Upwork Academy
Did you know about Upwork Academy with courses designed to help freelancers succeed on the platform? They recently added 6 more courses. All of them are free and on-demand, so you can take those that you like at any time.
Upwork Academy fully launches in June. Since then it has grown and developed into a useful tool for freelancers searching to explore courses and Upwork best practices.
Let’s see what you can find in Upwork Academy.
1. Freelance Academy starts with a few 101 learning paths.
Unless you are a complete beginner, these Upwork courses will not be so interesting as they have basic, step-by-step guides and information.
What we highly recommend for freelancers, though, is to take 101 courses for clients. Why?
Because most freelancers have no idea how the clients interact with the platform and what is Upwork cabinet for the clients and enterprise clients. It will be your advantage if you know the client’s side of the experience on Upwork, so that you can understand and help them better.
2. All Upwork Academy courses are grouped in four topics.
1. Your Profile.
This section has basic knowledge courses for beginners of Upwork:
Creating Your Profile. Get acquainted with the Upwork Profile layout and learn how you can improve yours.
Crafting Your Profile Title & Overview. Learn how to write a great title & overview for your profile and tag the appropriate skills
Building Your Portfolio. Understand how you can best showcase your work on your Upwork profile
- Setting your Rate. Discover recommended best practices for setting your hourly rate.
2. Finding Work.
The second section may help those who are struggling to find new clients. If you keep sending out proposals without getting any response, check out one of these two courses:
Finding Work. Discover how you can find work on Upwork and learn about what you should look for.
Submitting Proposals. Learn about some proposal writing best practices that may lead you to successfully landing jobs.
- Interviewing Tips. Discover best practices for interviewing with potential clients and representing yourself and your work.
3. Working on Upwork
This section will help you understand Upwork rules and terms better.
Working with Clients. Learn about some best practices for communicating with clients and making a lasting impression.
Work Contracts. Learn about the different contract types on Upwork.
Getting Paid. Understand how to get paid for the work you do on Upwork.
Work Diary. Understand how to use the Upwork Work Diary feature.
Staying Safe on Upwork. Learn about how to stay safe when using Upwork.
4. Growing on Upwork
The last section has only one course which will help you scale your career on the platform.
- Badges & Achievements. Understand the different badge levels and achievements you can strive toward on Upwork.
Upwork courses are not just videos and articles, by the way. They’ve developed have a great lesson-type UI to improve your learning journey.
There is a whole section on Trust&Safety which we think every freelancer should check out to avoid issues with policies and scams.
3. Coaching.
Coaching is a new amazing opportunity that appeared in Upwork Academy. You can join a group with one of four coaches. The community and expert advise from Upwork itself could be super valuable to grow your freelance career. Besides a full 2-week coaching training, you can join one of “Ask me anything” sessions with the coaches to raise any questions you have. Usually, coaching requires completion of some basic courses first. You can also leave Upwork your feedback about the Academy in this Google form.
4. Skill Certification
Skill Certification is also inside the Upwork Academy now. Here is a detailed article about Upwork Skill Certifications. Here we’ll just remind that they are offered by invitation only and available for 2 categories of skills: Development and Desing & Creative.
5. Upwork Events
Upwork Events are now a part of the freelance academy. You can view all the past events here filtering them by event type and language. For example, yesterday there was a community hour on the topic of Attaining the Ever-Elusive Work-Life Balance as a Freelancer. We all struggle with it sometimes, right?
6. Activities
There is also a section with activities in Upwork academy, but the only thing here is a Rate calculator, which is, to be honest, quite strange. It only considers your rent, groceries, utilities and work hours, while one would rather expect it to be based on the field of work, years of experience and competence. But it’s a fun gimmick, so you can try 🙂
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