Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel, Jennifer Marie, where I teach you how to make
money online as a work from home freelancer.
So in today's video, I'm going to talk to you all about milestones on Upwork.
And how to get paid.
If you're not familiar with Upwork, it is a platform where you can sell your freelancing
skills and services and apply to jobs for free.
I am a top rated Freelancer on Upwork and have earned over 80,000 US dollars since I
started freelancing on Upwork a few years ago.
If you want more tutorials on how to get started on up work, I have a whole playlist that I
will link you to in the description below this video.
So what are milestones?
Quite a few months ago, I received this question please can you discuss milestone payments
and how it works for freelancers.
So milestones on Upwork are used to break up a larger project into defined steps, deliverables
or payments that you and your client have agreed to.
Milestones are used in fixed price jobs.
So there are fixed price jobs and hourly rate jobs.
I have a video on the difference between these two.
But basically, an hourly rate job is one where you are using the Upwork app and getting paid
for every hour that you are working and that you are logging.
Whereas a fixed price job means for example, you tell a client, I will do this video editing
job for $200.
And they put that $200 in escrow and then release that money.
Once the job is completed, you will earn $200 Whether you spend five hours on the job or
10 hours, it doesn't matter how many hours you work, you just have to complete that job
for that price.
Milestones are funded individually and allow you as a freelancer to work through a large
project in smaller steps.
So as an example, let's say the job you have been hired to do was a two minute video creation.
And your client has decided to split this into four different milestones of $50 each,
for example, milestone one would be the storyboard.
And once you have completed Milestone One, you would submit that work for payment to
your client.
And if they're happy with the work, they will release that $50 to you.
And then you will begin Milestone Two which could be the first draft for another $50 and
milestone three, another $50.
And then finally, the final draft another $50, which would have a total fixed price
of $200.
However, this money is being released to you after each individual milestone.
So other questions I have been getting are how do you get paid with milestones?
This one was a great question.
If your client releases the funds for the milestone, will the money become available
for you to cash out for that milestone?
Or do you need to wait until you're done with the entire project to get paid at all?
So the answer to this question is no, you do not need to wait until you're done the
entire project to get paid, you will get paid for each milestone.
So even if you completed milestone one, let's say in January, and your client released the
$50.
And you didn't finish the second milestone until February or March, you would still get
that $50 It takes about a week or so for that payment to be released to you.
Because there is a five day security period which I'll talk to you about in a little bit.
I have another question here.
It says I have an issue.
The client released the milestone and then I quickly ended the contract.
I don't know if I'm going to lose my earning money and what happens to my review.
So to answer this person's question, if the client has released the milestone, and you
ended the contract afterwards, that's okay, you will still get this money.
And I'm going to show you also how you can leave a review once the contract has been
ended.
So let's look at another example of how you would get paid with milestones.
So milestones are part of fixed price contracts on Upwork.
When you accept an offer for a fixed price contract, the client will place funds into
escrow when they set up a milestone.
When you submit a milestone deliverable, the client can review the work and then release
payment.
When the client releases a milestone it will show up as pending in your account.
And Pending Payments become available to withdraw after the five day security period.
So I'm going to jump over here to my Upwork profile to show you how this works.
So I'm going to click on my jobs.
And when you do that, you can see all of my active contracts and my active milestones.
So Let's click on active milestones.
So as you can see, I'm working on this job for a client, they have put $175 into escrow
for my first and only milestone.
And if I click on that, you can see here that the budget for the job is $175.
That is how much they have put in escrow.
And then here you can see milestones paid.
So for this job, we only did one milestone.
And once I complete this, I can click submit work for payment, and submit the file for
this job.
And then they will have the opportunity to release that money to me.
But let's say we split this into, you know, two different milestones.
One was 101 was $75.
When they released, let's say, the first milestone of $100, that would appear here as $100, milestones
paid, and then we would have 75 remaining until they pay off, you know the entire budget
of $175.
Now to answer the question of the person who said, what happens to my review, once the
contract has ended, you will click on my jobs at the top here again.
And then you can scroll down to the bottom and it says ended contract feedback.
And if you have any jobs that you need to give feedback, they will appear here, then
you can click give feedback, and give your client whatever feedback rating you want.
Submit Feedback.
And because this client already wrote feedback for me, now that I have given feedback to
them, this has popped up.
If this does not pop up with the feedback that the client gave you.
That means the client has not yet provided you with feedback.
So if you want, you can message the client and say hi, now that we have finished our
job together, I was wondering if you could give me a review if you were happy with my
work.
So if a client has released funds to you and approved one of the milestones, you can see
that by clicking on reports, and it will show you the work that you have in progress.
And here under pending.
This represents the standard security hold period in which funds cannot be drawn.
So payments for fixed price milestones and bonuses have a five day security period from
the time payment is made to funds availability.
So your milestone amount will pop up here.
And it should be here in pending for about five days.
And then it will switch into available.
So you can see here I had a fixed price job and the milestone was $80.
And that is now here under available.
Now of course it depends how you get paid, I haven't set that balance is greater than
$100 will be sent every week.
And you could you know, adjust your payment settings or click Get Paid now if you want
to get paid earlier.
So again, I just want to note that oftentimes there will only be one milestone per job contract
unless you and your client have decided to work on a project in smaller segments.
So before the client sends you the job offer, you may want to discuss your terms with them.
For example, I'm working on this job for a client.
And you can see here $875 Well, this is for five different jobs that we will be working
on over a couple months.
So I only have one milestone once I complete all five jobs.
So I should have said to this client, I prefer to get paid 175 for five different milestones.
But I have worked with this client many times before, so I'm not worried about getting paid.
But again, it is something that you may want to discuss if you want to receive payments
as you are working on the project, especially if it is a larger project like this one is.
Here's another example of one of my largest clients that I've been working with for years.
And you can see that there are many different milestones all under one contract.
So once I finished Milestone One, they paid me the 250 then I started Milestone Two, and
once that was completed then milestone three and so on, and this is a client I've been
working with for quite a few years now.
Okay, so I hope that answered your questions about milestones.
If you guys are looking for more videos on Upwork make sure to check the description
below for my playlist on all of my Upwork videos.
And make sure to subscribe to Jennifer Marie for more videos on how to make money online
as a work from home freelancer.
I will see you in my next video.