How To Build A High Value Skill Fast

It is essential to build a high value skill as a freelancer. Freelancing is built on supply and demand like many other business. A person or business may not be able to achieve a certain task on their own and will have to reach out to someone externally to get it done. This is where freelancers with high value skills come into play…

This video is part of Nick Tubis’s educational series, Freelance University, which anyone can personally subscribe to by clicking here. Additionally, you can subscribe to Nick Tubis on YouTube to keep up with Freelance University and his other videos as well.

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Transcript:

Today we’re going to talk about the very first thing you need to do to succeed as a freelancer. In order to succeed with freelancing you’re going to have to have a skillset thats in high demand and that the market needs.

If you don’t have a skillset that’s in high demand its going to be virtually impossible to make a lot of money, because you won’t be able to charge a premium for your services and there won’t be a great deal of clients searching for the help you provide.

Now the bigger the problem that you can solve the more money you can make.

The more businesses that have that problem the bigger the freelance opportunity will be for you.

So on today’s episode I’m going to show you how to identify a skillset that you leverage or figure out one show you can how can develop what I call a “high value” skillset so that getting clients becomes way easier for you.

If you look at the highest paid freelancers, they tend to solve the biggest problems. Now as a freelancer this may sound a little strange, but you’re really a B2B entrepreneur. If you’re not familiar with B2B it stands for business to business. So as a freelancer you’re really selling to businesses, not consumers.

If you were selling clothing, food, or something along those lines the selling strategy is completely different.

And the single best way to sell to businesses is to tie your skills, knowledge, or experience to align with a businesses priorities.

If you align your product or services with a businesses priorities there will always be massive demand for your services.

This is why freelance digital marketing, accounting, attorneys, IT, and software developers are in such demand. Because really any core business function will always be a huge priority.

So it doesn’t matter if you specialize in accounting, IT, graphic design, PPC advertising, data science, CRM management, recruiting, and the list goes on and on. But you can see that all of those examples will always align with companies priorities.

A lot of you probably already have skills or experience that can solve a big problem. I’m sure a lot of you feel that you’ve been really good at your past jobs so those of you probably already know exactly what services you’ll want to provide as a freelancer.

But for those of you that still aren’t sure or are wanting to learn a new skill that maybe is more financially rewarding, let’s talk about that for a second.

The first thing that you’re going to want to do is see what is happening in the market, which is actually super easy. We want to do this so that we make sure that the skill you develop has a lot of client searching for help with that.

So the way you can do this is by going on Upwork and looking at what the highest paid freelancers do.

Basically what you’re going to want to do is set up a client account so you can see what types of jobs the highest paid freelancers are doing on the platform and how much they are charging.

And you can’t do that from your freelancer account. Upwork’s platform is completely different for freelancers and clients. But the good news is that you can set up accounts for both and just go back and forth from one account to the other.

And if you’re feeling overwhelmed and want help doing this, my team and I have actually created a mini course on how to do this step by step so you can follow along click by click and save a bunch of time instead of guessing what to do.

We’ve put a link to get that training above if that is something you would like access to.

Now in Upwork’s job search filters you will see a variety of categories that you can choose from. You’ll see the category of work which could be for example, web design, web development, finance, etc, you can filter by hourly rate, you can filter by freelancers that have worked over a certain amount of hours on the platform.

The best thing I recommend is that if you have no idea the skill you want to learn is to keep the category of work broad, but set the hourly rate, and hours worked on Upwork to the highest setting.

Because now Upwork’s algorithm will start to show you examples of freelancers profiles that meet that criteria. And you’re going to want to model the highest paying freelancers.

The next step is to get out a pen and piece of paper and really analyze their profiles and look for clues. Look to see what jobs they are providing. Look to see how much they are charging. Write down if they have any certifications. This is a major hack, and very few people actually know about this.

I like to find 5 profiles that resonate with you and then pick one skillset that looks interesting to you that you would like to learn.

We’re doing this to help you bet on sure things so that you have a huge edge over all of the other freelancers out there.

Once you’ve figured out the skill that you would like to learn, I recommend going on Udemy to find an affordable online course to learn that skill.

Personally I’ve had a ton of success with online courses and without them I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.

Again if that sounds techy or overwhelming it isn’t at all, and we walk you through exactly what to do in our Profile Secrets Masterclass, which you can get at the link above if you would like some more help.

And one more key important takeaway point to remember as a freelancer, you don’t need to be the best in the world, you just need to be good enough to solve the problem. As long as you can help the client get to where they want to go that is all that matters.

So go out there and take some action and I will see you right back here tomorrow!

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How To Be Productive & Manage Your Time As A Freelancer

This episode of Freelance University is all about productivity – how to manage your time efficiently as a freelancer. Nick breaks down a few time management strategies that you can use to help build your day effectively. One of the key strategies here is to base your schedule around your biorhythms.

This video is part of Nick Tubis’s educational series, Freelance University, which anyone can personally subscribe to by clicking here. Additionally, you can subscribe to Nick Tubis on YouTube to keep up with Freelance University and his other videos as well.

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Transcript:

Today’s episode is all about productivity and how you can become as productive as possible as a freelancer. A lot of freelancers struggle in the beginning with managing their time. Because they’re used to working 9–5 jobs, where they’ve had to be at the office. But now when they become their own boss, they’re not really sure what to do or how to organize their time.

I’m going to breakdown a strategy that I use that helps me 10x my productivity and that helps get me way more done.

What I do is I pre-plan my day the day before. And I base my day based on my biorythms and you should to. So for me I’m a morning person, and like to start working around 6AM but I go to bed early. I know a lot of successful freelancers who sleep in and work until 2AM.

It doesn’t matter as long as you pre plan your days. So what you want to do is at the end of the day get out a pen and piece of paper and schedule your day in 90 minute chunks.

So this could 8AM-9:30Am Apply for 5 jobs. 9AM-10:30M work on client project. With 15 minute to 30 minute breaks in between. This gets your mind thinking and visualizing about the day ahead and allows you to get way more done.

One other pro tip. I learned this from a freelancer who has a lot of clients and has made millions on Upwork. If you can give yourself 2 hours during the workday for unplanned tasks. As a business owner there are always things that come up unexpectadly.

By doing this it will help you prepare for anything that is thrown your way. Now besides planning your day ahead I also plan my week on Sunday’s. I really like doing this because it helps you strategize on the goals you want to accomplish not just daily to do items.

If you want to do this too, what you can do is get out a pen and paper and draw a big t on a piece of paper that has 4 quadrants. Three of those quadrants are for your 3 big goals for the year with an exact deadline on them. I’ve found adding deadlines to your goals makes them a lot more real, and puts the pressure on you to act. Kind of like when you’re in school and you have a project due.

One of your goals could be a wealth goal like making a certain amount of money per month. One of your other goals could be a health goal. Like for me its getting to 170 lbs. And another goal could be for your relationship or another area for your life. Than underneeth each goal you plug in all of the tasks that you need to do to make that goal happen. Then you just execute.

If you would like to learn more about how to become productive as a freelancer check out our freelancer client acquisition system online training program at the link below. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you on the next episode.

How To Overcome Limiting Beliefs And Become A Freelancer

Freelancing part time / full time is no walk in the park, but nothing is when it comes to working. A struggle that many have is making the commitment to freelancing. People are limited by their own beliefs and today’s episode is all about how you can break those limiting beliefs. This will allow you to progress quickly without doubtful thoughts holding you back.

This video is part of Nick Tubis’s educational series, Freelance University, which anyone can personally subscribe to by clicking here. Additionally, you can subscribe to Nick Tubis on YouTube to keep up with Freelance University and his other videos as well.

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Transcript:

As most of you probably know I’ve spent the past couple of years interviewing some of the world’s highest paid freelancers on the planet learning their insider secrets. One of the key things I learned and noticed all of them have extremely high internal beliefs. They believed in themselves even when they first got started even when they had zero clients. They believed they would figure it out no matter what.

A lot of them had to overcome large obstacles in their lives, but it never stopped them from believing. In fact one of my interviews was with Kevin Campbell who told me he had no idea whether if freelancing was going to work out for him or not.

But he wanted to follow his passion and its led to him earning over a million dollars freelancing on Upwork.

In order to succeed in anything you have to believe before you can achieve.

All successful entrepreneurs have this mindset.

Most people don’t believe in investing in themselves, so how can they believe others will invest in them? They don’t take a leap of faith during that moment they need to.

The few who do are become the exception.The few who do thrive and achieve extraordinary things.

So if what is holding you back from freelancing is that you’re not certain. Here’s a pro tip that will help put your mind at ease.

The first thing you can do is get educated, keep tuning in to Freelance University and get mentored by freelancers who have achieved what you want to achieve.

I recommend checking out my interviews with the highest paid freelancers in the world if you haven’t done so yet. You can grab them at the link above or below.

Here is an exercise that you can do. Write down a list of everything that could go wrong if you started freelancing and also write down what would you do if those things happened? You’re creating a list of all the worst case scenario thing and what you would do if those things happened.

This will help kill those limiting beliefs you have and help you get clarity.

So what you’re doing is your preparing for worst case scenarios so you’re eliminating the risk.

This the exact same strategy Kevin Campbell used before he got started with freelancing and once he did this his fear was gone.

Because he knew if any of those bad things were to happen, he had a game plan already in place.

Then I want you to write down a list of all of the benefits that could happen to you if you started freelancing and were successful. How much less stress would you have? How much more freedom would you have? Would you be able to spend more time with your loved ones?

Kevin knew that if his plan didn’t work out, he was smart, had a good degree, and could always go back and get a job if he needed to. It wouldn’t be a big deal. He could pick up right where he left off.

He also saved up a little a bit of money for his freelance journey, jus to give him a little cushion.

Then Kevin went all in, he burned his boats, didn’t look back, put in the work, and now he’s a freelancer who’s made millions.

The point is if you’re just getting started, plan for all scenarios, then go all in. You can’t have one foot in the boat and one foot out.

I hope this puts your mind at ease and if you want to get access to all of these interviews, you can grab them at the link above or below. And I will see your right back here tomorrow morning.

The Evolution As A Freelancer

In today’s episode of Freelance University, Nick breaks down the overall evolution of a freelancer – from just starting out and getting small jobs, to hiring other freelancers and creating your own agency.

This video is part of Nick Tubis’s educational series, Freelance University, which anyone can personally subscribe to by clicking here. Additionally, you can subscribe to Nick Tubis on YouTube to keep up with Freelance University and his other videos as well.

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Transcript:

Hey everyone welcome back to Freelance University and today we’re going to talk about the evolution of a freelancer. So what your journey should look like to reach the pinnacle of freelancing. So there are 4 phases of freelancing that I recommend going through on your freelance journey.

The first phases is establishing your minimum viable credibility. This is where your focus is on getting as many 5 star reviews as fast as you can so you can get a job success score and get the top rated badge on your Upwork profile. You might start out with a lower rate or discount past clients to give you a 5 star review. This is where you start out with maybe offering your services at a lower rate to get some projects under your belt.

In the beginning you want to position yourself as a generalist that can provide a wide variety of services.

Then once you get some reviews the next phase will be becoming a go to freelancer. This is where clients will start reaching out to you instead of you having to always reach out to them. This is the point where you can start raising your rates significantly and positioning yourself as a specialist. The way you figure out what to specialize in is by looking at your work history and looking at your most common projects. If you see a niche or a particular service that clients really seem to like from you, you can position your profile to specialize in that area.

Then the next phase of freelancing is turning your freelance business into an agency. You do this when you hit what I call the inevitable wall which pretty much every successful freelancer will hit at a certain point. Once you continue getting more and more good reviews as well as continue increasing your rates you will hit a wall. You’ll get to a point where you just can’t raise your rates anymore and attract clients. The rates differ depending on the service, but you get what I mean. People will only pay a certain amount for a particular type of service. During this phase you’re extremely busy with a stable of clients and are having to turn away new clients.

So you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. On top of that your freedom is gone and your working around the clock. So the next phases is learning how to build, train, and manage a virtual team of contractors. You still get the clients because you leverage your top rated score and online reputation, but now you start having other freelancers help you with the service delivery.

And the fourth phase of freelancing is expanding outside of Upwork to other channels. For your case it will be using automated personalized messaging using emails and LinkedIn. And this is where you leverage all of the credibility you’ve built and use direct marketing to land even higher ticket clients while building your full time dream team. This is the shift from going from an agency owner to an entrepreneur.

I hope this episode gives you some clarity on where you’re going and sparked some new ideas for you. If you would like more help with starting from scratch and turning your freelance business into an agency be sure to check out our Freelancer Client Acquisition system at the link below.

Getting Your UpWork Account Approved

One of the first challenges a freelancer encounters at the beginning of their career is getting their Upwork account approved. In today’s Freelance University episode, Nick breaks down how you can do this with a few different strategies.

This video is part of Nick Tubis’s educational series, Freelance University, which anyone can personally subscribe to by clicking here. Additionally, you can subscribe to Nick Tubis on YouTube to keep up with Freelance University and his other videos as well.

Watch Video Tutorial Here:

Transcript:

According to CEO Stephane Kasriel, Upwork gets 10,000 new signups every single day. Isn’t that crazy? So what does that tell you? It tells you that having the ability to freelance on Upwork is an exclusive club.

Not everyone gets approved. Only 2% of applicants actually get approved and today we’re going to talk about how you can be in the 2%. Today I’m going to share with you some little known insider hacks that will massively increases your chances of getting your Upwork account approved.

But before we dive into that. Let’s talk about the most common reasons why Upwork accounts get disapproved.

The way Upworks works is that it’s a marketplace. One side of the marketplace is clients. And the other side is freelancers. So Upworks main goal is to create balance between the amount of jobs posted by clients and the amount of freelancers they have with skills that can handle those jobs.

What they don’t want to happen is have an oversupply of freelancers with the same skillset because there will be way too much competition for freelancers and and not as big of a demand from clients.

So its actually a good thing that Upwork is strict because it really creates less way competition for us.

This is by far the number one reason why freelancers accounts aren’t approved.

The second most reason why your Upwork account might not be getting approved is because you’re not filling out your profile out completely or correctly. I’ve seen this happen a ton to new freelancers. They kind of half ass their profile and it causes them not to get their account approved.

Upwork’s system analyzes every new application and if they see a section that isn’t filled out it could be flagged. So this could be not filling out your skills, portfolio, etc.

So make sure that you’ve really taken the time to fill out your profile and made sure that everything is filled out.

The key to setting up a good profile is filling it out in full. Your title on your account should be skill-based, highlighting the different services that you specialize in.

A lot of top freelancers will plug in their top three favorite services they want to provide in their headline.

The profile description should be about building as much credibility as you possibly can.

You should highlight all the different skills and services you can provide and utilize specific keywords so that your profile can rank high in a search.

If you want help setting up an Upwork profile that sells, you can check out our Profile Secrets Masterclass guide at the link above or below.

This class goes into extreme detail and reveal every hack that will help you set up a profile that attracts the highest paying clients.

Now lets talk about some of the more advanced Upwork approval hacks to getting your account approved if you’re still not getting your account approved.

The first one is to broaden out your skillset to something more general. For example lets say that your skillset is SEO but there is an over supply of SEO freelancers and you can’t get your account approved. Broaden it out to digital marketing, landing page design, WordPress. Things that are related to your core skillset. This is a great way to get your account approved because now you aren’t applying for hyper competitive jobs.

You can always change your skills back to that more specialized skillset once your account is approved.

The second strategy that you can use that is highly effective is something called BYOT.

That stands for Bring Your Own Talent. This is a major insider hack that is a total game changer.

Bring Your Own Talent is when your clients brings a new freelancer to Upwork. So what you would do is have an existing client, friend, family member, or someone in your network set up a client account and then invite you using the BYOT feature.

This works the majority of the time because Upwork’s algorithm likes when a freelancer is hired on their platform. It builds trust with them, plus they don’t want to turn down free money. Upwork gets a cut on every transaction of their platform and this kind of handles their vetting process for them.

Both of these strategies work extremely well, and if you’d like more help with this the Profile Secrets Masterclass also comes with a guide called Upwork Approval Hacks that covers these strategies as well as some other ones in more detail.

You can grab it at the link above or below.

I hope this helps you and I will see you right here tomorrow!

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Who is Nick Tubis?

Nick Tubis is an American entrepreneur, advisor, and business strategist. He is known as one of the most sought after customer acquisition consultants in business to business commerce. He is famous for his unique lead generation and customer acquisition system that he created when he co-founded LiveVoice. His system generated his company hundreds of meetings and customers with Fortune 500 executives. In 2016 he was invited to write articles on entrepreneurship, marketing, and sales for Forbes. Nick was born on December 28th, 1994 in La Jolla, California and currently resides in Miami, Florida.

How He Got Started:

Tubis started his first business at 18 years old during his freshman year of college which delivered snacks to college students. His university made him and his business partner shut down the business because they were taking way business from on campus dining. At 19 years old, Tubis founded quickcashforgolfclubs.com from his dorm room which capitalized on an untapped niche in the golf club market. Within a few months of starting the company, the Quickcashforgolfclubs.com was making as much as much as $20,000 per month in profit. Tubis sold golf clubs in more than 20 different countries and every state in the United States.

At 21 Tubis co-founded LiveVoice which was a on-demand business support company that specialized in providing virtual reception services to small and medium businesses. This is when he developed a unique customer acquisition system that landed him consistent meetings and deals with Fortune 500 companies. His system consisted of primarily cold email marketing, content marketing, paid search, and LinkedIn marketing. LiveVoice was acquired by a large call center firm in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. Tubis then joined TSD Global as Chief Marketing Officer and pioneered the restaurant call center concept. Nick Tubis implemented his marketing system that has booked him meetings and deals with Hilton, Papa Johns, Clickfunnels, Samsung, Firehouse Subs, ADT, Wells Fargo, Tom’s Shoes, McDonalds, Equifax, Clickfunnels, Prudential, AutoZone, JC Penny, TGI Friday’s, Stripe, and hundreds of other leading companies.

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The High Demand Services Guide will help you identify what services to provide to your niche! We have divided the guide into 9 different categories to help you find your interests, type of skill, and related services you can provide that are in high demand!

Example: Creative > Graphic Design > Logo/Brand Creation

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Join Freelance University!

Freelance University is a global movement of 7,000+ high achieving freelancers and entrepreneurs who are committed to living to their full potential. These are unusually driven strivers who join Nick Tubis each morning to receive a specially created video packed with one BIG idea, delivered in under 5 minutes, that gives them a success advantage that day.

Then day by day, 260 days a year, these small improvements compound into massive transformations and significant success.If this sounds like you, join our movement today.

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Freelancing Clients is the premier resource to help you in every facet of the freelancing journey. Each of our tutorials, masterminds, and “invite only programs” are designed to jump start new freelancer careers and grow existing careers to new heights! Our diverse line of products and services has been designed and built by several of the world’s top freelancers who have earned over 10M on premier freelancing platforms. We guarantee results and enable you to build, grow, and sustain your freelance business. Learn freelancing secrets by getting mentored by the world’s most successful  freelancers.

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Learn to Become a World Class Freelancer

Join us on a live action broadcast where we cover 3 insider secrets that the world’s most successful freelancers use every day to propel themselves to the top. We’ll provide you with a free workbook to follow along with, and answer any additional questions you have after the broadcast. Click to register your spot FOR FREE!