Pro tip: I hit 500 freelance gigs last week and here is what cracked the code for me

Honestly, I never thought I would break 500 jobs on Upwork, but last Tuesday I hit that number after four years of grinding. The secret was niching down to just small business website fixes instead of taking everything. Has anyone else found a specific niche that worked way better than being a generalist?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer_park2623d ago

Yeah but I gotta push back a little on this whole niche thing - @oliverhernandez I hear you on the repeat business but honestly going super narrow kinda freaks me out. What happens when the market shifts or some new tech comes along and suddenly nobody needs checkout page fixes anymore? you're stuck. I tried niching down once to just WordPress security patches and after six months the work dried up because everyone started using managed hosting that handled it. Being a generalist feels safer to me even if it means being a bit slower to build a rep. Spread out but steady beats putting all your eggs in one shaky basket any day.

oliverhernandez23d ago

Used to be one of those people who swore by being a generalist... thought it gave me more options. But this post really changed my mind. Started focusing on just fixing broken checkout pages for small online stores and my repeat business shot way up. Being a jack of all trades just spread me too thin and I was never really great at any one thing. Now clients come to me specifically for that one problem and they pay more because they know I can actually fix it. Makes total sense now.

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parkerbrown23d ago

Man, that's exactly what happened to me too, @oliverhernandez. I used to take any web dev job that came my way and ended up being mediocre at everything. Once I narrowed down to just fixing checkout flow problems, my whole business changed. Clients started reaching out to me specifically for that issue because they saw I had a track record. It feels way better being the go-to person for one thing than being average at ten things. Your story about repeat business shooting up is proof that honing in on a niche just works better.