Upwork how to start an android developer?

Question

Android

Good afternoon! Trying to start working for Upwork as a mobile app developer.
I actively apply for projects that I can take on.
I choose mostly Entry Level projects.
There are many projects that you can take on. My hands are itching.
One needs to fasten the Navigation Drawer, the second one needs to make a Splash screen.
BUT! For some reason, out of about 20 projects for which I applied, not a single customer was interested in my proposal.
I prepared a Cover letter in advance, which I change from order to order, making changes to the points related to this task. But without success.
I try to apply for orders published no later than half an hour ago (I applied for a couple of orders in general during the first 5 minutes).
Please only respond if you have an Upwork profile and experience in dealing with customers/executing orders, not just anyone.
Thanks in advance for your reply.

Answer 1

It's hard to answer without knowing your profile, project links, and cover letter, but I'll try to guess:
- The Entry level usually has a lot more competition. In general, taking an order from 20-30 orders is quite acceptable statistics for an unpromoted profile, and in the niche of works that do not require serious skills, the competition is even higher.
- The speed of response to the project is important (because it's good when a client sees a list of 5 freelancers than a list of 50), but not as much as before. The reason is the ranking of requests in the client interface, before they were tied to the time of submission, but now they are ranked according to the "secret" upwork algorithm. That is, if you give in after an hour or two, you will have a good chance if Upwork ranks you higher.
- Try to write each cover letter from scratch, making it as specific as possible for the current task of the customer, write less water.
- If you spent a few hours on a profile, then try to spend an additional 2-3 full days, it will pay off, look at the profiles of top freelancers in your field.
- Stop submitting applications for a while (until you figure out what the time is), as Upwork can ban you for "non-market fit" when you have a lot of applications and few responses from the client.
- Regarding the direction of Android. Try to choose some main niches, it mainly consists in specializing in certain functionality: geolocation, working with REST, etc, but it may well be tied to certain technologies (for example, developing android applications on hybrid frameworks).
And a few questions:
- Can you share a link to your profile, projects and attach screenshots of a cover letter? A bad profile, formulaic cover letters, and the wrong choice of projects (for example, clients with a bad hire rate) can be the key to the problem
- are you not hired on projects or even not responded to?

Answer 2

You can, as an option, monitor projects where everything is described in detail and at length. Often, if such a project does not have a high budget, many do not read it to the end and send a standard carpet, or do not send it at all. When applying for such a project, you can write at the beginning of the letter that part of the project has already been done (or have done this before with proofs). This is almost 100% taken project. For the first project will go. And then you will make 4-5 projects, JSS will be visible and off we go. And do not write to just anyone, look at the client's rating, what marks he gave to freelancers for projects, look at his Hire Rate. And yes, from the reviews of other freelancers, find out the name of the client and use it in the letter. Good luck!

Answer 3

Submit applications in the first minute, if there are already ten people with applications, there is no point in poking around for small projects