Welcome back to yet another episode of “The Marketing Nerdz Podcast”.

In this episode, CEO “Karan Dharamsi” reveals the 3rd step on how to use the #1 tool to get clients for your freelance career in Digital Marketing.

So, are you ready?

But before we dive deep into the details, here’s a quick recap to the first 2 steps:

• Create you account on upwork.com and select your domain ( Click Here )
• How to apply and Write your application using the secret spec strategy ( Click Here )

Once you have completed the first two steps, here’s the next and final step to get clients for your freelance digital marketing career using the #1 tool:

One of the really important and often asked question by freelancer is related to the payment structure.

How will i be paid for my work? What if i don’t get paid?

These are the basic questions a freelancer would have while starting on upwork.com or any other similar platform. This is because all the communication is done purely online.

Also, since upwork.com is a platform that helps to bring the two ends of demand and supply, they too charge a certain percent of the project fee. And the question is who would bare this cost?

Depending on your profile (a new one or with reviews and ratings) and the communication you have with your clients, either you or the client has to bare the 15% charge which needs to be paid to upwork.com.

When you work directly from the platform, there is a lot of fee loss due to the various commissions and transaction charges etc.

Hence, sometimes, the client may ask you to work directly outside the platform and agree upon paying directly through paypal to save on these extra charges.

But this is where most of the freelancers who are just starting our get scammed!

Speaking with great experience, Karan shares the important pointers to look into while finalising the deal.

Here is the client thumb rule he shares to make sure you are not scammed with your initial projects as a digital marketing freelancer:

When you are working with your client outside the forum, take the payments upfront! Honest clients will pay you upfront.

Never work on a post paid basis outside the platform, specially with new clients.

When working through upwork.com here’s what you need to do:

Set milestones for your project and get paid for successfully completing that much percent of your project work.

In Upwork terms, the client has to escrow the funds for that milestone which is collected by upwork.com. And once you complete that milestone for the project, and client is satisfied, the client will mark the work complete and upwork.com will release your payment.

But what happens when you have done your work 100% as discussed but the client changes the terms and demands much more and does not mark your milestone, you can file a dispute.

In this scenario, upwork.com will come into the picture and analyse your communication, work and all the messages exchanged. Based on this, the payment is released or returned to the client based on what upwork.com finds legit.

Thus always have your communication through upwork.com. This is a very important tip to remember while working on upwork.com. For any such legal issues, upwork will only consider your communication that happens through the platform and not outside the platform.

So, if you follow these 3 simple steps, you too can use the #1 tool to get clients while starting you digital marketing career as a freelancer and skyrocket your career.