How to get your first client as a freelancer

To get your first client abroad, pick one narrow service, find a search on Upwork (opens in a new tab) where only two or three jobs are posted a day, build your profile from the words those clients use, and apply within minutes of each job going up. Expect the first month to be quiet, and aim for one paid job before anything else.

What happens on the client's side

I hire freelancers on Upwork myself, and I help some of my clients hire, so I see both sides. When I post a job and someone replies within minutes, I start talking to them straight away. If nobody does, I go back to my own work, and by the time I return, the job has a pile of proposals and I am skimming. One job I looked at recently had 142.

Upwork has an interest in this too. It earns money only when a client actually hires, and from what I have seen, only about 30 to 40 percent of people who post a job end up hiring through Upwork. Upwork does not publish that figure, so take it as my own experience. In my experience, freelancers who are active, reply fast and spend on the platform get shown nearer the top, because they help turn posted jobs into real contracts.

Why a new profile needs a thin search

A new profile has no reviews, and on a popular search it is up against dozens of people who do. In January 2026 there were about ten to fifteen new "cold email" jobs a day on Upwork, and each one drew a crowd of experienced freelancers.

I call the alternative a thin search: a combination of keywords that brings up only two or three new jobs a day. There is enough work to apply to, and few enough people applying that a new profile gets seen. Instead of one broad keyword, you combine the tool you know with another tool, a task or an industry.

Clay (opens in a new tab), the data tool I work with, shows how this changes over time. When I started with it in November 2024, only two or three Clay jobs were posted a day and very few people had the skill, so I got replies almost every day. By January 2026 there were ten to fifteen Clay jobs a day, and far more people applying. I have trained ten or fifteen of them myself. A thin search does not stay thin forever, so check your count every few months.

Step 1: find your thin search

Try five combinations of your skill with a tool, a task or an industry. If you work with n8n (opens in a new tab), the automation tool, you might try "n8n and Clay"; if you run HubSpot (opens in a new tab), the customer database software, you might try "HubSpot migration". For each combination, sort the results by newest and count the jobs posted in the last 24 hours.

Keep the one that sits at two or three a day and matches work you can actually deliver. If every combination shows five or more, add a third word, such as an industry. If one shows almost nothing, drop a word. How to choose your freelance niche shows how to pick the service before you pick the search.

Step 2: build your profile from the job posts

Read about ten of the job posts in your chosen search, and note the words clients use for the tools, the tasks and the results they want. Use those same words in your profile title, the first two lines of your overview and your skills.

When I began, I called myself a website developer on Upwork, and in three months I got no replies at all. The replies started only when my title named what I actually built with, first WordPress (opens in a new tab) and then the Divi (opens in a new tab) builder.

If your profile is new, say so and pair it with your experience. "I'm new on Upwork, but I'm not new to automation" tells the client both things at once, with your own field in place of automation.

Step 3: apply within minutes, every day

Set up saved searches with alerts for your combination, so you hear the moment a new job goes up, and apply while the client is still looking. An early proposal also stays near the top of their list. Weekends are worth watching, because clients have more time to reply then. Four out of six of my clients came from Upwork on a weekend.

Expect the first month to be slow. Three to five good applications a day adds up to about a hundred in a month, and with zero reviews you may get no reply to any of them. My early Clay replies were unusual, because that search was so thin at the time.

Each proposal costs Connects, Upwork's application credits, and every job shows how many it needs before you apply. The free plan gives you a small number each month. As of September 2026, the paid Freelancer Plus plan includes 100 Connects a month and shows what other freelancers are bidding, and Upwork says its subscribers are 50 percent more likely to be hired, based on its own data from 2023.¹ Once you are applying every day, I would pay for it.

Step 4: send a proposal worth reading

Open with something that shows you read the job, ask one real question, and where you can, add a two to three minute video that shows a small piece of the work. How to write Upwork proposals that get replies covers this in detail.

Step 5: say yes to a small first project

Your first job will probably be smaller than you hoped. Take it if it is real work at a fair price, because it gets you your first review, and a review makes every later proposal easier. Keep your hourly rate honest from the start: How to charge international clients from India shows how to set it.

A worked example

Say you have built sales reports in Power BI (opens in a new tab), Microsoft's reporting tool, for five years in your job.

1. The search. "Power BI" alone brings up far more than five jobs a day. You try "Power BI and Shopify (opens in a new tab)", "Power BI for restaurants", "Power BI dashboard fix", "Power BI and QuickBooks (opens in a new tab)" and "Power BI migration from Excel". "Power BI and QuickBooks" comes out at two or three a day, and you have connected accounting data before.
2. The profile. Ten of those posts keep saying "monthly profit dashboard", "QuickBooks data" and "automatic refresh". Your title becomes "Power BI dashboards for QuickBooks: monthly profit, refreshed automatically".
3. The applications. You save the search with an alert and apply to three jobs a day, within minutes, each opening with one thing you noticed in the post. For three weeks nothing comes back, and you buy Freelancer Plus when your free Connects run out.
4. The first job. In the fourth week, a small bakery chain asks for one dashboard showing profit by shop. It is a small project, but it is real work, and it brings your first review.

Not every first client comes from a proposal. A HubSpot consultant I know got his first client abroad without planning it: a small US company found an old Fiverr (opens in a new tab) listing of his and hired him to clean up their database. Later, a LinkedIn (opens in a new tab) contact became his first regular monthly client. How to get freelance clients without Upwork or Fiverr covers those routes.

Keep a simple log of every application: the date, the job, how many minutes after posting you applied, and whether the client replied. After thirty applications, look at which ones got replies and what they had in common.