What is the best way to attract customers to my Upwork profile?

Attract customers.

Make them chase you.

It’s great that you want to attract customers on Upwork and not always work to go out and get them.
In marketing - this is called the “pull” process instead of a “push” - you want to make your Upwork profile a “Pull” for clients. You want to tap into the hidden economy of Upwork where you get invited for jobs instead of applying to jobs.

That said, it’s a great journey getting to that stage where you have your favorite clients reaching out to you - making the whole process more easier, getting paid right and working with people you want to really work for. Sounds good? Read on.

So - let me give you some thoughts on reaching there and 1 bonus hack that you can go and try right now!

Here are some steps you need to get started in your journey:

1. Define your IDEAL client - be very detailed in your description and as narrow a field as possible. Basically, pick a narrow niche for your work
2. Define the PROBLEMS that they face with respect to your work and niche.
3. Define the RESULT you will give them.

All the above 3 steps require significant research on what your work is, what your profitable niche is, who your clients are, how exactly will you add value to their lives and much more.

Your profile should not be about YOU. 99% of freelancer profiles are about themselves. Big mistake!

A client does not give 2 cents about who YOU are. They want to know how YOU can HELP them & SOLVE their problems. So, your profile - should not be another resume or about you at all - talk about your clients problems, how you will solve them and give them the results that they want.

So research, iterate, take action. And enjoy the results.

As an example, you can check my profile where I have followed the above method. Pro Tip: Add “testimonials” also on your profile when you have them.

Finally, the quick hack that you can use right now!

Hack:

Decide your Profile Title using “Keyword research”

To search for freelancers, clients search using specific keywords. What if you know the keyword your ideal client uses?

Go to your upwork profile and use the “Search for freelancers” option to search for your field of work and you will see an “upwork suggestion dropdown” come down while searching (like google suggest). The words showing up are being searched well and above in a serial order. If nothing shows up - it has no search volume. Find the most optimum, use it, test your profile for 2–4 weeks & keep testing till you get the best fit.

Eg: My specialization is “Data visualization” and I build executive dashboards for business owners so that they can take “Data-driven decisions. So – I did some research by “Search for freelancers” option with some ideas. “data visualization” and “Data analyst” were clearly much more searched than “Data scientist” - so I made some changes accordingly.

Old Title - Data scientist
New Title – Data analyst & Data visualization expert

Result:
Profile views went up 30-50% over last 2 weeks.
Invites: 5-6/week over last 2 weeks.

These are two metrics you should track after and before the change of Title. Clearly, my rankings have increased for some types of keywords & visibility increased to the clients I exactly wanted to talk/work with.

Test the hack and main process and let me know how it goes.