Watched a guy go from $0 to $6k a month in 8 months on Upwork

I follow this freelancer in Atlanta who started with zero reviews. He took $20 crappy data entry jobs for 3 months straight. Built up a portfolio of 50+ jobs. Then switched to offering SEO audits at $400 each. Now he's turning down work. Has anyone else seen the slow grind actually pay off better than quick wins?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas.river8d ago

Yeah right, like the rest of us have eight months to eat nothing but ramen and stare at spreadsheets for twenty bucks a pop. That guy must have a savings account or a rich relative because most people would have quit after the first month of formatting PDFs for some random dude. I'm sure his "SEO audits" are just telling people to use more keywords too.

mason_murray88d ago

Man @lee.cora nailed it honestly, but here's the thing nobody's saying - these "mentors" are just building their own portfolio off your time while you're too tired to notice you're doing the actual work for free. You think he'd pass along his actual client contacts or just the grunt work?

lee.cora8d ago

PREACH it @thomas.river, that is EXACTLY what I was thinking. I tried that whole "grind it out" thing for like two months once for a guy who paid me 15 bucks an hour to rename his Dropbox files. I was eating gas station sandwiches and crying in my car by week three. He acted like he was teaching me business secrets, but really he just wanted someone to fix his mismatched fonts for free. I swear those "SEO audits" are just copy-paste from a 2015 blog post about meta tags. People love to talk about "investing in yourself" but they forget that rent doesn't care about your side hustle.