How to Earn Over 700$ Hourly on Upwork: Interview with Adam Palmer

Introduction:

In this interview, Sean Jackson interviews Adam Palmer, the Freelance King, about his journey as a freelancer and how Upwork saved his life. Adam shares his experience of going from financial struggles to making over $2 million on Upwork. He emphasizes the importance of going all-in on freelancing and treating it as a career rather than a side gig. Adam also discusses the proposal process, building a strong profile, and the value of upskilling. 

Sean Jackson: Hi Adam. Let’s start off on your journey. Obviously you are well-known in the Upwork space. You’ve made over 2 million on upwork, you have a great community that follows you online. You’ve also written an amazing book that literally says ‘Upwork saved my life’. So, let’s get into the heart of it: how did upwork save your life? 

Adam Palmer: Well, I think, the more I freelance the more I hear this same story: we are in a place where we could barely afford bills and I had just gotten laid off. I was applying for jobs because I was probably a couple of weeks away from running out of unemployment from my last job.

I was in depth with different restaurants that I owned previously. My father told me that I should probably file a bankruptcy. So, I needed to figure this out and I noticed that the last couple of businesses I was working with started using Freelancers. And those freelancers were working on little tasks and earning little money per hour at first. And when I compared my skills in digital marketing, email marketing and online  business I started to think of becoming a freelancer. I quickly learned that the more social proof I could get from this system, the more authority I could build in it. 

I actually realized that many small business owners hire freelancers. I took the time to write down everything to understand this system and platform and how I can connect all the dots. So, one bright weekend I made my profile, made a video and got my first job at $45 per hour rate.

I quickly understood what the client needed and I saw that I can help him with several tasks such as editing videos, copywriting, etc. He gave me a great review. Then I realized that my laptop now serves as an ATM and I can work from anywhere. I came to the idea that if you work hard, you get a good review and you’ll give yourself a raise. And that’s how the system works. 

I was upskilling and learning this platform and getting ahead of the curve. It's because what you knew 5-10 years ago may not be something that is in demand by the client. 

Sean Jackson: Got you! So, let’s go through your journey a little bit more because as you stated you kind of went through the early phase that so many upwork freelancers went through. You started building from small but you actually took it to the next level. I want to talk about that transition a little bit because there are many types of freelancers that dabble off the side, but there are freelancers like yourself, the freelancer king, who said ‘no, I’m going to be all in on this. This is going to be my career. Not only on the education side but also as a job, I am going to do freelancing work. I’m going to make this my primary job’. So, what were the factors that led to it? 

Adam Palmer: Sure. Like I said that transition step happened early on. I think you are shooting yourself in the foot by putting your toe in the water because you are not going to get what you are searching for. You are just going to get frustrated and spend a lot of money these days because connects are expensive.

I think the determination to burn the boats and invade the island of freelancing requires you to take the job. No client, no stranger online is going to give you money unless you are all in. And what I see so often is that freelancers are not making anywhere near the client. I know so many people getting frustrated and so many people don’t do the right thing to get the jobs. 

Recently I have hired 2 freelancers out of 40 applicants. These were the two that did 2 things: proved to me that they are human and had read the job announcement, and the second, they know how to do this thing. What I want to say is that the most expensive freelancer is the one that doesn’t know what they are doing. That’s a huge fear for clients. I can say that every job that I apply to I really concentrate and show the client that I know how to solve this problem. 

Usually freelancers think that the clients are rich people and they can throw their money. It’s actually not about the money but the time, because clients want to know you can do it without taking their time and effort in understanding the project and what they need. 

Sean Jackson: Let me ask your opinion about a couple of things because you've obviously hired a lot and earned there. I’m always curious about different things in your sales process. Obviously you are trying to get their attention with a well-drafted cover letter, a powerful portfolio and profile and all the things that you teach already. But one thing is obvious: you want to call the client to take an action and respond in some way. 

So, do you like it when you can get on a phone with them via zoom and talk to them or you are more inclined to keep things via messaging? Because many people use zoom these days and they feel comfortable with it. Do you like zoom or messaging or it doesn’t really matter? 

Adam Palmer: All right. It’s mixed. I don’t love zooms. If I could avoid zooms I would put zooms into a trash can and light them on fire. I’m kind of old-school. My call-to-action has to kind of be like ‘talk to me’ because I’m charging 750$ an hour. I prefer phone calls because they save me time and while talking with a client, I can be engaged with other things and tasks simultaneously. In the case of zoom I have to pause what I'm working on, respond to the call and then continue working. 

Sean Jackson: So, how do you feel about the number of proposals that you should be sending out? It’s interesting because a lot of complaints that I’ve heard about upwork are that now they are charging connects for everything. So, should you send a lot more proposals or should you just put everything into boosting your profile? 

Adam Palmer: There is such an eclectic amount of freelancers on the platform. It really depends on what you are doing. You have to look at your business and start building it. My advice is ‘Don’t waste your connects’!. On the other hand, know that the best proposals are based on strong profiles. 

Spend time to work on your profile weekly until you put yourself in a place where you have no time to work on it. It’s like, you have the opportunity to make your store as awesome as possible. Upwork pushes people early as soon as they get on the system. 

The other thing you can do is make a client profile and hire someone to help you with thumbnails, to make your freelance profile look more organized, and more satiable. The idea is to look at your freelancing as a funnel. 

Sean Jackson: I think the proposal you send out is obviously the first two sentences that really matter because that’s what the client sees the first. But it’s reinforced by the profile strength, right? If you have a weak sentence in your profile combined with a weak first line or two in your proposal, you just have a weak presence overall. 

Adam Palmer: So, don’t expect the clients to have unlimited time. You have to make an impact quickly for the brief amount of time that they are going through it. And once they hit thumbs down you are gone forever, you are archived. 

You shouldn’t waste it by long greetings. Stay on the track. Give only the most necessary info related to the job. Once they are interested in you, they’ll go through your profile, through your portfolio and reviews. For some people it could be as easy as just selling a project catalog package. The clients want to know what the freelancer’s strategy is.

Sean Jackson: I would also like you to share a story with the audience that we talked about before. It’s about your book ‘Upwork saved my life’. And there is a funny story behind that book that you were sharing beforehand. You decided to put your experience into it and of course you needed to hire someone to help you write. Can you share that story?

Adam Palmer: Sure. Yeah, so as soon as I got started on the system I had the idea for a while. I had the blog ‘Upwork saved my life’. Writing a book is tough and I wanted some help, and where did I go for that? Upwork, of course. She was awesome and it was one of my best hires. Then we hired a person that did the art, a person that did the last editing. Everybody was on upwork. And the funny thing was that my writer became too successful on upwork by reading my book. And when I wanted to offer a new project, she had already raised her rate. 

Sean Jackson: I see that was your fault (laughing). You trained them to do it. Anyway, you have some amazing material out there. Would you share some of the things you have out there for our audience that they can consume? Because you have both an agency which is AutomateScale and then of course you have all your work out there. So, where do you want people to go and get engaged with?

Adam Palmer: Sure! If there are any clients out there we have AutomateScale which is a full digital marketing service agency. We concentrate on funnels, automation, AI, etc. 

I would assume most of the people out there are freelancers. We have a lot of different resources available at https://www.freelanceking.com/. There are a bunch of free tools that you can download in PDF if you want. 

We are growing an awesome community right now at the https://theonlineworker.com/ where we are basically putting together these different communities. We have our courses there.

I’m going to have different content creators doing individual courses about little subcategories like WordPress. It should be a great place  to learn how to up-skill, meet other freelancers, and share resources. That's kind of independent of some of the platforms. I think it’s important that we all are able to find each other and support each other. It’s helpful to have like-minded people that are able to share and grow together. 

Sean Jackson: Absolutely! Adam I can’t thank you enough for your time. Thank you for being on the show. 

Adam Palmer: Thank you Sean. It was really nice to talk to you.