Having ZERO experience is never a hindrance in starting your freelancing career. You can still be a successful freelancer even with ZERO experience. Discover how and learn some useful tips in this FB Live Session.

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And this is more directed at Upwork. We do have different online freelancing platforms like Upwork, onlinejobs.ph. We have freelancer.com, Hubstaff talent and a whole bunch of different freelancing platforms.

The problem that a lot of newbies in freelancing have been facing is that a lot of the jobs posted prefer those with experience. And if you have no experience, then you can't apply for the job, you think you're not qualified to the job. If you're an employer, just think about it, if you're hiring somebody to do your Facebook campaigns, wouldn't you choose somebody with more experience rather than somebody with less experience? If two people were applying for the job if you had a business wouldn't you choose somebody with more experience over somebody who has no experience at all?

What I'm getting at here is that if you want to get hired, if you really want to get the jobs that you're applying for on Upwork, then you have to think like an employer, you have to think, “Okay, if I was the employer, If I was the business owner, what would it take for me to hire a person with zero experience? There's a lot of question you should have in mind.

The problem with a lot of freelancers is they don't think that way. A lot of freelancers just apply through 50 different jobs, 20 different jobs making the same mistake over and over again. You apply for a job and then you don't have the experience you made a mistake and then you still didn't change your mindset, you're still going to make the same mistake if you apply to 20, 50 through a hundred to a thousand jobs. You're never gonna get hired or maybe if you're lucky you can get hired but chances are low because you're still making the same mistakes over and over again. So you have to think if I was an employer: If I was an employer looking for, let's say, a transcriptionist or a VA or a Social Media person or an SEO, what would it take for me to hire this person? 

So that's the question you have to ask yourself and the answer to that question should be guiding you in what you should be doing right. We know that competition is very tough. There are millions of freelancers, and when you apply to a job, sometimes there are 20, there are 50 other freelancers applying to the same job. 

Well, there are a couple of ways to do this and the first way that you can do this is with your profile. You have to have a strong profile, a well-written profile. The thing I see with a lot of newbie freelancers is that they say, “Oh, I'm not getting hired.” Even some of the students and in the VA Bootcamp, they say, “You know, I'm not getting hired, what am I doing wrong? I'm applying to a couple of jobs every day.” And when I look at their profile, the picture is horrible. There is very bad lighting, some have like bedroom pictures or something, there's a wrong grammar in their profile and it's not very clear. Do your best if you're trying to succeed. If you're trying to earn P50,000 a month and you don't have a professional picture, your profile has multiple grammar mistakes, you're not using proper punctuation, then put in some effort. A lot of people are complaining but they don't put in the effort so you should put in the effort in your profile. When it comes to your profile, if you're a newbie, you should use sales techniques and sales tactics. That's important when you're applying to an online job, even if you're applying to jobs face to face. I went to one of my first jobs, well my first job is working in Greenwich, I had to go to an interview, I worked in Intellicare, Convergys I went to an interview, I went to a final interview but in every point, every interview, every single job you apply to, every single Upwork job you apply to, you are selling yourself. You're selling your skills, you're selling your capabilities so you have to learn basic sales skills. When you write your profile, you should be using sales techniques and sales language.

You spend your time writing your cover letter to that job and the thing that you have to do is you have to stand out. Just imagine the scenario once again, step into the client's shoes, step into the employer's shoes. Think, there are 20 people applying to this job and what will make you choose this specific person and if you're thinking how can I capture a client's attention,  that's one thing. How can you stand out from everybody else even if you have no hours work, even if you have no job success score? How can you stand out compared to all the other people that are applying? How can you beat the competition? 

My number one advice here is that try not to apply to jobs that have 50 other freelancers because your chances of getting hired is much lower. If you see a job that only has five people applying or less, then you can apply to those, not for the ones with like 50 plus other freelancers especially if you're new, just don't do it. Your chances of getting hired can be very low. When you do apply to jobs and what I tell my students in the courses that I teach in the VA Bootcamp is that you should apply to a job, you know, “One job per day”, that's my advice. Maybe you can have like two if you want but one job a day and you apply to it properly.

Another important thing that I that I've personally used is when you don't have experience and a client wants to see your work, wants to see your experience, you create your own experience. What does that mean? For example, if you're a newbie web designer, you just learned web design, you know how to do WordPress, HTML things like that. You're very new, you haven't created, you say I can create a website, you wanna apply to website jobs but you don't have any clients you worked with. Well, create your own experience and what I mean by that is work on dummy websites, work on demo websites and then you can add these to your portfolio. If you have your own website, you can add this your website. If you have an Upwork profile, you can add this to the portfolio section of your Upwork profile and this shows clients that even though you don't have actual experience working for clients, they can see your portfolio and if you do a good job they can get impressed. So, create your own experience. I've also done this. I've personally created my own experience.

There are other jobs platforms that I didn’t have any experience like zero hours worked but I was still able to charge $100 per hour because in my portfolio section I say, 'this is what I have done, this is what I've created.' And if you're a newbie you don't have any actual work experience you can create your own experience, take screenshots pretend that the dummy website you work on is a website for a client. 

You don't need to be a website designer to do this. You can do this if you're a virtual assistant. If you're good with Excel, if you know how to do pivot tables and charts and data analysis you can create your own portfolio, add it to your portfolio and in your profile, you can say, I have experience creating pivot tables, data analysis charts and so on. If you're a transcriptionist, transcribe something. Transcribe a video.

This is very common, I see a lot of newbies who are applying for transcription jobs who don't have experience and they don't even have any portfolio, don't have any samples of any work they've done. Now, if I am an employer and you don't have experience plus you don't have any samples of work you've done. I'm probably not going to hire you. 

If you are a writer, create your own writing samples. You can't be a writer, apply for jobs and then not show your clients any writing samples. So, create your own experience, create your own portfolio. That's the thing I want to focus on more today is that when you say you don't have experience, create your own experience and saying you can do this to your client saying,‘’I have experience.”If you don't have any clients yet and you're applying for website design jobs, you create 50 websites on your own just for practice, then you do have experience creating websites, okay. And this can be applied to almost any job out there. If you don't have any writing experience, write 50 blog articles just for practice and then do show them to a client that you do have experience. So create your own experiences.

And lastly, in your cover letters and proposals, you should be using sales skills as well. Sales skills are very important. Like I said you’re always selling yourself. And keep things short and simple when you're writing your cover letters. In the Philippines, we're taught like in high school and college to make very long essays and things like that but when you're writing cover letters they should be short, you're talking to it, just think like if you were an employer what would you want the cover letter to look like.

There are two things that I want you to keep from this Facebook live session: 

• • 1. Put yourself in the client’s shoes, stop just applying to multiple jobs but think, what would it take for a client to hire me? 
    2.  If you don't have experience, create your own experience, create your own portfolio. That's what a lot of newbies have done and they've been successful doing that and lastly, study sales skills. Apply sales skills in your cover letter, in your profile. So that when you apply to jobs, you can stand out compared to other freelancers applying to the same job.

Q&A Highlights

What if I'm not fluent in speaking English, but I can understand English?

Well, it looks like you're pretty comfortable writing in English. You were able to write this question properly and it's grammatically correct but there's some punctuation problems and you're not writing a cover letter, you're just writing a Facebook comment but you can write and you don't need to have perfect spoken English to be able to succeed when you're freelancing.  In fact, written English is more important for most clients because most clients maybe will talk to you once or one a month but all the other time, they'll be chatting with you. They’ll be asking you questions via typing so if you can type in English decently, then you should be okay. You shouldn't have a problem. Don't let your English stop you. Don't make it an excuse as to why you're not applying for work and there are some free software tools out there to help you with your grammar. There are Grammarly and a couple of other software. So if you need help with grammar, maybe you need to study grammar a bit more. Don't make it an excuse as to why you are not applying.

If I’ll apply for the complete package, can I have it done not on a consecutive day basis? Very Interested though. 

 If you sign up for the VA Bootcamp, you get access immediately to it so on day 1, you can watch everything in one day if you want if you're crazy but I don't think anybody has that kind of time but you can watch it. I know some students have been taking it over six months because they have full-time work, they’re moms, they don't have time to really take it so they take maybe one lesson a week or something and they’ve been taking it for a very long time and they can review it again because it's lifetime access. They can go back, they can do it for maybe a year from now, they want to review the lessons they go back. So you have access to all the lessons you can watch them anytime and you can review them anytime like in the future so if you forget something you can always go back.

Do you have any labeled template for the cover letter and profile?

I do have a format in my VA Bootcamp, Accelerated Course, and Successful Freelancer Course, I do have templates for cover letters and profiles but you'd have to enroll to get my own templates and the stuff that will guide you. It's not word-for-word stuff that I teach because I don't believe in teaching word-for-word. I believe that you have to understand the principles and if you understand the format on how a cover letter and how a profile should be written then, you can apply it over and over again in different scenarios. So it's not word for word but it is in the VA Accelerated and Complete Courses but we do have some cover letters on the blog. Jason Dumana shared these cover letters. I did a dissection of that on the blog.  I'm waiting for some, a couple of other friends to send me their cover letters. They said they would come but they're busy also so I don't blame them but a couple of others have said they're going to share their cover letters and I'm going to share them on the blog as well and then just dissect them, go over these different sections. My advice for profiles, there are lots of profiles out there. You can check out. Upwork profiles are mostly public, so you can look at successful freelancers. Look at their profiles.

Can you expound on the 3^rd principle about sales you mentioned earlier if we’re new in this freelancing business.

 So, what I talked about with sales is that you have to remember, you're always selling yourself. You're always selling yourself to clients, when you're applying to jobs, you're always selling your capabilities and what you can do. And there are so many different sales marketing principles that you can apply when you're writing your cover letters.

One book I can recommend probably is “Influenced” by Robert Cialdini. It's not a very long book but it can help out. It might be a little bit advanced and there are like copywriting books. If you learn to copywrite because that's what you're doing you're selling yourself via writing so that's considered copywriting so if you read copywriting books like from Joe Sugarman and the like, the “Boron Letters” are very interesting there's a story and then they teach you copywriting stuff then you can learn sales principles from those but you're always selling yourself.

 Even if you apply to jobs you know, in SM or something you're selling yourself because you're telling SM that you should choose me over these other candidates. You're always selling yourself when you talk to people, you're always selling yourself. So, learn sales principles and apply them in your everyday life.

What would be the relevant samples that I can show in my profile if I'm trying to get a VA job in Upwork? I uploaded some excel file via JPEG as a sample. I know it's not enough, however, I don't have any idea.

So look at the job you're applying to and then the stuff that they're asking for. Because some jobs they ask you to do social media, some jobs they absolutely do excel some jobs you ask to manage email. There are a wide variety of jobs so look at the job you're applying to and that's the kind of portfolio, that's the kind of sample that you should create. Like if all you're applying to are social media jobs create like 20 different social media, maybe 10 different social media portfolio items and that would look nice. So relevant to the job you're applying to. Look at the jobs you're applying to first and then create the samples.

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