How I Landed My First $5000 Client On oDesk In Less Than A Year

Here at Digital Mined we try to help freelancers by giving you direct insights into the industry. Daniel Cuttridge works with clients around the world who are looking to make more money from their online business. He focuses on SEO and other Inbound Marketing Strategies. You can see his blog at SEO Saves . Here’s his story of how he landed his first $5000 client in less than a year.

I took the decision to work as a Freelancer in November of 2012.

I didn’t know anything about getting clients and wasn’t sure how to go about it. I created a services based website which took me most of November and started getting in touch with local companies using a combination of cold calling and direct mail.

This took me up to January of 2013 and I still hadn’t landed a single client. People simply weren’t interested, they weren’t qualified leads.

I knew something had to change and so I decided to signup on oDesk a site I’d heard about in the past because while you have competition, at least the job postings are from people who actually wanted the work done.

To begin with I hadn’t setup my profile as well as I could have, but from the start I focused on my covering letters and reading the brief. It’s extremely important to do that because even if you use a template to apply from that could be relevant to anyone in your area of expertise it’s still not customized to the clients situation.

I spent on average an hour per application and I started to see results.

Here’s what I did to build my profile up to a 4.8/5 feedback rating:

- I read the clients brief thoroughly and tailored my covering letter to the brief. I supported any major points with references when I felt it necessary.

- I underbid the budget. I knew with no feedback I couldn’t expect to get the work at the full price. I did this for my first 5 projects.

- I only applied on the projects I knew I could do an excellent job at.

- I only bid on fixed price projects.

Eventually I’d built up a good feedback score and I knew I wanted to start charging more for my services. This was so I could focus on fewer projects at a time and build lasting relationships with my clients. There’s nothing wrong with trying to upsell a service to a client once you’ve done a good job.

At this point I was still bidding on WordPress projects primarily, but over the past 6 months I’d learned more and more about marketing and knew this was where my passion was.

I adjusted my feed preferences so it displayed only the marketing jobs and I adjusted it so it only showed me the fixed price jobs at a minimum of $800 which was up from my original $250 setting.

I decided it was time to improve my profile.

- I took tests related to the jobs I was going to be applying for, scoring in the top 10% of SEO and top 20% of Internet Marketers on the site. Don’t underestimate how good this looks to a potential client and how far it will go to allaying their fears.

- I created my overview using a bullet style list of why people should pick me, what I do and what I know.

After I’d done this I continued applying for the projects that I was interested in and I knew I could do well. I made suggestions, referred to my test scores, attached my LinkedIn profile and social profiles and offered Skype sessions as well as my personal e-mail.

At the beginning of December this year less than a year after signing up on oDesk I landed my first $5000 marketing client from following the steps I outlined above.