One day, I got an invitation to interview for a job on Upwork. The invitation read:
“I’d like to invite you to apply to my job – and I found you by looking up something related to sex and gender. Please review the job post and apply if you’re available.”
The job itself wasn’t interesting to me.
What was interesting was this mention of “sex and gender.” You see, just a day before, I had added a new item to my portfolio.
This portfolio item was titled, “Daily Emails for a Dating & Men’s Health Guru.” It talked about how I had written all these emails about dating, relationships, and sexual health for a big ClickBank seller.
This was the only mention of “sex and gender” in my entire Upwork profile.
And that’s why I think your Upwork portfolio is the secret to triggering Upwork’s recommendation algorithm.
Sometimes, those recommendations happen when clients are looking for specific keywords, like in the situation above.
But in my experience, new portfolio items mean more job invitations overall, even for jobs that don’t have to do with the portfolio item you just added. It certainly doesn’t happen every time, but I’ve seen such a bump in invitations often enough to think it wasn’t just chance.
And here’s the beauty of your Upwork portfolio: you can put anything in there.
Of course, you should only put in actual writing projects that you’ve done. But it can be on Upwork or off Upwork, it can be paid or done on spec (ie. for no money), it can be professional or a school project — whatever, as long as it’s relevant to a potential client who is looking for a copywriter.
And if you want to know how I write those Upwork portfolio items that trigger the Upwork recommendation algorithm, you’re in luck.
I describe it all in detail in my new book “How To Become a Top-Rated, $150/Hr Sales Copywriter On Upwork.”
And what’s more, you can now get this book for free. At least that is, if you act by midnight tonight PST.
In case you’re interested, here’s where to go: