- There's something a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with
a lot, and that is trying to do too many things themselves.
This is something I wrestled with for a long time,
and I still do to some extent, but I tell you
the issue got a lot better once I realized
there are some incredible online platforms
that make it very, very easy for you to get
access to people all over the world who can
help you with all kinds of different issues.
And the one I wanna talk to you
about today is called Upwork.
Upwork is an online platform that gives you access
to contractors and freelancers all over the world,
and whether you need to build a website or design
a logo or sort through a complicated Excel file
or get some SEO work done on your website
to generate more traffic, I mean you name it,
there's pretty much an expert for everything out there.
And Upwork is a little bit more pricey, but I have found
that the people I've hired on Upwork have been a lot more
reliable and just consistently delivered high quality.
Whereas with some of the other options out there,
it may be a little bit more hit or miss.
I actually have some internet entrepreneur friends
with companies that employ 40 people,
but the funny thing is every single one
of these employees are not actually employees.
They're just individual contractors
they found through Upwork.
And they just hired a person for one job
just to kinda test him out and see
how good of a job they did,
and when they found competent people,
they just continued to use those people
over and over and over again on a daily basis.
And they handle the payment through Upwork's platform,
and they're never actually their employees so they don't
have to make a long-term commitment to these people,
but for all intents and purposes, as long as they
keep performing, they'll keep hiring them.
And they've worked with certain people for years.
I just thought that was a really cool solution,
especially if you're somebody who is still kinda
in the startup phase, and you don't quite have the budget
to make a long-term commitment to an employee just yet,
but you do need ongoing help and you're looking for
the best help you can get at the best price.
And just based on my experience with Upwork,
I think it could be perfect for that kind thing.
And what I wanna do in this video here today
is just give you a quick tour of Upwork's system
and show you how it works and just how simple it is to use,
and I think you'll see what I mean.
It's a really nice platform, and you don't have
to be made of money to start hiring people.
You can get a lot of really good
help for a really good price.
And just so you know, I do not have any
kinda affiliate relationship with Upwork,
I'm not making money from this,
I just wanna make you aware of a really good solution
out there that has done a lot of good for me, and I think
it could probably do a lot of good for you, too.
So let's dive in.
Okay, so when you first get to the Upwork website,
you're gonna see a page that looks something like this,
and there's a couple ways that
you can get started finding help.
One way would just be to start browsing right here,
and you can basically find the area
of expertise you're looking for.
Let's say, for example, if I'm looking
for a virtual assistant, I can click here,
and I can just start going through some of these profiles
and figuring out what kinds of experts are out there,
what kind of VA expertise is available for hire immediately,
but usually when I'm using Upwork, what I do
is I just log into my account and I post my job,
and then I have people bid on my job, and then
I can basically choose from whoever bids on it
and find the best help at the best price that way.
So if you don't have an Upwork account yet,
all you gotta do is go up here where it says Sign Up,
and then if you're in my situation
where you're like a business owner
and you're looking to hire some help,
you would go over here and say,
"I want to hire a freelancer."
And then if you have your own company,
you would click this one here and fill out
all your company information and your personal information,
or if you're just an individual and you just
wanna sign up that way, you could do it this way.
In my case, I've got a company,
so I'm gonna do it like this.
And then once that's in, I'll just click
this checkbox right here and say Get Started.
And then just like I showed you before,
if we wanted to go and search for some freelancers manually,
we could do it that way, and all we'd have
to do is start narrowing down the category
and the specific type of work we're looking for.
So let's say if I had a legal document
that I wanted somebody to rearrange or rewrite for me,
I could go ahead and click on this right here,
and then in terms of Any Job Success,
that basically just means that the person's track record
of being able to deliver what customers want for them.
So obviously, the higher success rate,
the better you're gonna get in theory.
So we'll click that, and then Any Hourly Rate,
this is really just based on your budget
and how much you're willing to pay per hour.
As you can see here, this price is quite a bit less
than what you would normally pay for just
a standard attorney in the United States.
I mean I've seen prices up to $600 an hour for attorneys.
So $60 an hour is quite a bit better.
It just kind of illustrates how much less expensive
it is to work with freelancers internationally.
So anyway, with that said, I'm going
to do this a different way, actually.
Typically, when I'm looking for help on Upwork,
I post the job like this, so I'll go ahead and do that.
I've used Upwork for a ton of different stuff in the past,
like creating websites, designing logos,
creating complicated submission forms,
doing SEO work, finding Microsoft Excel specialists
to reorganize and rearrange my Excel files,
I mean, all kinds of stuff.
And I've had pretty good success with all of it.
So just to show an example of what you could post here,
I'm gonna say in this example I'm looking for somebody
who can help me create a video marketing piece
for a piece of real estate that I'm trying to sell.
And I'm gonna include this video in my property listing.
So if that's the kind of work I was looking for,
I would go ahead and click on this, and then
I would go down to Design & Creative and probably click
on Video Production, and then I'd say something like,
"Video Marketing Needed for Real Estate Listing."
And then I'd go on to describe
further what I'm talking about.
So I'm saying, "I have a real estate listing
"that requires a video marketing element.
"I'm looking for an experienced specialist
"who can help me showcase this property's
"features using images and video footage,
"which I will provide, and Google Earth."
And then in this kinda example, if I've ever created
a video like this in the past, or say,
if I've found a video for somebody else's property listing
and I really liked it and I wanted my video
to look kinda like theirs, I might include a link
to that YouTube video or wherever that video is hosted.
Or even if I had the actual video file,
I could go ahead and attach it here like this.
The nice thing about Upwork is that it gives you,
I think it's up to 5,000 characters to describe
what you're talking about, so you can get very,
very specific and talk at great length about
what it is you're looking for, and attach
files just to eliminate any confusion about
what it is you're hoping to accomplish.
And that will help people understand what you want,
and then you'll get the right kinds of price quotes
and the right kinds of people bidding on your project.
People who actually know how to do what you want.
So by all means, the more descriptive you can be
and the more clarity you can add to this kind of posting,
the better results you're likely to get.
This is a pretty brief description because
it's a pretty straightforward project,
but I have had things in the past,
like when I was creating websites and that kinda thing
where this was much longer and more in-depth,
so just keep that in mind.
And then what type of project do you have,
this is gonna be a one-time project.
And how many freelancers do you need to hire for this job,
I've only ever hired one freelancer at a time,
that's almost always the one that I'm doing,
and then enter skills needed,
as you can see, this one is optional.
In this case, say for example, if there was
a specific video editing software
that I know they would need to use,
I might include that in here,
so I could say "Adobe Premiere" or "Camtasia",
something like that, or "Final Cut Pro X".
Basically, if you know there's
a specific skill that they need to have,
you could go ahead and put that in there.
So for example, if you were putting together
a WordPress website, you could say "WordPress" like that.
You kinda get the idea, but again that's totally optional.
And then how would you like to pay,
every single time I've ever hired somebody,
I've always paid a fixed price just because
I just get a lot of comfort in knowing
what the project is gonna cost me rather than
just having somebody run up a huge bill.
So that's how I always do it, but obviously, you have
an option to pay them by the hour if you'd rather do that.
Which could of course work in your favor
if they end up completing the project
a lot faster than you thought they would've.
So just keep that in mind.
And then Desired Experience Level,
usually what I do is I click Intermediate or even Expert.
If it's like a really simple project
that I know does not take a lot of expertise,
then I might do this one, but nine times out of 10,
I'm doing at least Intermediate, if not Expert.
And then for Budget, for this kind thing,
I might say $100 or maybe $200, something like that.
And keep in mind, that doesn't
necessarily mean you're gonna spend $200.
It's just telling any freelancer who bids on your project,
you're telling them, "Hey, I have $200 to spend on this.
"So if you're planning to put in a bid for $1,000,
"don't even bother because I'm not looking at those."
And the funny thing is, I've actually had a number
of instances on UpWork where I've put my number in there
and people still put in bids for higher.
I don't really know why that happens,
but for whatever it's worth, if you want
to just communicate what your limit is,
that's your opportunity to do that.
And then Freelancer Preferences, you can say
whether you want anyone to apply for the job
or only UpWork users, or only freelancers I've invited.
So if there's three specific people on UpWork
that you've worked with in the past
and you only want them to see it,
then you could pick this bottom one.
I'm just checking this top one,
maybe this second one down here.
If I did have a specific freelancer in mind,
I would typically just reach out to them directly,
I wouldn't even bother with this.
And Preferred Qualifications, this is sort of
another place where you can add clarity to what types
of experts you want bidding on this project,
or if there's a particular location
you want them to be from, you could do that.
Maybe if you only want people in your country
or in certain countries to bid on your project.
And then English Level, this is one I could see
as being fairly important because I know I have hired
some people through UpWork where their English was like,
eh, it wasn't great, but we could get by.
So I would say I would want somebody to be fluent.
Again, that's kinda up to you.
I don't think it's like a deal killer necessarily,
but I know that's been a sumbling block for me in the past,
or really just more of an annoyance.
It doesn't mean I can't get the job done, but it does
kinda get in the way when you can't communicate
with ease with the person you're working with.
And then Screening Questions, if you wanted to add some
specific question here, if it's a really job-specific
issue that you wanna know about, you could do that here.
I've never really done this,
but you can obviously do that if you want.
And then Cover Letter, if you don't add any questions,
then they're just gonna automatically tell everybody
to include a cover letter when they submit their bid.
So once that's done, you can go ahead and click Preview
and just get the overview of what you are asking for.
If everything looks good,
you can just go ahead and click Post Job.
And then once that email address is verified,
it's basically gonna take at least a few hours
before you start getting lots and lots of bids.
So what I'm gonna do here, I'm recording this right now at
10 in the morning, I'm gonna come back later this afternoon
and we will take a look at what kinds of bids we've got,
and we'll just kinda get an idea
for what types of contractors and freelancers
are interested in doing this work for us.
So I'll be back here in just a second.
Okay, so it's literally just been one hour.
I was planning on having to wait a little bit longer
than this, but it's been one hour and I've already
got 11 applicants here for this project.
So let's go ahead and click on these
and just take a look at what we have available.
And as you can see here, some of the prices
we're seeing, $100 all the way up to $250.
Now we can click on Show More, get some other options here,
and really, in terms of deciding
who you wanna work with here,
probably the things that I would be looking at
are their experience and maybe their portfolio of work
just to get an idea for what types
of other projects they have worked on in the past.
We can take a look at this guy right here,
we see some of his experience,
get a look at some of his past reviews
from other people who have worked with him.
Looks like he's got a pretty good track record.
This is his portfolio here.
Not really seeing a lot of video stuff,
so I guess that might be one determination
that might make me say no to this guy,
simply because it looks like a lot of his other stuff
is more like images, not necessarily video,
and that's probably why his quote
is only for $100, not $200, 'cause perhaps
he's just not as experienced in this area.
And this is all just purely me guessing
based on what I'm seeing here.
So we can go ahead and click on,
let's check out this guy here.
Let's scroll down here a little bit.
So let's go ahead and click on this.
So it looks like this is just a list of some
of the previous videos that he's made for other clients.
So let's just go ahead and click on this one,
see what this looks like.
(inspirational music)
So as you can see, it looks like
it's pretty good-quality work.
It's not exactly the kind of video that I'm trying to do,
but it at least gives me an idea
for the kinds of quality this person's capable of,
so I guess that's somewhat helpful.
And again, this probably would've been more helpful
if I had a specific example that I wanted my video
to look like that I could've shown, 'cause then
I may have gotten more targeted bids from people
who do exactly what I'm trying to do.
Again, it's only been an hour since I posted this,
so we could always go back and check out
some other people as well.
Now let's check out this one here.
And let's see, looks like this person's
from the good old US of A.
Let's check out her YouTube channel,
see if there's anything good here.
Here we go, this looks like some
more specific real estate stuff.
(inspirational music)
- [Woman] These are exquisite truss beams
that are underlit with accent lighting,
so that you can create mood and ambiance...
- [Seth] Nice, okay.
So this particular person looks like they kinda have
experience doing pretty much exactly
what I'm trying to do, and granted
I would have to provide this kinda footage to her,
I'm guessing she wouldn't come
out to my property and shoot this.
I'd have to kinda provide it,
and then she would put it all together.
But that's just a really good example of,
all I have to do is take a look through a person's
demo reel, or some of their previous videos,
and get an idea for what they can do.
Let's take a look at this other one here.
(Latin music)
Okay, now what we're seeing here is like drone footage.
I don't even have a drone, so I couldn't provide this.
Basically, any footage that I would have of the property,
whether it's me just walking through it or if I
hired somebody from a site like WeGoLook
to go through and take some video footage for me,
I could send basically everything I've got to this person,
and they would splice it all together and add
these fancy little things at the bottom.
Anyway, it just kinda gives you an idea.
Honestly, I would be very interested in working with
this person just because, from the few seconds I've spent
looking at their information, it looks pretty much
in line with the type of video I'm trying to create.
I don't see a lot of stuff with Google Earth in here,
but that may not necessarily be a deal breaker.
Again, I could look at other people,
but it really just gives you an idea
for the kinds of price ranges you'll see here and the types
of talent that will come out and bid on your project.
And it really gives you just
a nice selection to choose from,
and a lot of information that you can look at,
understand who you're hiring before you hire them.
And just to kinda give you an idea for
what the communication process looks like,
I'm gonna show you the back-and-forth discussion that I had
with a freelancer from UpWork just a few months ago when
they were creating a submission form for my website.
I'll kinda show you what that looks like.
So this guy put together a submission form for me
for a total of $60, that was 'cause it was originally $50
but I tipped him an extra 10 when it was all done.
Let's take a look at our messages back-and-forth,
just so we can kinda get an idea for what we talked about.
And as you can see, it's really just a lot of back-and-forth
between me and him, and it's all in writing.
I never actually talked to this guy verbally once,
it was just purely in this type of written format,
and we could send files to and from each other,
but it was really a good experience,
he did a really good job,
he was a very good communicator, and I'm still
using the form he created on my site to this day.
So it's been a really good fit,
and it was only $50, $60 for me to do this.
And first of all, I never could've done this on my own.
I just don't have the skills needed to do it.
And even if I did, it probably would've taken me
way longer, and just in terms of the cost of my time,
it would've been crazy how much more it would cost
if I just tried to do this all on my own.
So anyway, hopefully that's a helpful overview
of how UpWork works, and if you're having any issues
with projects that you just don't know
how to pull off on your own, I wouldn't hesitate
for a second to go and check out this website.
I know it's been really helpful for me,
and it can probably be really helpful for you, too.
And again, I'm not an affiliate of UpWork in any way,
so I'm not making any money from this.
I just wanna make you aware
of a really good service out there.
So that's pretty much all I have to say about that.
Hopefully you found that helpful,
and hopefully I'll see you again soon.