, at least a day. They appreciate the time of the contractor, really appreciate.
An interesting case: once a client approached us on an upwork, and we entered into a fixed price contract for a certain amount, which had to include 9 hours of consultations on the CRM system we are implementing. Having received 5 hours of consultations, the client came to the conclusion that he did not want to implement this system in himself and, accordingly, the need for us as potential implementers had disappeared from him. What would a Russian client do in this case? Well, it’s not hard to imagine options. I, in general, having learned about this situation, mentally said goodbye to this client, and did not count on money for 5 consultations. I decided for myself that this will be considered an unfortunate presale. However, the client warmly thanked us for spending our time on him, for how fully provided him with information about this system, for how much time and nerves saved him in the end, wrote us a laudatory review, paid for the full amount of the project , closed the contract and left.
Do I need to work on upwork spoken English, or enough written? In our niche - yes, we need conversational. In any case, the task is set in writing - we do not take on tasks assigned only orally. But all clients want to call, at least for an initial acquaintance, and also like when we call up with them at the acceptance stage so that they can quickly show us some kind of bug.
Spoken English is still our weak spot - the only limiter, because of which at the moment our customers are 75% of the number, all the same they are customers from the Russian market. But we are working on it. Constant practice with native speakers helps a lot.
How is work with clients from other time zones built? I immediately at the first interview warn that we work from 9 to 18 in Moscow, and I am personally in touch from 9 am to 9 pm in Moscow, and that no more than once a week we can make a general conference call not earlier than 8 am Moscow and no later than 10 pm Moscow time. It is convenient for us, and our western clients have to put up with it. Those who refused to work with us for precisely this reason did not exist (or did not confess). And to some extent the fact that we work when they sleep is even better, especially when we need to tweak a system in which they are already actively working and which should not be unavailable during their working hours.
Of course, it can be difficult if on the same day you need to call early in the morning with clients from Australia, and late in the evening - with clients from the USA. Therefore, for us, priority customers are customers from Europe, with which our time zones differ slightly. It is them that we try to attract when looking for clients outside of upwork.
How, working on upwork, attract customers past upwork, without breaking the rules of upwork?
Until recently, it was very easy. The upwork profile is perfectly indexed by Google (if you don’t set it up in the settings so that it cannot be seen by unregistered users). In the upwork profile it was possible to place a link to your website or page with contact information. Potential customers 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 settlement account in the bank, because, as I wrote above, I never hid your taxes no western client will go for anything). Approximately the same number of English-speaking clients came to us in this way as directly through upwork. I worked on SEO-optimization of the profiles of our profiles, and they are on the 2nd page of Google issue on our target request.
At the moment, the rules of upwork prohibit the placement of links to personal sites with contact information, and links that were previously placed in profiles are hidden. (Very sorry).
Another option to attract Western customers, which effectively showed itself in our niche, is targeted advertising on Facebook. We started an English-language Facebook page, where we occasionally post cases, on the page - a link to our profile aprovka, so that potential customers can read eulogistic reviews about us. We buy targeting ads 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 customer life cycle.
In general, not the gods burn pots. Those who still have not tried to withdraw their team on the upwork I advise you to try. At a minimum, you will meet interesting, literate and positive people and a different culture.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/310856/
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