Original subtitles

in today's video i'm sharing the process of translating on upwork for an entire week coming up

hello and welcome back to the freelanceverse i actually just recovered from like over a week

of illness and i'm finally back to work and to making videos and i couldn't wait to get back here

and this is just a quick reminder to appreciate health because i feel like when we get so caught

up with work and our daily lives we sometimes forget to appreciate that so if you are healthy

at the moment appreciate it it's really important anyways a few weeks ago i made a video on fiverr

and it did really well it's by far the most viewed video on my channel it actually just

hit 2000 views yesterday that's insane 2 000 views but it's also the number one spot in the search

results when you look for fiverr translations on youtube so of course this is very popular

this series and i want to continue so today is the second episode of i translated on blank

for a week and today's platform is upwork so i'm gonna work from today sunday the 22nd of november

i think until next sunday on upwork i'm gonna do my best to earn as much money as possible

i'm taking you along uh giving you updates daily on how it's going i'm excited to see what up work

is all about i have no idea about it i've never worked on it never used it before make sure to

watch till the end of the video to see how much money i managed to make let's get signing up so we

are on upwork unlike the fiverr video i actually have no idea about our work i never used it as a

selling or buying website and the first thing i like to do just check out that kind of like

the competition so i'm going to go with german translation or german translated

and see what's out there so we have two dit maximum okay so you can see the job success the

rate and like how much they supposedly earned how many jobs they did seems to be all between like 20

25 okay paul is a bit more 35 okay everything around 30 euros 20 to 30 euros okay so we will

probably also go with around 25 to start with oh there are okay they're paid memberships as well

yeah we're just going to try the free one for this week but apparently there is a paid one

as well i've never heard about it let me know if you're interested in a video on that we will

just sign up for now i'm gonna sign up with the email here i'm gonna enter all my information

username it just suggests one we take the first one it seems okay i don't want emails and i agree

okay so we set up the account now let's see what happens next hi adrian thanks for your interest

in upwork as the world's largest stellar platform we connect millions of businesses with independent

professionals like you to get started all you need to fill is all you need to do is fill in your

profile that's what i thought i hope this doesn't take as much as long as fiverr it took forever

oh i can upload my linkedin profile that's useful yes we will do that okay the linkedin function

doesn't work that's a bad sign when i click the link it just continually looks for different links

and then it says request too long so that doesn't work so i'm just going to upload my cv instead

the resume also doesn't work okay already a very annoying start i'm gonna have to do this

manually then so what is the main service you offer translation it has its own uh

category so we're gonna choose that select up to four types of work general translation legal

no medical note technical yes which languages can you translate so is it the source or the target it

doesn't really it doesn't say anything so i'm just gonna go with english okay translation english

german french german do they have german switzerland do they have kind of a no they

don't have a distinction that's unfortunate because that would be important anyways

moving on what skills do you offer translation editing improve reading subtitles okay what

is your level of experience in this field i'm relatively new i have substantial experience i

have comprehensive and deep experience expertise five years experience as a as a translator plus

two in a in the language industry so seven all in all so i'm gonna go with expert but of course

anyone can click anything here so what is your english proficiency i'm gonna go with fluent

what other language do you speak native oh and i saw that they also have swiss german

swiss german sign language what no they have swiss german sign language but they don't have normal

swiss german what so hourly rate let's go with 25 as we have seen before upwork fee five euros

every hour of work they take five dollars i didn't know that that's an extreme fee upwork fee is 20

okay that's good to know i didn't know that that would be a definite no-go for me

personally uh we're gonna go with this just for this experiment title i'm gonna go with english

french to german translator i like to top skills experience and interest this is one of the first

things clients will see on your profile so i'm just going to fill this in quickly okay i filled

it in with my in my languages i focus on the fact that i'm swift that i'm swiss so if someone is

really looking for that they would find it through my profile nine out of 11 so i think it's going to

go faster than for fiverr that took way longer now the profile photo i'm just gonna add my cp

picture if that's possible i don't know i'm not a fan so far of the website at all the the signing

off process is very tedious nothing seems to work properly it's already the third time that the

website freezes now gonna use another more casual picture hopefully that works you take your privacy

very seriously so i need to enter my address so i'm gonna blur this preview profile okay if

that's everything then it went very fast just not smooth looking good make any deployment history

everything is in okay yeah gonna submit profile congratulations sooner part of upwork okay so it's

already approved then here you can create direct contracts securely create contracts and easily

collect payment for non-upwork project okay that's interesting so there is a feed apparently with

jobs that are interesting to me that's cool my profile is now public oh 60 available connects

i remember someone asked me about connects it's interesting that apparently i have 60

connects maybe two to two right people on here so i assume that this is really a bidding website so

not people will contact i have to actually bid on stuff to get to get chosen but we're gonna leave

it here for day one we set it up i'm gonna look into it a bit off camera and see that tomorrow

i will be better prepared and know what's going on and then we will bet on a few things so yeah

see you tomorrow so i'm back it's technically day three i mean yeah i guess we have to say it's day

three because yesterday i tried to log in and it just didn't work i don't know what was the problem

probably it still had to get confirmed or something now today it works again so that's how

these weekly challenges work right you never know what's going to happen so it's day three that we

can actually start yeah i assume that no one will contact me on upwork it's different from fiverr

so i thought today the best thing to do would be to get in contact with some people or trying to

how this works actually so let's just take the first one for example that's on my feet

i don't know if this is relevant for me let's just open it so this was posted 10 minutes ago

important do not bid if you're not use a 100 human translation okay that's good for us

this job post should only be claimed by the contractor who helped us okay anyways natives

so okay my feed is not for me then english to have i translated okay that's weird because i i'm

pretty sure in my profile i said which languages i offer right i'm sorry i'm i'm confused anyways

let's go to find work we want to we want to do something right okay brings us back here let's

go with this one english to chairman smally hi i need a german translator for a small document

470 words 15 interested translators please apply okay now this is now 470 words let's check what

that would normally be that would be about 50 to 60 dollar for this job and they want 15 uh quite

bad but let's try i just want to try so oh okay required to connect to submit the proposal too

so i was wrong i thought like every connect is one proposal but apparently they cost different

amounts so this one costs two out of our 60s so let's see submit the proposal each job requires up

to 6 connects you can get 20 free connects to get started i got 60 actually okay purchase additional

ones for 15 cents each so your general profile will be submitted with this proposal that's good

we want to do that how do you want to be paid by project because it's small right 15 i bid three

dollars they take away 12 dollars will actually go to me from 470. my cv is already shared so

i'm just gonna write a little introduction here okay i was just checking if we know a

name by someone but i don't so i'm just gonna go with hey there or let's go with good afternoon

and then i just wrote a very standard small one i want to see if this works i said i'm new in upwork

i'm a professional chairman translator with five years of experience i will be glad to help you out

with this translation shop please do get back to me if you're interested attachment i don't think i

need anything because my cv is already attached um let's just see submit proposal okay done we

submitted our first proposal very cool no it says no but i just proposed some i don't know strange

very strange this site i haven't really found my way through it yet but i want to submit

another proposal today and then we go on to the next day let's go with this one english to

german translation for baby pet and home product descriptions let's go with that it's again 15 so

i'm just going to do the exact same thing and see what happens okay i've just submitted the second

one and that it's that's it for today i hope we get some maybe an answer by tomorrow see you then

so i am back it's day four as you can see i just locked in well i logged in throughout

the day as well and i actually installed the app on my phone so in case anyone would contact me i

will get a notification and not miss it so as you can see here on this page i just did

basically what i did yesterday i sent proposals as many as i could as you know yesterday i didn't

really figure out how the site works how i find the jobs that are relevant to me now i

found this filter by category i don't know why it's so hidden but as you can see here you can

actually filter for translation english german it's the no hires button so it means that 66 jobs

no one was hired yet because that's essentially what i want i don't want jobs where people are

already hired that makes no sense right so these 66 are kind of relevant to me but then you see

like this one two to four dollars an hour and 20 goes to upwork so there's no point in doing that

but for example this one that i just did it's 30 an hour and they are just looking for a business

translator english to german so it sounds good and i actually wrote the bigger and more in-depth

proposal text than yesterday i i read a few articles that said it's really important what

you're right there it's but now i actually wrote the email that i usually would write

to a potential client none of the proposals from yesterday were accepted as you can see here in the

overview of proposals that one is now in archive so i assume they chose someone else and one is

still active oh actually now there are four active because i did them today but this one is from

yesterday that's essentially all we can do today in terms of jobs but i also read that it's quite

important to do this test what was it called the upwork readiness test apparently this gives you

kind of a batch or a take on your profile and then you rank higher when you send a proposal

so it says it's ten short questions so i thought i could just do this one thing that i still

haven't figured out is why some jobs are way more expensive than others as you can see now i have 45

connects left from my 60 in the beginning and some of them that i applied to today they were only one

connect but then one was four connects to pay so i don't know if the person that puts up the job

decides how much you have to pay and then even one shop came up where i couldn't even apply because i

didn't have to make the paper membership anyways for tomorrow i'm going to try to figure out why

certain jobs cost more than others and i'm still gonna continue sending proposals and

hopefully we will get our first job by tomorrow talk to you then yeah so i'm back on the site and

as you can see i'm not at home i'm at the co-working space but it's fine so unfortunately we

didn't get any responses yet still i'm not sure why but i throughout the day i submitted more

proposals it is actually day five now i think yes yesterday i submitted more proposals but

see now a lot of proposals as well where there are like these restrictions you know preferred

qualifications like this one at least 90 score of course i can't have this because i haven't

had a project yet so uh it's a bit unfortunate because these are the really interesting projects

and also location germany it's a bit weird because it doesn't matter where i am yeah so

it seems to be really hard to get started and i've heard from from many people that

i'm just tired of of proposing an upwork and i already get it after a few days it's really

frustrating because you don't even get an answer right you just try your best you they've tried

different approaches with different emails and see no one really answers as you can

see in my proposals there are four i think still open and now it's friday afternoon so

i'm just gonna check if someone proposed something here that could be interesting

for example this one english to german translator needs for website articles general business topics

that would be perfect so i'm gonna try and propose to that and what i did today is i undermined the

price a little bit of what they offer here you know it says what they expect so here i will

cover 20 now i don't recommend that at all and i would never do that but just for this experience

i want to try because i want to find something at least this week don't do that if you want to build

a sustainable business that's not a good approach anyways we'll write this and then get back to you

either after that or tomorrow so i'm back to my office and to this camera view it is day seven

it is the what is it 29th of november i did spend yesterday and today uh with sending out proposals

still i sent probably about 10 more but i didn't get any replies so all in all i didn't make any

money this week i'm sorry if i disappointed you but um yeah it's not easy on upwork apparently

i currently have six open proposals still so there is still a chance that i might get any

job but it's definitely hard to get started i find it harder than on fiverr because here

you really have to go after them on fiverr you have to hope that people see you and you have the

chance you can just share your profile on your linkedin or your network right i haven't even

done this in my fiverr video this would have also boosted the sales i think whereas here you can't

really do that so me personally if i had to choose between them i would definitely pursue fiverr even

though they say it's worse paid so yeah i wouldn't choose any of them but i didn't find yeah i didn't

feel myself at home on upwork also the site wasn't really for me maybe also just translation is not

the best thing on there because i know that people make six figures on upwork it depends depends on

your expertise if it's for you i think i have now nine connects left so i did spend 51 connects in

one week and it didn't lead to anything and then after that i think i would have to buy connect so

that's also something to take into consideration you either buy the premium membership or you have

to buy connects to continue so it can probably get expensive quite quickly so yeah that's it

unfortunately my total is zero euros yeah and i have not gotten any message not any

like most of them are just rejected or are now archived so i also looked on on a couple of

facebook groups how to properly address people on there and uh made some adjustments in the in the

tent that i sent out yesterday and this morning but yeah nothing worked i hope this gives you

an insight that it's not easy so i was always under the impression that anyone could start

easily on pages like upwork but it's not that easy because a lot of people require you have

many jobs already completed which of course you don't have in the beginning anyways hope

this was insightful let me know in the comments if you do make a living on up work and how you

started i would be really curious on that and i see you next week with another video bye bye