Graphic Designer Documents Remote Earnings

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is episode 1443. So glad you're here. Today, we're gonna talk about the path to standing out on a crowded freelancing platform.

There's a lot of people out there who are trying to freelance and they often use platforms like Upwork and others. And they sometimes have difficulty because there are so many competitors. Well, the path to standing out, this story here demonstrates it perfectly. It also demonstrates the benefits or attractions of working this way, as well as to be fair, the detriments of it, right? So the negatives.

And now last but not least, what is the effect of going from no ratings, no ratings or reviews on a platform like Upwork to having even a single positive rating? This is definitely interesting. If you are a freelancer, you're gonna take something away from this, if nothing else. So the story is about an Australian graphic design graduate who lands a freelancing gig sprucing up business and marketing reports. She then draws enough confidence to chart a full-time nomadic lifestyle.

Graphic designer documents remote earnings. That story's coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]

Cassandra Marsh spent years studying graphic design in her native Australia. She enjoyed it and was excited to enter the workforce, assuming she'd start a high flying job the moment she graduated. Unfortunately, there was no job waiting, not for another long, arduous 12 months.

So Cassandra started working at the local YMCA as a swimming teacher and vacation care leader. It wasn't quite graphic design, but it paid her bills while she continued looking for something in the field. Still, it felt discouraging. The opportunities were few and far between. And after a short while, she thought about ditching design and studying early childhood education instead.

Until a job ad in the local newspaper caught her eye. The ad described a job for someone with experience working with kids, along with an ability to design business documents. Cassandra, thinking it was such a curious mix of the two skills, applied straight away. After all, she was the ideal candidate. It turned out the job posting was an accident.

The company erroneously placed a single ad for two jobs, instead of two ads for one job each. Even so, Cassandra's mix of skills surprised them. They agreed to hire her on a freelance basis. Her task would be to take their dole business documents and redesign them so that they were off the charts. The workload was slow at first, just a couple of hours a week.

So Cassandra kept her job at the YMCA, completing the design work on the side. That is, until she decided to see the wide world. With an adventurous spirit and just that one freelance client, she quit her job and moved to Cambodia. Now, you might be wondering, how could she do that? Well, the cost of living is low in Cambodia, and Cassandra liked to live simply.

She was confident in continuing to receive work from her client and thought that could see her through. And it did, until their relationship ended up on shaky ground. For the first time in over a year, the client stopped paying Cassandra, which was, of course, concerning. To make matters worse, they were pushing her to work even more hours. If they were going to cause that much trouble, she should at least earn more money out of it.

Worst of all, though, was the feeling of her income being stripped away. It wasn't sustainable relying on only one client, so she set out to find more. And to do that, she posted a profile on Odesk, which is now called Upwork, and it promptly received very little attention. She calls it zero divided by zero attention, in fact, which seems like, you know, not very much. Sometimes Cassandra would apply for 50 jobs per week and not get a response on a single one of them.

She knew for a fact that her lack of reviews and experience combined with relatively high prices was not helping her cause. So she set about changing them. In fact, she modified the one variable she could, which was her prices. She gradually dropped her rate until she had several employers pick her up at the going price. It would mean working for peanuts, but hopefully scoring a few prize reviews after finishing the work.

And those reviews did begin to trickle in. Five stars here, another five stars there, made her profile started looking much better. That was when she figured it was the perfect time to raise her prices. She'd had a lot of experience designing business documents at this point and was confident her work was worth more. Eventually she found an equilibrium where she could charge the maximum amount possible, yet still receive responses to her bids.

Cassandra would often use a trick to lever her pricing and schedule. When really busy, she would price herself highly to justify taking on any additional work. When things were a little slower, she would drop her prices to drum up more interest. By now, she'd moved on from Cambodia, was traveling through other parts of Asia, living the digital nomadic lifestyle. She had regular clients and regular work and easily made enough money to stay afloat while adventuring.

But she knew the good times might not last forever. So once again, Cassandra looked ahead, registered a business and started a website, lakazdi.com, which is a play on her nickname, Kaz. There she could pitch her document designing services to a different audience. Over the next year or so, she added content to the website and gradually increased her visitor count. Wasn't a whole lot of traffic, it was just 20 to 30 visitors per week.

But the visitors were highly targeted, looking specifically for what Cassandra does, business document design. Between the website and her upward client stream, there's no shortage of available gigs. Due to COVID-19, she's returned to Australia for the time being, but she still has her business ready to go remote as soon as things open back up. [Music]

So here is the effect of a single positive rating on the platform Upwork. For Cassandra, once she got her first rating, just one five-star rating, she managed to go from applying to 50 jobs a week and getting no response to applying to 50 jobs and getting one or two jobs from it each week.

So all of a sudden, she's going from no work to like one or two gigs each week, just by having that single first review. So it just shows how important it is on a platform that relies on ratings and reviews that before you can really compete, you actually need to make sure you can get that review. So often what people will do is this strategy that Cassandra deployed where she worked for a lot less money than she normally would, just for the first couple of gigs because those reviews are so important. And then from there, she raised her prices. So if you're gonna be on those platforms, you absolutely need to have some reviews.

Also another interesting fact, Upwork has 12 million registered freelancers, but perhaps more importantly, it has over 5 million employers looking for workers. So more freelancers than there are companies hiring, but definitely a lot of companies hiring as well. So it is a marketplace in which you are able to compete, but be sure you have that review. All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to Cassandra's site, Upwork, anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1443. That is one, four, four, three. Take care of yourself out there and be sure to check on somebody else as well. I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.