10 Things I Learned From My First Year on Upwork — Part 3
This is a continuation of my article part 2(https://dpericich.medium.com/10-things-i-learned-from-my-first-year-on-upwork-cfb15429be26)
Lesson #7 — Log Descriptive Hours Every Day You Work
There are two main ways to do contract payments through Upwork: lump sum and hourly. Depending on your contracts, and the work being done, you will likely end up doing both throughout your time on Upwork. Each payment type has its benefits and drawbacks.
A fixed price contract has the upside that if the work takes less time than you expected, you get the same payment no matter what. This can push your hourly rate for a contract way up. On the other side, if a project is more complicated than you expected, you can quickly see your hourly rate plummet as you have the same payout no matter how much time you spend.
The opposite can be said for hourly billing as quick tasks will pay less while lengthier projects have bigger returns. For a contractor, hourly billing can be nicer to avoid ballooning project complexity from reducing your hourly rates to below minimum wage. Clients like fixed rate projects because these protect them from massive project price swings.
When it comes down to it, being a good contractor or client is based around open and honest communication. If you are working hourly, it is very important to provide descriptive daily logs of all your hours worked so that your client has transparency into what you are working on and how the project is progressing. Even if you tell them that the project will take longer, still log hours as your explanation with real time work logging will give them a perfect picture of how the project is progressing.
My first few hourly clients didn’t expect to see hours logged until the end of the project. We had great communication throughout the entire project and they never felt surprised by what hours I ended up logging. This changed with one client who felt blindsided when I told him I had spent more hours to complete the project than I originally expected.
I had done a number of demos with him and messaged him updates on how many hours I was estimating to complete the work after each demo, but he couldn’t piece together the progress without the work logged to his bank account. The deliverables were good and all the work was finished on time, but the client was still mad that I hadn’t done daily logs which soured the entire contract.
The moral of this story is one part of good communication for hourly contracts is to provide daily updates through the work logs. Log descriptive summaries of your work for the day and follow up with messages and demos to ensure your client is always in the loop and never feels blindsided.
Lesson #8 — Don’t Overbook Yourself
This is a tough one to hold true to, especially as you gain traction with your Upwork account. At first you will apply to dozens of jobs without getting a single reply. Once you have your first job you will be happy as you turn out a great product. One good contract leads to more as you can quickly create a profile that shouts “I’m a great contractor to work with.”
Too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. You may start doing two jobs in parallel. Then three or more. It is hard to say no to a job posting or interview request that looks too good to be true. Though it seems like a great idea, taking on too many projects at once may lead to issues in the long run.
Clients’ expectations and timelines may change over the course of a project. If you are working a single client at a time and the client needs a last minute feature or a quicker release, then you are in a good spot to accommodate them. If you have 3 clients with different timelines and a client changes their deadlines you can quickly get into a bad position.
Remember, to each of your clients, their work is the most important work and other clients don’t matter. This isn’t like working at a company where you can talk to managers who meet across teams to resolve priorities and resource disputes. There is no one to resolve timeline conflicts between your different clients.
If you find yourself between two demanding and unyielding clients then you not only risk losing further work from these clients, but also may get down graded as a contractor. This impacts puts potential future clients at risk too.
Make sure that you are setting yourself up for success. This comes in the way of setting clear deliverables with deadlines, and if a client is looser on their specifics, not overbooking yourself into a bad position.
Lesson #9 — Avoid Clients who Talk Bad About other Contractors
Whenever you are talking to a new person, whether personally, professionally or romantically, you want to make a good impression. There are certain things you can do to ensure this such as being a good listen and keeping the conversation lively. However, you can quickly drag the conversation down if your stories start having overly negative tones.
Who wants to be around someone who always has a negative outlook, or is always blaming other people for their problems? Yes, projects may be challenging and some people might not help make them easier, but if you sense there’s a common theme of every issue being caused by other people, there might be a problem with the client, not just their projects and contractors.
Whenever you have a meeting with a new client, be aware of how they describe other contractors and projects they’ve been part of. If they talk about how bad other contractors are, how the finished projects always disappoint, or that projects take longer because bad contractors require lots of rework, you may not want this client.
One of my clients went into a details about his project’s previous contractor who he had recently fired. He described issues with deadlines and disagreements about hours needed for features. This would seem normal as some people don’t agree on the difficulty or work needed to complete a project. My client clarified that he fired the contractor because he took too long and was making the project sound more complicated than it needed to be.
Knowing the project scope of moving an entire website from Rails to Node I should of realized that the client didn’t understand the magnitude of the work. He did seem to understand this project could take more time, as he told me all the quotes he had gotten had been for the same hours as the original contractor had said. These developments were red flags for me as the client was talking poorly of a previous contractor, did not understand what his projects entailed and refused to accept realistic timelines for what his work would require.
If this sounds like a contract you’re going into, think before you accept the contract. You don’t have to take every contract, and being selective of who you work with will save you a lot of headaches and ensure that you can satisfy your contractor’s project demands.
Lesson #10 — Don’t be Afraid to Stretch Yourself
Some people do Upwork for the secondary income, but this has never been my main goal. Sure, I like the extra money and I know my time and worth and will not work for less than that, but that’s not why I do this. Upwork to me is a set of opportunities to stretch myself both as an engineer and a business person.
There are so many opportunities on Upwork to try out and develop more technical skills. Maybe you’re proficient in React, but you want to learn about server side rendering with Gatsby or NextJS websites. Maybe you’re great at Ruby on Rails, but want to learn Python with Flask. Maybe you have a basic understanding of servers and the command line, but you want to develop better DevOps skills. These are all things people have work for and need contractors to do.
Beyond technical skills, Upwork is a great place to stretch and strengthen your soft skills. There are so many different contract types, deliverables and client communication styles. Maybe you have a micro managing client for one contract, followed up with someone who just wants their app working. Maybe you have clients in Europe or Asia and have to work on understanding an entirely different set of social cues. There are so many ways that you will be challenged to listen better and convey meaning in the most effective manner. It’s hard, but it helps so much.
The contracts are there and if you want to have more opportunities to develop both your soft skills and technical skills, then this is a great opportunity. I hope that you can take the lessons above and have immediate success, though your experiences may very greatly. Enter every contract and conversation with curiosity and respect and you have the world to gain.
Catch Up on Previous Sections of — 10 Things I Learned From My First Year on Upwork
Part1: https://dpericich.medium.com/10-things-i-learned-from-my-first-year-on-upwork-cfb15429be26
Part 2: https://dpericich.medium.com/10-things-i-learned-from-my-first-year-on-upwork-part-2-adc4c1e44f54
