UPWORK PARA INICIANTES: Como Começar em 2026 *Passo a Passo*

Upwork is definitely one of the best

platforms available

today, if not the best in my opinion,

for those starting to offer

services online and wanting to earn in

dollars. However, in my experience, what

I've observed is that most

beginners have no idea what to

do within the platform to

actually achieve good

results. And that's why I'm

recording this complete tutorial for

you here in 2026, to teach you everything

you need to do to succeed on this

platform. And if you don't

know me, my name is Joarias Garcia.

I have been working as an

international freelancer for over 7 years. And on this

channel I share everything I know,

all my experience to help you

earn in dollars by providing your

services online. And if you

're serious about providing services to

clients abroad, I invite you to

click the link below in the description

to join my community,

where you'll find all my

training courses, all my materials, and

a community of students who are

already providing services internationally, just like

you are starting out.

Okay, so I'm already logged into my

Upwork account, I'm on the platform's home screen

. And for those of you who don't

know exactly what Upwork is, it's

simply a marketplace, like

Mercado Livre, for example, where we

have clients on the platform,

who are people interested in

hiring someone, and we have

freelancers, who are people

interested in providing

services to clients. I do

n't think I can be any clearer

with you than that. And all Upworking does is

manage. She manages the contracts,

she brings together this group of people, you know,

clients and freelancers, here on the

platform. She provides all the security,

she manages the payments, and because

she does all of that, she earns a

commission—a commission on the services, on the

contracts you provide here on the

platform as a freelancer. Currently,

at the time I'm recording this

video, for each contract you close using

the traditional model on this

platform, you pay 10% of the

contract value. There will be

some rules there, which may be a

little more or a little less, but in

general it has been 10%. Within this

platform, you can provide basically

any type of service that has a

mutual interest in both parties. For

example, your niche might be very

specific, but if someone posts a

project here and wants to hire someone with

your characteristics, that's perfectly fine

. You finalize the contract

with the person here. So there isn't one

exact category, one exact term. Oh

no, just video editor, just

graphic designer. Basically, any

service that's in demand on this

platform, you can provide it here

. So, when I search here,

for example, "video editor" or "video editing," you'll find

that keyword, that

exact match, most of the time

within the

projects that are posted in droves on this

platform. And the video editing niche

, which I used as an example, is one

of the strongest niches we have

on the vast majority of platforms in the

world today, right? Video, in general, is

highly valued. If I look here, in the

most recent section, you'll see that

projects are being posted all the time. So, at the

moment I'm recording this lesson

here, all these projects have already been posted

that you could apply if

you think you can execute

them. So now that you understand

what Upwork is, I'm going to make everything

even simpler for you.

You'll see that understanding

will become much easier now. The

platform is basically divided

into three pillars. We have the first

pillar, which is the profile pillar, the

second pillar, which is the project pillar,

and the third pillar, which is the

proposal pillar. Let's take a look at

each of these pillars within the platform. The

first pillar, which is your profile, is

basically your business card on this

platform. This is where the person will be

able to find out all the details.

She'll see if you inspire confidence, if

you're truly the

right professional to carry out her project.

So here we have Julia's profile,

Raman's profile, and you'll see that they'll

be people from all over the

world, okay? Ukraine, Lithuania, the Philippines,

and the Dominican Republic. Upwork

operates in over 180 countries. The

second pillar is precisely this

page we were on, where I

showed you the research. This here is the

project pillar. After you create your

profile, you come to this section

to find projects that

match your profile and

the services you

actually want to offer on this

platform. So, if you're a

video editor, you come here, create a

video editing profile, like Joshua here,

for example, see, he has a profile

specializing in video editing for

e-commerce. So, after creating

his profile, he'll come here to the

search bar and type in terms

related to e-commerce and

video editing. So, it's going to be virtual editing; he

'll also use the term e-commerce and

try to find the project. So,

that's the second pillar. So, once again

, first pillar, profile, second

pillar, project. You scrolled down here

, analyzed it, found the project that

makes sense for you, and you're going to click

on it, right? You're going to do an

analysis of the project here, just like we

'll be discussing in the next few moments of the

video. And you're going to click up here,

on "apply now," to apply for

this project. And here we arrive at the

third pillar. This is the moment

when you will submit your proposal. Here

you will write why you believe

you are the right professional to

work with this company, to

provide services on this project.

So, profile, project, proposal. This

is Upwork, in short. And

in the past I used to say that there

were only these three pillars, but

lately, with all my

experience, having hundreds and hundreds

of students in my training programs, I

've identified that the most important pillar

of this platform isn't precisely your

profile, nor the project, nor the proposal. It is

a fourth pillar. So, nowadays, even though

Upwork doesn't offer this directly, I'd say it's the

most important pillar for achieving

results. And I'll reveal to you

what that pillar is later in the

video, because then it will all make sense

in relation to everything you'll learn about

creating a profile, choosing projects, and

submitting proposals. If I reveal it

now, it won't make any sense to

you. So, now that you

understand these three pillars, I'm going to go into

more detail about

each one so you can learn what

you need to do to build your

structure here on the platform. And the

first thing you have to do

here on the platform when you

log in is to set up your profile. Just a

reminder that I'm not talking about

your account's general settings here

, okay? There are other videos here on the

channel to help you set up email,

create an account, and configure

payment. Beauty? Here, we're discussing

the structure you need to achieve results

within Upwork. These other things are

covered in other videos on this channel where I

teach you how to do the

basic setup of your account, which

is actually quite straightforward, but if you need

more help, watch the other

videos on this channel. I'll leave it here

for you. And to talk about this

first profile, I've separated four

profiles here from different areas so

you can understand the general context you

'll apply, regardless of the area

you're in, okay? The first and

most important feature of your

profile, your main business card,

the thing that will attract the most attention at the

beginning, is your profile picture. The

profile picture will convey a lot

to your client in a

subconscious way. If you don't have a

cool profile picture on this platform, if

your picture is a blurry selfie or doesn't

project a professional image,

that already counts against you a lot

. But when you send a

proposal, your profile picture is the

first thing the client sees. So,

what makes a cool profile picture?

Simply by appearing as

close as possible to the

frame, occupying as much area

as you can, with a

good expression, preferably

a confident expression, and having a

good contrast with the background, meaning you should

n't be too close to the background. For

example, you could use a black background

with a black shirt, but instead, if you

use a black background, you could use a

red shirt or a green shirt to

create contrast. So, a good photo

doesn't necessarily mean it was taken with a

camera, with this or that, super

quality, none of that. You're going to take the picture

with your own cell phone, okay? What

will matter is how you take that

picture. Remember when I told you, look, the background

contrasting with you, right, so you give

R$ 1 if you occupy as much area

as you can here. When you upload

your photo here on the platform, you can

also adjust it, okay? So, you can

zoom in, you don't need to try to take a picture like this right now

, okay? You can

use a wider framing and

then zoom in, just like you

see me here in this video, okay? Depending

on your field, if it's something more creative,

more artistic, like graphic design or

video editing, you can take a

photo similar to Joshua's here too,

which is a slightly more

produced photo, but you can use it as well, okay?

As long as you appear properly

on camera, and have the right context. We

also have a photo of Key here, a really

cool photo. She's a virtual assistant, so

her photo conveys the maturity of a professional virtual assistant. You can clearly see that

just by looking at the photo. For example,

in this video here, you can see that the

background is yellow and I'm standing out

from the background. If I took a picture here and

put it in my

Upwork profile, that would look really cool too.

Understood? So, the profile picture, let's move on

to the next part. Second most

important thing, your title here on the

platform. This is your

job title, the services you provide, and the areas in which

you work. Here on the platform you

can see that there's a term and then a

dash. There's one term, there's another little

dash. There's a term, another little dash.

Raman here too, look, there's a term,

there's another little line. This one here is using

a slash plus a slash, right? A

horizontal bar. Joshua here, look, he uses

another contextualized phrase. The case

here uses a term, a dash here

as well. So, in general, to avoid

mistakes, use the

most specific keywords for your area, the ones that

most relate to your field. You'll

separate these keywords with

dashes and simply put them in here

. Of course you're going to

use any keyword, right?

What I advise you to do,

especially if you're just

starting out, is to use what we call

modeling. You're going to come up here in

the search, you're going to choose "talent"

here, and you're going to type in the terms related to your

field. For example, let's use a

virtual assistant, right?

Virtual assistant. You'll find other

people in your field who

are already seeing results. You'll be

able to analyze all of

these people's credentials here. Are you

just going to copy and paste? No.

Why? Because even if you're

in the same field as that person, they'll

probably have some

specialization. So, when we

type "virtual assistant" here, it doesn't

just show up as "virtual assistant." These

virtual assistants here, they have

expertise. So, there's no point in

copying and pasting if you don't have the same

expertise as her. And even if you have it,

okay, copying and pasting isn't cool. So,

this first one here from Nigeria, it's

focused on Notion. The second one is that she's a

virtual assistant in the medical field. The

third is a virtual assistant focused

on customer service. So, the

idea behind your title is basically this:

analyze other freelancers in your

field, see which terms best fit

yours, which they also use,

and present them here in a way that is

grammatically correct. You're not going to

paste this here, you're not going to

use a lowercase R, an uppercase D, you're

not going to use the GPT chat's

copy and paste function. Write it neatly, just like it

is here, separated by

capital letters. Can you see there are no

grammatical errors? I see a lot of

freelancers with grammatical errors in their

titles here. Man, that's a huge mistake

. Don't do that, okay? So,

write it down properly. If you want to

use a different format as well, without the

dash like this one here, you can use it.

If you have a phrase that already fits

perfectly into your job title,

otherwise follow this pattern here:

keyword, hyphen here to

separate. It's going to be really cool. Next, and

most importantly, the description. One

thing you'll notice is that there's no

other description like it on this

platform. Even if someone copies and

pastes the same template, there will always be

something slightly different. So,

this description here, I don't even know what

the other descriptions are like, but I assure you it

will be different. Different, look.

Look at the size of this, look how it's

written. Look at Joshua here, already

separated into bullet points. Look, this case here is

a little smaller and more

focused. So, this here, your

description, it's more of a sales pitch.

You are not creating a resume here

on Upwork. This is not for a

job application. You

are entering a project. You

really need to grab

your client's attention so they see that you're the

ideal freelancer to work

on that project. So you have a

large number of characters that you

can use here in your description to

try to stand out. And

especially in the beginning, it's important

that you use this

wisely. So, first of all, how do you create a good

description? The best way for you, as a

beginner, is to create a model

similar to the one in the title. You're going to find

about five freelancers in your field who

are getting results, okay? They've already

made a good amount of money, at least

more than 3,000. And you're going to copy these

five descriptions and analyze what

you can use in your own. And just to

give you a few tips, don't use

very blocky sentences here, all

too close together, okay? This makes it difficult for

the person to read, and it also takes away

their interest in reading long texts, okay?

The clients here on the platform

prefer bullet lists. You can make

a bullet list separating the processes here, see?

You create bullet lists

related to your process. What do

you offer your client? What do

you develop? You develop this

here, you develop this here, this here,

the results you generate, this, this

and that. So, a bullet list is very

welcome in your description. You can

also use some strategic emojis, without turning your description into

something too colorful, like a circus,

okay? Also avoid these little dashes here, in

the GPT chat. This isn't legal for

you to use, okay? Especially for those of

you who are just starting out. Check out Raman's profile

too, it's really cool! Separately,

everything is well contextualized. He has the

part of the testimony here that he includes,

he has other bullet lists

down here, down here as well. So there's

no set rule for how you should

create the description. If I open 100

profiles here, they'll have 100

different descriptions, but you can create a

template. And if you want something more

specific, more step-by-step,

than writing every single detail in

my training, you know, in my

community, there's the

Upwork training there, it already has templates, it's all

very complete, you just copy and paste and

change the information. And if you

're doing it alone, use

a lot of common sense, don't leave it stuck,

don't leave a giant thing here, look.

This isn't right, it's too stuck

here, I can't read it. It's clear that this

guy here, Raman, already has

700,000,000 in earnings on this platform. Julia

also has over 300,000. This does

n't really matter as much anymore, because the

person's experience on the

platform, the results they've achieved,

the social proof—basically,

you don't even need a profile anymore, right? This alone is enough to

make the client want to

hire you. But since you're just

starting out, you have to use these

tools to your advantage. It's no use

thinking you're going to do more or less the

same as someone who makes a lot of

money, someone who's been here at

Upwork for, I don't know, at least 10 years

. Hey, if you're just starting out, don't try to

emulate those people who already have great

results, okay? Focus on those who are

starting out like you and are already getting

good results. That way, it's much easier to

have a basis for what to put in

your description. And right here to the left of

its description is the

technical information, right? Your language skills, everything

in order, the number of hours you'll

work per week, your verification, your

education. Fill this out as

best as you can, with as much

detail as you can manage. I

advise you to always keep your English

conversational, right? Unless you

're fluent, then you leave it as fluent or

native bilingual, right? If you speak

the language perfectly there. But overall,

even if your English is very

basic, don't leave it at basic; always

leave it at least at conversational,

because otherwise some projects won't

come your way, and that's not ideal.

We have GPT chat, several platforms

to help you with your English, okay?

So this is pretty self-explanatory, okay?

Just fill it out below. Yes,

that option won't appear for you in the

consultation section, okay? Work history won't

work either because you've never been hired through

the platform. We'll have your portfolio on your

profile. Your portfolio is where you

put your best

work examples here on the platform. Pretty

intuitive, right? If you want to make a

cover for your portfolio, you can include that

too. In the case of this

Raman profile, he doesn't have a cover image in

his portfolio, okay? The only thing

you need to pay close attention to

here is the title, okay? Create a

standard title for your portfolio. So, look at

his title here. It's

spelled out correctly with the dash, see? See

how they all follow the same

title pattern? This is something you should

do. It's no use writing one in

lowercase, another in uppercase, one

one way, and another another way.

Standardize it, okay? To make your profile look more elegant

here, to show that you

care about that. So, to

specify which examples

you should include, that's very

relative from area to area. You'll see

that you can add links,

PDFs, and upload videos here

. If you're a video editor, there are

several ways to showcase your portfolio. I advise you to have at least

three examples here, okay? Three

good examples to make your profile

more complete. By dragging this down here

, we have your

skills. You can add 15

skills here, okay? So,

you'll really need to research the terms that best

fit the services you provide. These

will be keywords related to your

services, specialties, the

tools you use—everything

you think your potential client

might search for on this platform to

find your work. Next, we

have certifications. Unless you

have some kind of certification, you add it

here. If you don't have the means to start,

at least you don't need to, okay? But if you

have it, it's definitely a cool feature to

have on your profile. If you don't

have one, no problem. Then we have the

employment history, which is your

work history. Here you would include

your work history related

to the field you want to study or things

you've done in the past that complement

that field in some way. For example,

if you're a video editor and have worked

for an agency, put that information here.

If you're a video editor, you're just starting out,

and before you worked as an

engineer, or on a

farm, or as a

bricklayer's assistant, for example, it doesn't quite make sense to say

you

edited videos when you were a construction worker before. Not that there's a

problem, but you can see that

one area doesn't complement the other. Now

imagine if you were a

leadership coach. You are a coach who talks

about leadership in companies. Back

in the day, you either worked in the Navy

or you worked in the Army. Wow, it would

n't make sense for you to say

you worked in the Navy or the Army

here if you work in leadership. The

Navy, the army, is not known for

traits of leadership,

discipline, commitment, and so on.

Beauty? Do you understand what you're adding

here to your employment history?

Please write the title correctly as well,

without grammatical errors, as this harms

your profile. And here's the description where

you'll explain a little about what

you did within that activity, right?

What were their responsibilities and everything

else? You can write here

in paragraphs, or you can put

bullet lists here as well. I prefer

bullet lists, okay? I think it's very

difficult for a client to come here, analyze,

read everything in their profile, then get to the

employment history and read all this here

too, a long text, very crammed together.

I see that most customers don't

have the patience for that. Those bullet

lists highlighting the main points, or perhaps a

more contextualized phrase at the end

, I think that makes more

sense and is more dynamic. And if you've

never worked anywhere, which

might also mean you have no

work experience,

you can put in your employment

history that you work for your own

company, that you are a freelancer for the

company. In my case, Joarez Garcia

video editing, for example, Joarez

Garcia something, or JG digital

something, right, which is the name of my

company, because after all, now

that you work for yourself, you

work for your own company. And you

can state that you work providing

services for such and such a company, doing such and such a

thing, developing such and such a thing, okay? There

's absolutely no problem. It's interesting that

you try other experiences. This is only for

those who have other experience

that wasn't a specific job,

but that complements their existing skills. Do you think

anything that complements your

profile here, such as

volunteer work, a networking group

you belong to, or a trip you've

taken, anything that you think

adds value to your profile, feel free to

add it here in the "Other" section? But

overall it's not mandatory. So now

we've seen most of your

profile. In short, for you, common

sense. Common sense is very important

here on this platform, okay? So

don't write things incorrectly or

with such derogatory terms, no, it's not

interesting, okay? And if you provide

services in more than one area, within

your own profile, you can have

specialized profiles. So let's assume

you're both a front-end and back-end developer. If you don't

want to put everything in the same profile

because you see a very clear separation

in that, you can have your

profile specialized in front end,

back end, or full stack, in the case of

Raman. Here, if you are a video editor and

graphic designer, you create a

video editing profile and a

graphic design profile. If you work with

translation, but also work as a

leadership coach, like I gave you as an

example, I created a profile for translator,

transcriber, and a profile for

leadership coach. So you can have more than

one profile, in this case two, right? Currently,

at the time I'm recording this

video, you can have two

specialized profiles, and when you send

your proposal, you can choose which

profile you want the client to see when

they are reviewing

it. Sure, guys, the cherry on

top, because I always save the

cherry on top for last, for those who

watch the video until the end, okay? To

show that you are

truly committed to achieving results here on the

platform. The best thing you can

do is invest some time and create a

presentation video. I can't

tell you all the benefits a

presentation video can bring

to your profile and your chances of

getting hired. Sometimes, just because

someone is watching your video here

somehow, I'll leave it playing here.

Sometimes, just the fact that she looks at you,

likes your hair, or thinks

you look like her son or

grandson, or likes your smile,

or that you exude clarity. For

example, you're watching this video

because maybe you like the way

I speak or the way I explain things.

Or you like the scenery, for example,

right? Yes, recording a video and talking to the

person creates a very strong connection.

For example, if she only sees

your profile here, she can't get a

sense of who you are, but when she

watches the video here, it's the closest thing

to a connection she'll have with you.

This is very powerful in these aspects. And

of course, you can have a good script,

convey confidence, okay? Saying to the

person: "Wow, I'm excited to work

here on the platform, I have experience with

this, I always dedicate myself a lot to

my projects, etc." The

primary intention is to create a connection, especially

for those of you who are just starting out. You won't

know how to create a super script with

production and all that, okay? Record a

video, it can even be vertical like this.

I recommend shooting horizontally, you know, to

capture it like I'm recording this video

here horizontally, you know, in a rectangular shape,

right, sideways. Yes, it's more interesting

than recording vertically. However, if

you want to record vertically, that's

fine too; you can record, you can add

subtitles. If you're a video editor,

you can edit your video well enough to

use your presentation video

as your own portfolio. Beauty? You

'll see, man, people

use presentation videos. This

really stands out here, look

. This one even uses a

slide version, right? Make a slideshow here

too. It might be helpful for you to use

a slide if you think it makes sense

for your work here as well. Beauty. The

Case here has a great result. I

think she should have a

presentation video, especially in the

virtual assistant area.

Her introductory video here would definitely

help her profile get more

project invitations. Suddenly

being able to charge her clients more,

right? She didn't include her option here.

Even so, it's having a great result. It's

not that you're required to

use a presentation video. Nothing

is mandatory, right? Is creating a legal title

mandatory? No. Is creating a

legal description mandatory? No. Is it mandatory to use all of

your skills listed below, 15 skills

? No. Using testimonials and

certifications here is

employment history mandatory? Guys, nothing is

mandatory, but any tools

you don't use on your profile

will make it harder for you

to win projects, which

can cause you to give up

sooner because you're not seeing

results. So, when I tell

you that every detail matters, it's because

all of this is a puzzle. And

when combined, it conveys a feeling that

you are a professional, it gives

credibility to your client. She

filled in everything she could, and then some

. Oh, CAS here also

filled everything out completely. It doesn't have to

be something gigantic. It's not a matter of

size. It's a matter of conveying

information that's important for

your client to make a decision. And another

cherry on top, testimonials, okay? If

you can get testimonials from people

you've worked with, those

people need to have a LinkedIn profile so they

can send them to

you. Dude, that's really interesting

for your profile. It's like a

review here on the platform,

even if you've never been

hired, because

Upwork verifies this in the testimonial before approving it on your

profile. So the client

will analyze it and see: "Wow, this

is a real testimonial, right? He

never worked on the platform, but he has

worked in other places. Upwork

verified it." So these testimonials here

are really cool. Always remember that

whoever you ask for this information has to

write it in English, okay? It's digital in

English because otherwise it will appear here in

Portuguese, and that's not interesting.

Beauty? Now that we understand the

first pillar, the profile pillar on this

platform, and how to create a great

profile, let's move on to the second pillar, which is the

project pillar: how to find

projects that make sense for you.

To start finding projects, you

have to come here to the

Upwork homepage, okay? You can click here, on the

Upwork logo. Whenever you click, it

takes you to this page here, okay? And in

this search bar, you will

type the keyword related to the

jobs you want to find on the

platform. So let's use the

example here, of

video editing. And as soon as you press

enter, you'll be taken to this

part here. It's in this tab here, right, that

you'll find the projects. And notice

that I want video editing, but I didn't

type video editing, I typed

video edit. Why? Because the

keywords here are

matched. So, if the term that

's here isn't

written in that exact way somewhere within the project

, you won't be able to find it. For

example, if I typed "video editing," only

projects that contain the term "

video editing" in some form will appear here, and they

will always be in Portuguese, either Brazilian Portuguese,

Cape Verdean Portuguese, or

Portuguese from Portugal. Even by the sheer

number you can see, look at the

number of projects that appear. And

when I type "viral editing," which is the

English term, the entire platform is

used in English; look at the difference in the

number of projects. So you always

want to find the terms in English. So

you have to do some research

to see which keywords

will best relate to the projects that

make the most sense for the service you

want to provide. So

, for example, someone who is a video editor—well, I'll use the

term video editing, but if I'm

focused on editing short videos,

real videos, for example—you can

type "res" here. Why? Because the

term "res" is directly related to

video, right? Because the real deal is a

video. So, if you're focused on reals,

using the term "reals" is very

important. If you also

edit with a program like Adobe

Premiere Pro, for example, you can use the term

Adobe Premiere Pro here as well. You

'll also find projects from people who

want a video editor who only uses

Adobe Premiere Pro. So you

can already stand out from some

competition that doesn't have the same

capabilities for your

project. The term virtual

assistant, well, that's the most

obvious term we're going to use, right?

Virtual assistant.

But if you're a virtual assistant

focused on customer support

, you can

use this term here: customer

support. And then you can also type in

that customer, and

Upwork itself will give you some terms

you can search for, look.

Customer service, Customer Service

Representative, right? That's a representative who provides

customer service, right? Oh, 28

minutes ago, 2 days ago, 7 hours

ago, it's because it's not in "most recent"

here, right? The most recent ones, oh, 14

minutes, 18 minutes, 28 minutes, 53

minutes, okay? So, the terms

you use in the search above

will help you a lot, okay? So,

find three to five terms that make the

most sense for the service

you want to provide. And you're going to save

these terms in the way I'm going to

show you right now. So, going back

here, to video editing, let's suppose

I found three

video editing terms here. What do you have to

do? When you type

your keyword up here, the projects that

appear will be all

the projects on the platform that contain that

keyword. But if you can filter

these projects, especially if you're just

starting out, you can immediately remove

the ones that don't make sense

for you, and you won't need to keep

looking at them here; it will only

waste your time. So, for that, we

have the filters here on the platform,

located on the left, and it's important

that you use them. So, video pre-editing

, oh, entry level, intermediate and

expert. If you are a

beginner freelancer, you will only select entry

level. It makes sense? He does. If you're an

expert, you could just mark it as expert. It

makes sense? He does. But from my

experience, I always advise you to

check all of these, regardless of

your level. Why is that? Because

many times, whoever is creating the

project puts "expert" in their name, but the work

can be done by a beginner, and you

analyzed the project and you saw that,

wow, they put "expert," I'm a

beginner here on the platform, but I know how to

do the work. So even so, you

can send it via post. So I

advise you to check all

three of these here, because unfortunately it's not that

perfect, is it? Because if

you're an expert, you should only hire other experts

who pay more. If you're an intermediate player,

you should only get intermediate levels, but

in general, that's not how it works on

practically all platforms, okay?

So I advise you to always check all

three, regardless of your field, okay? Here,

the job type can be hourly work or

fixed-price work, right?

In short, I work by the hour. Your

client will pay you by the hour here on the

platform, right? You're going to start

working, you're going to activate a little program

here on the platform itself, and you're going to

start the timer there, you're going to

take screenshots of your screen from time to time, and that's

basically it, okay? I

always advise you to let both of them score. If you

want to charge a minimum amount here, just

select the hourly rate. Ah, my lowest

hourly rate is 15 per hour. Mark

this down, see, minimum value 15, because then you

won't see projects that will pay

less than the fixed price. It's not

worth marking anything here, because

sometimes there might be a project that pays

less than $, but it's very quick, right? If it

's a simple project for you and

you want to execute it, right, with a fixed price, it's

not worth marking this here.

Again, not all

matches are exact. Sometimes the

client puts that they want to pay 10

per hour, but in reality, in the

project description, they want to pay 30. They just

put 10 there because they made a mistake

or because they wanted to, I don't know, do

some kind of test. So

you have to test these matches here

. In general, what I suggest

you mark are these three here, these

two here. You can set the

minimum volume per hour if you want, okay?

Especially if there are a lot of projects in your area

, then it's a good idea to

only look at the projects here that are

paying what you'd really like, okay? Regarding the

number of proposals, I advise you to aim for a

maximum of 10 to 15, okay?

Especially if there are a lot of projects in

your area, right? Just like video editing,

there are a lot of projects; I would only leave five

out of 10. Because if there's a project that

already has more than 10 competitors, you know,

more than 10 people who submitted

proposals, it won't show up for you.

Because if you're just starting out and you want to

compete in a project that already has 20

proposals and was posted a long time

ago, it might even be a good project, but

for someone starting out it's not ideal,

okay? So, at most 10 to 15 here, if

you don't have many projects

available in your area. Because it has

areas like video editing that have a

lot of projects. There are similar areas; for

example, if you're a developer who

only uses one type of program, then it doesn't

make much sense to take all

your opportunities from there, okay? Always

client info, payment verified. Never

send a proposal to someone who isn't payment

verified, okay? Oh, it's not a payment verified

like this one here. Payment is unverified, so there

's no guarantee you'll receive

your money. In short, that's it. If

you want to be 100% sure that if you

are hired, you will receive the

money, the contract is closed, you will receive

the money, payment verified. Never

send a proposal to anyone who isn't

100% sure about payment verification, okay? Never.

Client History doesn't keep a record of anything. The

client location time zone is not required.

Project length, right? Project size is

not important. There are also projects that are

short-term but pay well. It's a long project

and sometimes it doesn't pay that much. So,

dude, it doesn't make sense to just rate it based on the

size of the project. There's no need to specify hours per week or

job duration

. So, in

general, you can copy this here, exactly as

I've put it, and you'll

be fine for your initial

filtering. Once you've filtered here, you

'll click "save search" and give

your search term a name. The name

can be anything. For example, if

you put "viral editing" above,

and you want to write "avocado," the name here will be "

avocado," but the keyword is "

viring," okay? So this is just the

name of the search you saved. So

if you want to test it by editing with

different filters, you can test that

too. But overall, a

keyword search is enough, okay?

Changing from one filter to another there won't

make that much of a difference. It's best to

save it later, right? The term "viral

editing," save it in Adobe Premiere Pro, right?

Press enter here, and it will

pull in the filtering as well. Save this here,

Dob Premiere Pro, so you have at

least three to five keywords.

Once you save these

keywords, when you come to the

homepage here on the platform, you

won't need to search anymore. Your

keywords will already be here.

These, as you can see, are

my keywords, right? And when I

click here on "all," all the

searches for these keywords appear together

here. So I don't need to keep

typing here, look. I don't type anything. I

save my searches here;

everything is already filtered here, okay? The

name is correct here, see? And when I

want to see, I come here, press F5 to

see if any projects have come up. Oh,

this project came up here, this project came up

here. And I'll just keep doing

that. Look at all the pollution you're

avoiding on your screen, and how much time

you're saving. So, that's why

we save the research here on the

platform. So that was the second

pillar, the design pillar. Do we

understand each other? Now let's move on to the third

pillar, the proposal pillar, and right after that, the

most important pillar of the video for you

who are committed and watching the

video until the end, okay? So let's

suppose, I'm analyzing the

projects here. Legal. Oh, I didn't like this one

. Ah, this one doesn't pay so well.

Beauty. Ah, this one is cool, but

the description doesn't really make sense in relation to

my skills. Oh no, this one

's good. Oh man, I'm going to open it here. Hmm,

cool. The description is good. Yeah. The

customer is a great customer here, with

good reviews, and is paying a

fair price. In this case, it's not [the case], but let's

assume he is paying, right? Just an

example for this video, right? Oh, they're

paying well, the client has good

reviews. Let's assume this project

here is a cool project. You're going to come

here and click on "apply now". This is

where you will submit your proposal.

Remember when I told you earlier, when

creating your profile, that when you have

specialized profiles, you can

select which profile the client

will see in your proposal? It's not that

he can't open your profile and see

the others you have there, but with this

proposal here, when he clicks there, it

will open directly to your

specialized profile. So, let's assume that

for this project I'm going to use this

profile here, which I thought best

fit the job description.

They're giving me the project details

here again for me to read, right?

All the information is provided here. By scrolling down here

, you'll find the shape I'm

going to receive. Normally,

you copy these terms exactly as

the client presented them. If

the client is paying a fixed

price here, you'll put here, uh, per

project, okay? This is the amount he's

paying. You'll offer it for $20

as well. I usually advise you to only

send the proposal when the client's budget

matches yours. So, for

example, this client here is paying $

for this project. If you'd like to

do this project for 50, don't submit a

proposal for 50, okay? You'll find

another project. Why? Because there will be

people who will do it for 20, and for them to

pay you to do it for 50, you have to

be very good, have a super

portfolio, references, and everything else. And

since you're just starting out, there's no point in

trying to charge more, and there's no

point in trying to charge less either, okay?

It matches the client's budget. If he

's paying $50, come here and put down $50. If

he's paying $20 an hour, between

20 and 30 an hour, put 20 in your first 3 or 4

projects. Then you can

put in half of what he pays per

hour, right? But don't put in more, it's not cool, and

don't put in less, because I think

putting in less is even worse than

putting in more, okay? You're going to get

some clients who aren't the kind of

clients you want to work with,

honestly, okay? If a customer only cares about the

lowest price above all else, and they said they'd

pay 20, you quoted five, and they still

hired you, well, that's not the kind of

customer you want. Regarding the

project duration, you usually copy what

the client has specified, okay? Project in less

than a month. Come here and put it in for

less than a month, okay? Just

copy this, copy the terms here too

, right? Then you can come here and

submit your proposal. Here on the right,

you can drag down here, okay?

If you want to have a little more

space here. Jor, how do I make a good

offer? There's no need to reinvent the wheel

when creating your proposal. The

proposal itself isn't what

makes you win the project. But

wow, Jorge, that doesn't make much sense. He

does. Do you want to see me show you

how it's done? Oh, remember what I told you here

? Profile, project and proposal. Let's

suppose you send an

amazing proposal, but your profile is poor. You did

n't create a good profile and you didn't know how to

find the project. You submitted a

proposal for a project to a

bad client, didn't you? A customer who doesn't have a

good review, a customer who didn't

put a description there, you misunderstood

the description. You're submitting a

proposal for a project that doesn't

align with your skills. Sending

an amazing proposal won't guarantee you

the project. At the same time,

having an amazing profile but a

bad proposal doesn't guarantee you'll win the

project. While submitting a

beautiful, incredible proposal and

having an amazing profile can be tricked into choosing the

wrong project, it won't guarantee you

win the project. So, if you don't

analyze this context before

submitting your proposal, you won't get the

project. So, if I've analyzed this

project here, I've read the description, I see

that it makes sense with my

skills and it makes sense with my

profile, then yes, you send your

proposal, okay? And the proposal has two

forms; there's a template on my

Instagram, you can click on the

highlights there and download the

template for free, okay? Just

click on the highlights. Or you can come

here, to the Upwork website itself, there's

a proposal template there, which is

a really good one.

We typically use templates.

What is a template? The template is

copy and paste. No, a template has

some information that is always

repeated in all proposals to

facilitate the structure of your proposal,

but you don't simply copy and paste it,

because you have to customize your

proposal for each job you are going to

submit. So you should never send a

proposal here on the platform by copying and

pasting what the GPT chat only

sends you. It's no use copying and pasting the

proposal and coming here to the platform, opening

this one and sending the proposal, opening

this one and sending the proposal. This doesn't

work. You're not going to get a

project, you'll just waste your connections

here on the platform, it doesn't work, okay? The

proposals here at Upwork are

high-quality proposals. Send proposals that

match your profile for projects that

you have reviewed and found to be

worthwhile. Analyze the description here and see

how you can connect with the

customer. And this Upwork template here,

for example, you say: "Hi, put the

client's name here. The bottom part is

standard, see? If you need help with

this, it's from the template. You

don't change this. But what's inside the

brackets here, you will

change this. So you need help

analyzing the client's problem. You'll

come here to the platform, you'll

analyze what the client needs.

Oh, I need a video editor

to edit 10 videos for my

YouTube channel. And then you put if you

need help with video editing for

your YouTube channel, I have so many

years of experience or expertise with

YouTube channels or YouTube channels

in your area editing the type of video

you requested. So, inside the brackets,

you'll update it to the client's needs

. And then you'll say: "No, I

'm a great choice for this project

because I have such and such skill." My

videos help customers buy

more, increase retention, etc.

List the benefits here. It can

be with a comma, or it can

also be like this, with a bullet list. Below,

you can also follow what

you're going to deliver, how

long it will take you to deliver, how

much you're going to charge for the project,

and everything else. You can

also post examples of your work here. It can

be the link to the entire portfolio or it can

be the link to individual work examples

. So this is the very

template that Upwork recommends you

use, and it's a very good template.

Basically, all my proposals

follow a model similar to this one.

Similarly for my students, I have

specific template models there, depending on

the situation each one is in. There's

also this model here from Upwork which is

very good. There's also a model that's

featured on my Instagram profile,

which is also very good. Beauty?

Did you understand? Especially in the

beginning, you will use a template. It's

no use me coming here and telling you:

"Write this down, type it this way." That

's not what makes you win the

project. What makes you win the

project is a combination of these three things

here. A quality profile involves finding

a project that aligns with your

needs, skills, and

profile, and submitting a proposal that

matches your profile and

the project you've chosen. So,

now that we understand these three

pillars, I'm going to reveal the

most important one to you. The key point I've realized after

analyzing all of this is

that it's pointless to have a

great profile, to learn how to

find the best projects, or to

know how to submit excellent

proposals if you don't put that knowledge into

practice. The fourth pillar is the pillar of

practice, the pillar of commitment, the

pillar of making things happen. Wow, Jarez,

you made me wait all this time just to

give me this ridiculous pillar, something that

's obvious, but stick with me and you'll

understand. So, pay attention with me.

Creating your profile is enjoyable, it's cool to

create your profile. You're going to add a

photo, you're going to add a title. It's a

moment full of hope. Wow, I'm

changing my life, I'm going to work here on the

platform, I'll post this. Jarez

taught me how to create a good profile, I put

everything in, the skills, everything else,

certificate, bam, that's it, testimonial. Wow,

I have a really cool profile. No, now I'm

moving on to the next step. Oh man, I'll come

here and save my

keywords. I saved these here, I'm

doing some research on the projects. Wow,

what a cool project! I would love to work on this

project here. Wow, what a

cool project! I liked this project here

too. I'm going to separate these projects.

Beauty. Wow, that's cool. I'll send my

proposal now. I've arrived here, right?

I put up my nice template. Let

me see if I can copy this, okay?

For us to use as an example. Copy

this here. Oh no, I copied my template. I'll

drag it down here. I will send

my proposal. Send your initial

proposals. Doing all this is fine until

you get your first, no,

second, third, fourth, fifth,

rejection from projects you're going to

submit proposals to and nobody's going to

respond, until you start thinking:

"Damn, is my profile

good enough? Damn, am I

finding the right projects? Damn,

is my proposal good enough?"

Doing everything is great until you

start getting "no"s. And you're going to get a

lot of "no"s. That's what I want you to

understand. You're going to get a lot of "no"s at the

beginning, man. So you arrive here on the

platform on the first day, send five

proposals, put your foot up and

wait like, oh, no, now just wait to get

hired, the dollars will go into the

account, and most likely they won't. And

what happens? These doubts I

mentioned will creep into your mind. Then

you'll stop logging into the platform, you'll

stop sending proposals, you'll

start saying the platform doesn't

work, when in fact you need

practice, you need to put things

into practice, you need commitment, you need

dedication, you need

discipline. After you create your

profile and do everything else, that's where you're

starting out. Creating your profile, finding

projects, and everything else—that's the basic stuff you

need to understand the platform. That's when

the game really begins. No,

I will send three proposals per day, I

will send two proposals per day. At the

end of the month, if I send three proposals

a day, I will have 15 proposals per

week and 60 proposals per month.

With 60 proposals, your chances of

getting a project are much

higher, right? The chances are much higher, and

you'll probably get a

project more often if you just show up and say,

"No, today I'm going to send three

proposals. Oh, I'll wait a week,

I'll send two more. Oh, it didn't work, I did

n't get hired, right? I'll send

three more this week." By the end of the month,

you've sent, I don't know, 10 proposals, you've

sent 15. When you send that kind of thing, it

's very likely you won't get

hired. And then the next month, you know

what you do? You exist, because

while we're going through the whole

creation process, it's very enjoyable, it's

very cool, it's full of hope, but

you're going to get "no"s, you're going to be

ignored, and you're not on this

platform to win over all the

clients, you work alone. I can't

win over all the clients. I do

n't have time. I get a ton of "no"s

too. I know how to do it. I

teach this. I know how to create a portfolio.

I know how to talk to clients, make

calls. I speak fluent English, blah blah

blah, this and that. I know how to connect with

so-and-so, I'm already taking courses, Dude. I

've gotten a lot of amazing clients, but

even so, I get a lot of "no's." And that's

okay, man. You don't need

all the clients, but you need to

do at least a

little bit every day. So decide. Am I going to work

with the platform? Great, I'm going to log into

the platform every day, three

times a day, right? 10 minutes

in the morning, another 10 minutes in the afternoon,

10 minutes at night, 15, 20 minutes. I'm going to

dedicate a little more time, I'm going to leave it

open, I'm going to analyze more, I have more

time, instead of three, I'm going to

send five, I'm going to send 10 proposals,

as long as they are high quality, there's

no problem sending more

proposals, but it's important that you

do it consistently, a

minimum consistency of a few

weeks, a few months, so you can have

good results on the platform. So I

'm telling you this because I see a lot of

beginners doing everything they have to

do, creating good profiles, and when they

get their first rejection, not giving up. And

what do you think? That all the clients are going to

come and give you... They're going to hire

you, right, you who are just starting out? You

who don't have a super profile, a super

portfolio yet, you need to find

your space, and there is space, there's space

for everyone. There are projects here, man,

that sometimes pay very well, that have almost

no competition. Look at this

wonderful example I'm showing you here

. This project was posted a

minute ago, okay? No one has

sent a proposal yet. If you go

and send a proposal first, your chances

of being hired will be higher.

Being in the right place at the

right time also impacts things. At the same time,

I sent a proposal, I'm hopeful,

I'll wait. Wait for what? Are you

sure you'll be hired? No.

So you're going to send your proposal, you're

going to meet your daily goal of sending

two or three, I've already sent the first one, you're

going to find another project and

send it. The next day you're going to

do the same thing. Then

your chances of being hired will be

very high. Now, sending one

or two proposals hoping to be hired because

you're hopeful, because you did... It's

a good job at the beginning, thinking that

just doing that will get you the project,

will bring you that nice money. Man,

unfortunately there's no such guarantee. I

can't guarantee you'll

be hired, but I can

guarantee that if you do what I

told you in this video, for a good

period of time, your chances of being

hired will be very high. For

some people it can happen in one or

two days. I've seen people with three or four

days on the platform make $1,000. I

myself, in my first month, got

nine projects. I've seen people take a

little longer, but at the same time not

dedicate themselves as much. So your dedication

here on the platform pays off. I

can guarantee you that, especially for

most Brazilians who earn in

reais, earning in dollars is certainly

very rewarding. So this video

about Upwork in 2026

was certainly one of the best videos I've ever

recorded about the platform, okay?

Especially with this new pillar here,

which is the pillar of practice. I see many

people only dedicating themselves to this, But

when it really comes time to

dedicate yourself, to send proposals, to be

there, to find projects, you stop

because you think you've done everything so well that you'll

send one or two proposals and

naturally get hired. You

have a beginner profile. Everything

we do brings an incredible level of quality to

your profile, but even so, you need to

show up a little more,

dedicate yourself a little more. I'm not talking about

anything absurd, but like I told you,

two proposals a day, three proposals a

day for a period of time, it

could even be a month, man. A month, your

chance of getting projects by sending

two or three proposals a day is very

high, especially if you do what

I'm showing you here. In fact,

the average time my students who

dedicate themselves to the platform get

great projects is much less than a month.

Anyway, community, link in the description.

I hope you enjoyed this

video. If you want to be my student

in the community too, interact with me.

I'm there every day and other students,

people who already live off this market,

both with Upwork and others.

Platforms. I have various content,

various training programs, okay? I hope you

enjoyed this video. Apply it,

okay? Apply it, and it will bring results,

alright? We're in this together. And for your

other questions related to Upwork, there are

definitely videos here on the channel,

okay? Hugs.