Hey there, future freelancer! 👋

Welcome to the 10 Days to Paid Challenge – your step-by-step roadmap to landing your first paying client and that coveted 5-star review on Upwork.

Some links in this training may be affiliate links - consider it a way to tip for teaching you for free! I only use affiliate links for products I've used before and would genuinely recommend. (And no, Upwork isn’t one of them.)

Over the next 10 days, I'm going to walk you through EXACTLY how to set up your profile, find the right jobs, create proposals that get noticed, and turn those first clients into paying clients. No fluff, no theory, just practical action steps that get you PAID.

Before we dive in, let me make sure you're in the right place:

* Haven't figured out what freelance services to offer yet? Start with my Find Your Freelance-Ready Skills training first.

* Curious about my personal freelancing journey or why I'm so obsessed with Upwork as your starting point? Check out my challenge introduction video.

* Ready to fully commit to the 10-day challenge? Amazing! Click here to opt in and get Days 2-10 dripped into your inbox. (Not quite ready? No pressure! This link will be waiting whenever you decide to jump in.)

Remember, this challenge is designed to be DONE, not just consumed. Each day builds on the previous one, and by Day 10, you'll have everything you need to start making actual money as a freelancer.

Let's get those first dollars flowing and that first 5-star review shining on your profile! 💰⭐

Oh, and once you complete today's tasks, I'd LOVE for you to share your Minimum Viable Profile in our group chat so we can celebrate your progress! I'll personally peek at it and let you know if there are any critical tweaks needed. (Remember, we're not going for perfection here, but that headline and hook really do matter!)

Let's Get Started! Day 1: Account Setup 🚀

Alright, enough big-picture talk. Let's get to the actual action step for Day 1:

Your Task: Set Up Your Upwork Account

* Go to Upwork.com and click "Sign Up"

* If you've had an account before: Try to resurrect it instead of creating a new one (Upwork only allows one account per person, EVER)

* Follow their basic signup wizard

* IMPORTANT: When it starts asking about your professional title, skills, education, etc. — just put in the absolute bare minimum for now

* You can literally type "Test" or gibberish if needed

* Don't waste time perfecting anything yet!

* Once you have basic access to the platform, come back here

WHY AM I TELLING YOU TO HALF-ASS THIS? Because most people waste HOURS trying to perfect their profile before they understand what actually works.

We're going to build your Minimum Viable Profile next—just enough to start applying for jobs and getting results. Your profile, proposals, and portfolio will ALL be constantly upgrading as we progress through this challenge.

Remember: A mediocre profile that's actually live will make you more money than a "perfect" profile that never gets finished. ✨

Creating Your Minimum Viable Profile

Alright, let's talk about what actually matters when setting up your Upwork profile. (It's not what most beginners think!) 🔍

The Perfectionism Trap (And Why We're Avoiding It)

Listen up, fellow over-achievers and perfectionists (hello, that's me too!) – we have a tendency to keep ourselves stuck in "busy work" mode. Perfecting. Tweaking. Building samples. Creating portfolio pieces. Rewriting our profile for the MILLIONTH time.

Let's call it what it is: procrastination disguised as productivity. 💅

The hard truth? Many people won't even finish this challenge. So spending 17 hours crafting the "perfect" profile before you've even landed a job is like buying a wedding dress before you've gone on your first date.

The ONLY productivity we care about right now is getting you landing jobs. Everything else is a distraction.

Day 1 Task: Profile Research & Setup

This is a two-parter that will give you both platform familiarity AND intelligence on your future competition.

Part 1: Competitive Intelligence Gathering

* Go to Upwork and click the search bar

* Change from "Jobs" to "Talent"

* Enter keywords related to the service you want to offer

* Add these filters:

* Job Success Score: 90%+

* Earnings: $10K+

* Hours billed: 100+

Think of this as an intel mission. 🕵️‍♀️ These people are your future competition. I want you to study:

* Their profile photos (professional? casual? creative?)

* Headlines (what's grabbing attention?)

* Hooks (the first couple sentences visible in search results)

* Hourly rates (what's the range in your niche?)

* Total earnings (how much volume is possible?)

Your task: Find 5 profiles of people charging rates you'd LOVE to be charging who have billed a substantial amount through Upwork. Copy their:

* Headlines

* Hooks (first few visible sentences in the search results)

* Remaining Profile

* Rate

..into this spreadsheet for your research purposes.

Pro Tip: If you struggle to find 5 solid profiles, that's valuable feedback! It might mean:

* Your search was too specialized (zoom out a level)

* The niche has lower rates than you hoped (try a related category)

* There's not much volume in that specific niche

You should have pages of results even after applying filters. If not, broaden your search.

Part 2: AI-Assisted Profile Creation

ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/Claude (my personal favorite for writing): https://claude.ai/Perplexity (AI search engine that also does pretty good copywriting, math, and formulas): https://www.perplexity.ai/Emojipedia: https://emojipedia.org/

Once you have your 10 examples, head to ChatGPT or Claude with this exact prompt:

I am new to Upwork and I'm standing up my beginner profile. I am interested in offering services in the [YOUR NICHE] space. I don't yet have proven experience on the platform yet. (If you do have relevant experience in your chosen space, share that here. If you don't, just skip) I researched 5 top profiles in my space and here are their headlines, their opening hooks and their full profiles for review. Please review these and create a hypothesis as to why these people are landing jobs with these profiles - what common themes do you see?

[PASTE YOUR RESEARCH HERE]

After the AI responds, follow up with:

Perfect. My goal is to disrupt someone's attention while scrolling and STAND OUT among profiles like these. So I don't want my headline and hook to mirror theirs but rather stand out in a unique and unexpected way that hijacks attention and earns the click-through in my profile. I want you to create 10 headline/hook combos to choose from using a variety of tactics like humor, curiosity, stats, etc. Remember the idea here is to be different from the examples I showed you while still competitive despite my lack of platform success yet.

Review the outputs, select your favorite, and then tell the AI

Awesome. I love this one:

[PASTE YOUR CHOSEN HEADLINE/HOOK]

Now please go back to your original hypothesis on why those other profiles perform well and create the rest of my beginner profile that will help convert and land me new clients. Please use a casual but professional tone of voice (like how you'd speak to a co-worker at lunch) and use simple, everyday language.Keep in mind that Upwork doesn’t allow traditional formatting, like bolding, italics, bullet lists, etc. Format creatively using CAPS (sparingly), emojis or other characters to create a cohesive, easily-readable designed profile.

If the output doesn't feel quite right, give the AI feedback on what's missing. (I’ll get into copywriting with AI a lot more heavy in future trainings, but I want us to keep our eye on the prize right now. Be OK with “good enough” for the moment. Focus more on getting the tone/personality right than having every detail perfect. Just remove anything that feels false or inaccurate, and you'll have a solid starting point.

REMINDER: Your headline and hook are 80% of what lands you jobs. The rest is mostly for the algorithm to help you show up in searches. We'll optimize for keywords later, but for now, "good enough" is