What we can all Learn from Danny Margulies

If you're looking for a few top tips for growing your business as a freelancer - which i personally think apply to any freelancer on UpWork and are reiterated in various blogs - feel free to skip to the last paragraph of this blog!

Ever wanted to earn a six figure income on UpWork?

Me too man!

Naturally I've been putting in a bit of research as I write this blog and one name which keeps popping up in the freelance content writing niche - that of Danny Margulies, earner of hundreds of thousands of dollars on UpWork. His website, courses and blogs over at Freelance To Win are apparently the holy grail for thousands of freelancers.

So what do I think? Is it for real?

Let's split this article. I want to be fair to the fella, so we'll start with the positives.

What can you learn from Danny?

Danny is a great copywriter, and probably an even better marketer. This is evident from the get go, and even the personal blogs on his website are very well written.

Enough so that for any budding content writer, it's worth doing a quick analysis:

• He is a pro at that short, sharp, punchy writing style, which I personally love to use as a content writer. It's easy to read, it's engaging and it makes a lot of information easy to digest.
• He loves the rule of threes. If there is such a thing. Three succinct bullet points on how this will benefit YOU. Three rhetorical questions to make his point.
• He breaks it down well, into simple, easy-to-understand content which is instantly appealing.
• He uses capitals, bold text, italics and headings to give his blogs urgency and appeal.
• He uses humor to engage the reader.

And I've picked all that up just from the homepage of his website.

What a geezer. Sourced: http://www.businessinsider.com/psych-yourself-into-starting-a-business-2015-10

So the guy knows how to write. Seems he's also pretty dedicated to helping out other freelancers, responding pretty regularly to comments and questions. Going through his profile, I think he's probably a genuine UpWork success story.

So it's all peachy?

Hm. A source of income even more lucrative than his freelance writing is the UpWork courses which Danny offers on his website. In fact, he's stated on his UpWork account that he's earned more than $250,000 from these (most of it profit) - around about the same as the $200,000k+ he's earned from freelancing on the website itself.

Here's the crux of the matter. Danny's most recent blog post was within a few weeks ago, however his most recent contracts on UpWork were in 2016. And even then there were only a few of them.

This is pretty clever - he markets himself and his blog as courses as if he's currently smashing the freelance writing, however he hasn't really been active on the site for two or three years. He's more of a course-seller than a freelancer.

Making the most of his reputation, right? Sourced: https://www.upwork.com/fl/dannymargulies

Which isn't to say the blogs and courses he offers are necessarily bad - and sure, if I were him I'd capitalize on the opportunity as well. I mentioned his blog on what to include in a portfolio here because I think it's pretty sound advice. Obviously no one is born knowing how to kill it on UpWork, so it's good to get a helping hand, and from what I've seen a lot of his guidance for content writers is pretty sound.

Here's the thing. As hard as I look, I can hardly find a bad word about the courses he offers - it seems like he's got people singing his praises literally everywhere. It's almost too good to be true. If I were making a quarter million dollars on my courses I'd consider spending money on making sure my reviews were flooded with praise as well.

And What can we Learn From all This?

Let's summarize. I'd personally never consider paying for courses on UpWork, especially really expensive ones. In my personal opinion, there's an element of these courses taking advantage of freelancers who are writing proposals in broken English, working for a pittance and not getting any clients.

But there are a whole load of blogs out there (hopefully including this one) which offer sound advice from UpWork freelancers. There's no secret to making it.

When we break it down, Danny has mananged to average over 60k a year from creating great copy at high hourly rates between 2012 and 2016. Kudos - he's done well, and I think this is achievable.

However, he's also turned this into an "earn a six figure salary as a freelancer" enterprise and people are loving it. We don't necessarily even know if there's any foul play, fake ratings, false contracts, fake reviews of courses, etc.

What I'd suggest is that taking courses isn't going to boost you from being a good freelancer to earning hundreds of grand. There are no real shortcuts.

However there is value, in:

• creating great proposals
• selling yourself for the amount you're worth
• finding long-term clients and adding value to their companies
• working hard enough to make freelancing a healthy, primary source of income
• constantly looking for ways to improve and find niches where you can make money
• expanding your skill-set so that you can achieve all of the above

The long and short of it is that there's no shortcut to all of this. Personally, I'm betting on dedication, learning new things and intuition - and hopefully by sharing as much of my journey on this blog, anyone reading it will benefit as well.