How to Use Upwork to Land Premium Clients - With Ashley Kruse

0:00Welcome, welcome back to another episode of the serve scale sword podcast. I'm beyond excited because today we're talking about a topic I know absolutely nothing about and I feel like I know a lot about a lot and this is one of the topics I can be like I've never even logged into the platform and so we have a special guy she's not only a strategist citing member but she also is helping freelancers land premium clients on upwork so Ashley welcome to the show tell my audience who you are as a person and about your business hey everyone I'm so excited to be here my name is Ashley Cruz and first and foremost I am a done for you service provider so I am an ad strategist been doing ads now for just over three years and I absolutely love it and as of 2025 when I was building out my own roster I started leveraging the upwork platform where I started to find a lot of success and over time I was just like okay cool I want to teach this and so I now I'm also

1:05helping freelancers be successful on the upwork platform helping them find what brandy calls champagne clients on a platform that traditionally has a really bad reputation outside of that though I am a mom I am a wife I am just a regular ol gal in the Midwest out here just trying to do the Lord's work with helping people so that's me it's so funny because yes I do say champagne clients and before Ashley I would have been like if you want some PBR clients you go on to upwork and so it's also so funny to me that so many people I don't drink but I used to and in college that's what you drink was PBR and people don't know what that is but it's a really nasty college so we say PBR clients or champagne clients and it's so funny because I have a GPT that I created with my knowledge so it even tells people don't use upwork but Ashley is proof that upwork can actually land really high premium clients when you know how to work the system and the platform

2:08so Ashley tell me what even made you jump on to upwork to give it a shot yeah so in 2024 I was back in corporate working a regular sales job and at the end of 2024 I was like okay this is soul sucking I can't do the sales life anymore I want to come back into my business and so I decided to come back but for me I didn't have a runway there was no I didn't have I think I had one retainer client at the time for ad services and I was just like I don't think I have the time or the capacity to wait 90 days or 60 days or even 30 days to find my next client like I needed a client yesterday and I decided to jump on the upwork platform and I just started like sending out pitches and I used a process that I used on LinkedIn several years ago when I used to write resumes and I come from LinkedIn in general so I understand the process of hiring and what you know your potential people that are going to hire you are looking for and so I started

3:10using this methodology that I've created and it went off right so I signed my first client from upwork that was a high ticket client in the first I think it was like 15 days that I was on the platform and then seven months later I was waitlisted and all of those clients for the most part came from upwork I had a few referrals that came in but every day I was working my upwork leads and for me because there was such high buying intent it made sense for me to spend my time there because I just knew that it was going to be a lot less of an uphill battle and a lot less convincing energy because these people knew what they wanted so seven months it took me to fill out my client roster and I was like okay there's something to this process and I absolutely love it it feels the steadiness and the predictability that I've always lacked in my business and so that's where it came from okay so for the people who have never even logged on to upwork like myself

4:12how do you know like how do you go about finding like clients that will actually pay you a premium rate and aren't looking for ad managers or other service providers that are like five hundred dollars a month or ten dollars an hour like that's who you're competing against so how do you find the clients who don't want that but they want the expert yeah I love that question so I'm going to be real there's a lot of crappy jobs on the upwork platform but I think that there's a little bit of an art to it so when you jump into the platform you're going to be bombarded with hundreds of jobs and especially if you're an ad manager you're an ad strategist you're someone that has that like strategic level brain you're going to read these opportunities and you're going to be like eh I don't think that this is a great fit for me and then you're going to see one that is a good fit and the minute you read it the budget's going to be an alignment the way that they're talking about the results that they want is going to feel really good for you and the results that they're

5:13asking for are going to be and seem reasonable based on what we do as service providers and so it is a little bit of an art and you have to learn how to find those opportunities but a few ways that you can do that is simply just by searching for the types of jobs and getting consistent with looking at jobs so that you know how to discern what's worth your time and what's not you're going to there's going to be a little bit of trial by fire to be honest but once you figure it out it it'll work beautifully okay so correct me if I'm wrong because once again ding dong don't know anything about upward so if someone is looking for jobs one upward is it mostly paid by the hour so there's actually both I think this is a common misconception a lot of people do pay by the hour but actually a lot of clients want that retainer type of service or project based service and they'll often say the way that they want to pay in their job description for me though as a

6:15strategist I always say and set that expectation up front that I don't work on an hourly basis that's just not how I do my work the the level of strategy that I bring to the table is on a retainer rate or on a project by project basis and I can share more about that with you during a discovery call or whatever the case might be but I think it's as a strategist it's our job to show up and dictate that conversation because the client just doesn't know they don't understand and anyone who's gonna buck back on an hourly versus a retainer rate probably aren't your right fit client anyway so are you responding to these job ops even if they do put an hourly rate yes I do so again I just am gonna assume that they don't know what they don't know so I'm gonna say hey like I see that you're doing an hourly rate this is actually how I work if that's something that you're open to let's talk about it and that works really well for me like I get for every 10 pitches that I send I'm getting three sometimes four responses from people so it's I think that there's like this

7:20misconception that's oh if you're hourly or if you only want retainer they're never gonna respond but in my experience that has not been the case and it's because I use case studies it's because I use my results to get past that that's what they care about they don't care about how you get paid they care about whether or not you can give them the result they want okay so speaking of that then a lot of people assume that like upwards great for people just getting started and you're not someone who's just getting started so who do you think work is actually perfect for to be honest it's perfect for anyone so it depends if you're just starting out it's a great way to get your feet wet like one of the things that I remember when I was first starting my freelance business is I was like I just want somebody to let me into their ad manager so that I can play around and see how it goes those types of jobs are on upwork but now as an established service provider there's also people who are spending over a hundred thousand dollars a month on upwork and they just are on ads rather and they just don't know where to

8:23find the right talent and they don't want to post a job on LinkedIn because it costs money they don't want to post a job on other websites again because it costs money upwork is free for them to post and they're going to get a solid number of people that are going to come in with that right experience they get to be a little bit picky about who they choose and so as long as you're coming in with that experience you could get a job if you have lots of experience and you could get a job if you don't have a lot of experience there's a client out there for everybody and I think that's a good thing to note and like a reframe is that a lot of people like we just assume that people know how to find service providers but that's not the case it's like people actually don't know where to look for service providers this comes up a lot that's why we have so many people at DEMOS and they're like bringing a need an ad manager where do I find one and I'm like hey we have a directory for that but when before we had a directory I said you can give me a post not posted in my group but most of the people don't know where to get service providers and a platform like upwork they spend money on advertising their ads are in podcast they're on Hulu they pop up

9:29up on my peacock like wherever I'm watching there are those ads and so when people see that they're like oh that's where I go to get talent because that's what the ad told me to do and so I think that's a really good reframe of this isn't just for people who are looking for cheap labor it's people who are just looking for labor and they don't know where to go so going back to the fact that you said they don't have to pay to be on the platform do you have to pay to be on the platform as the freelancer that is a great question the answer is no you don't have to pay there are benefits to paying to be on the platform so there's a couple of things you can do you can get a badge I don't have a badge that I pay for you earn badges through like consistency and pitching but you don't have to pay for those the thing that I do pay for and the thing that I recommend people pay for is the connects the connects are what help you rank higher when you're sending a bid or when you're sending a pitch to your potential client so for me when I know that I can absolutely crush the

10:33results they're looking for and I'm a really good fit or I have a case study that literally speaks to exactly what they're looking for I will use my connects to get myself in a higher place so that they actually see who I am what I bring to the table I don't do that for every single pitch but you use those connects to get yourself seen it's very similar to how you can rank in Google for different searches you're just paying for placement at that point so if you have a high intent buyer that's a good fit for your work using those connects to get yourself seen as a good is a good strategy have you ever tracked like in a 90 day span or maybe like last year's number how much you spend to get when I spend x amount of dollars this is how a client yeah it's a great question for me that number is 300 connects which equates to about 45 dollars and connect spend so for every 45 dollars that I spend I am making my retainer rate which is 2300 times four

11:37so it's a pretty good ROI I think that's the thing that people like get in their head but as a service provider you are you either paying in time or you're paying in money to find clients for me when I was back in MLM I would pay a ton of money every single month for an email and phone list that I would have to pick up and dial the numbers for you you're spending it on connect some people choose to spend it add dollars on meta some people choose to spend add dollars on LinkedIn or wherever it is but if you're not spending dollars or spending time and for some people it's more worth it to spend dollars than time and so it's the same thing with clients when they come and they're like I only do organic I'm like great I only do ads because I value my time and that's not true I do both but I just like that whole concept you're either paying for with time or money and so with you you're leveraging money and it's not even that much 45 dollars for 2300 dollar

12:44contract and then they stay four months but then so my question is does upward take a percentage of the contract they do they take 10% so what I always recommend people do is that you adjust your pricing accordingly right and your leads are the people that are on the other side trying to hire you they understand that and in my experience I've had clients who have stayed with me for eight nine months and they don't mind being on the upward platform but they tell me like hey let me know if we need to adjust pricing to account for what upward is taking and again like that's part of the approach is like when you are able to discern the right type of champagne client you can tell and you sense that they actually care not only about their results but like you as the team member those kinds of things open up very easily and they are so willing to work with you and I just I love that because it's five clients that I've had over the last five year or last year wouldn't have found me if it wasn't for upwork and like there are some of my favorite people to work with so that my question is and this might be a dirty question

13:50and not that type of dirty y'all but like we're like doing some shady stuff dirty is do you take them off the platform okay this is a question that I get a lot and I will never suggest somebody takes someone off the platform because if you get caught you could get your profile band that's just the truth of it and I wouldn't want any I wouldn't want that to happen anybody but there's also keeping them on the platform can be helpful because you're protected that way so if somebody walks away again you don't know this person if somebody tries to bow out of their contract if somebody doesn't pay upwork has ways to manage that so that you mitigate risk that you might not see okay so someone's listening to this and they're like okay Ashley you've sold me on it I'm gonna jump on the platform what are the like three top three action steps that they could do this week so first and foremost create your profile I would say that's like the number one

14:51thing and don't copy and paste whatever you put on LinkedIn into your upwork profile I want you to think of your upwork profile as a sales page right like it should feel very similar to your work with me page or whatever website that you use to promote your services use your case studies as part of your profile and that's the second suggestion that I have is get a case study and find opportunities that really relate back to the case study that you're creating right the more that your ideal client can see that you have the experience that they're looking for the more likely they are to pay premium rates so if you're just posting or if you're just pushing out a generic proposal and you're not taking any time to show them why you're the best fit they're gonna treat treat you like a commodity and when someone treats you like a commodity it's because they think that they can find what you do somewhere cheaper and the goal of this is to not do that you're not trying to send a bunch of

15:52pitches you're being very specific with who you're pitching to and your profile as well as your case study help to bolster that rate that you're gonna charge so those are the first two things and then the third thing I would say is start sending pitches like just start sending 10 pitches make it your goal I always like laugh because I follow Brandy's methodology with 30 minutes of marketing minutes every single day and I tell people okay take one of your marketing minutes for the week and spend out five to ten upward proposals okay track how many you send see what your view rates are see what your response rates are and see if they lead to any calls that will tell you where you need to focus your time and energy is your pitch too big is are you not being direct enough in getting someone to a call those will those numbers will tell you what to do but that can't happen unless you're consistently showing up and pitching oh I love it okay Ashley this has been so good maybe in another day another life I would have been on upwork but I think this is great

16:59for people to try I really do I think it's something that like if your people are on there if you want to give it a shot then go do the thing give it a shot for 90 days decide how much money you're willing to invest and do that but also I know because Ashley is one of our strategist side members and we've been working on this together she has a resource for you that you can go and learn more how to do this so you can either go off now and do it on your own or you can join Ashley in her training and learn how she's been able to do this with the step by step process Ashley will you tell us more about what you got for my listeners yes so if you are brand new to upwork and you are just trying to figure out like what you should be on your profile the first resource that I just want to offer you it's free it's my upwork profile checklist you can grab that checklist it goes through eight different parts of your upwork profile that you want to have dialed in so that one you can feel like you know what you're doing on the platform and then two so that you can be

18:01found by other people who are searching because that's one thing we didn't talk about today guys is that it is a massive service provider directory so people can literally search for you based on your profile so go get that checklist so if you want the checklist you're going to go to business-baddy.com backslash checklist to get access to that checklist immediately it goes through the eight things that you need on your upwork profile and you'll get access to it immediately I want everyone to go grab that checklist we will put the link in the show notes so you have that it will also be on the blog so you can go read the episode grab those tips and we'll link it in there so you have many places that you can go grab that checklist completely free from Ashley and she has a ton of other resources for you on upwork whenever you're ready for the next step so Ashley thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with our guests but I like to do some rapid fire so are you ready for this ready okay so what is your favorite business book

19:06gosh right now it is building a second brain because I'm just horribly unorganized so I'm learning to be more organized and that's actually it's opened up a lot for me to be more organized and how to actually do it so I love that book did I recommend that yes yeah we I was about to say that's a book that I recommend I like that book okay perfect so favorite big to this book building inside your brain and then too how do you like your taco oh man I like a hard taco I like a beef hard taco with cheese or I like alpesto or like the traditional Mexican style is like my all-time favorite with a little pineapple huh everyone just says I'm like I do not want to sweet taco like it's not like it's not everyone no and I love how you didn't flinch of that question most people were so taking a bag about that question and you were just like oh that's how I ordered my taco normal question like whatever and then tell me what's the best piece of business advice you've ever

20:08received oh that's a good question honestly just jump just do it get into action that's that's truly I think for me I'm a trial by fire girl so having that permission to just do it messy was always the thing that I needed to be successful so I that's the piece of advice that I really appreciate and then final question what are you either loving or learning in your business right now oh I'm loving and learning my webinar process actually I do run a webinar for land premium clients on Upwork and I am loving refining it like I traditionally in the past have jumped ideas and jumped webinar classes all the time but I've committed to Brandy to stick the path of this one webinar for a while and I love it like I'm finding all of these little ways to make it better and better and to give more value and it's just been such a fun process so I think that's my the thing that I love most right now I've been running the same workshop for the last six years for

21:13conversions for clients like people don't understand that that is the path to success as you continue to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over as long as it's producing results and so you're staying true to that webinar and optimizing and refining it serves you so much better than jumping around to 10 different ways to sell your product actually thank you so much for being on the podcast we've loved hearing about Upwork everyone go drive her checklist and also give her a follow on Instagram what is your Instagram Ashley it is at the dot business dot baddie it's very long but it's it's great we will link that up in the show notes as well thank you so much Ashley for telling us all about Upwork