How to Start Drop Servicing Without a Website: the Upwork Way

Can you name one remote business opportunity that doesn’t require any skills, talents, or connections to operate? Yep, you guessed right. It’s drop servicing.

This business has been very popular lately, but many tutorials and guides have made it seem like you must own a drop service website to become a drop servicer. Well, I’m here to let you know you can make money from drop servicing without a website.

Let’s face it: websites are a lot of work. Especially business websites. You have to go through a long process to create them, spend money on them, and even with all that investment, their search engine rankings and traffic may not improve.

While they are a fantastic resource in terms of monetization, you can become a drop servicer without one.

Websites are great and beneficial (if you can get one), and to do without one, you will need a platform to act as a landing page. Fiverr and Upwork are great choices for this.

You can create a gig or profile advertising your services on these platforms and use their wide customer base and traffic to grow and promote your business. As long as you do it right, you can create a flourishing drop servicing business without a website.

In this guide, we’ll focus on drop servicing on Upwork, you can learn about drop servicing on Fiverr here. In some ways, this method is more straightforward than creating drop servicing websites. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at what drop servicing is.

What is Drop Servicing?

For those who may not know, drop servicing’s meaning can be described as middleman-ing services—Dropshipping and even retail arbitrage bear some resemblance to this business model.

What drop servicers do is market a skill, then collect orders from customers and hand the orders over to a previously selected freelancer to work on. When the service is done, the freelancer sends the results over to the drop servicer.

The drop servicer forwards it to the customer, collects the payment, and pays the freelancer his cut. The remainder is the drop servicer’s profit. 

If done correctly, a drop servicer can make a lot of money from this work. If you want to learn more about drop servicing and what it entails, we have a detailed guide for you right here. But if you’re all caught up and ready to learn how to start drop servicing on Upwork, keep reading.

For those reading who may not know what Upwork is, I’ll give you a short introduction.

What is Upwork?

Upwork is a platform that helps connect freelancers with people who need work done. That is, it’s a freelancer network. Upwork has been around for decades, though, and was known as Elance-Odesk before 2015. Now it’s a freelance marketplace that helps freelancers find work and people find suitable freelancers.

Drop servicing on Upwork works by offering services on Upwork and getting another freelancer (from Upwork or other freelance marketplaces). This freelancer will do all the work, and you deliver it to the main customer.

Upwork does have a service fee, so the money remaining after the freelancer’s cut and Upwork’s service fee is yours. Remember this tidbit so you can set a price that’ll allow you to pay these fees and still make a profit.

I’ve compiled all the steps required to start drop servicing on Upwork right here. There are five of them.

Steps to Start Drop Servicing Without a Website.

1. Choose a niche

Your niche can decide whether or not you can become a successful drop servicer. As a beginner, your ideal niche should be a service that doesn’t have too many competitors but is a highly demanded service.

This is because, as a newbie, you don’t have the experience to vie for customers with more experienced freelancers.

You should also pick a niche that you’re interested in. You’ll have to learn more about it if you’re selling the service because you have to know enough to talk to your clients about it. No one’s going to buy a service from you if it seems like you don’t know anything about it.

Because the conditions for picking a successful niche are strict, you might have difficulty selecting one. Typically, services that have to do with eBook design and creation or video editing have a high demand with low competition.

Plus, they’re jobs that will be needed periodically, so if a customer is satisfied with the service, they might come back to the same drop servicer to make another order.

Though the options may seem few, many services can be used for drop servicing; if you need more examples, you can find some here. Our next step will require you to research people, not services.

2. Get a Freelancer

To start drop servicing without a website, you need a capable freelancer to handle the orders you receive. You absolutely cannot begin drop servicing until you’ve found a freelancer who’s able to give you great results at a low price.

Surprisingly, many freelancers do outstanding work for cheap. This could happen for several reasons. They may be new freelancers and trying to generate experience by underpricing their services, or there might be some other reason.

What’s most important is how skilled they are and the price of their services. When looking for a freelancer for drop servicing on Upwork, Fiverr is the best place to find them.

While there are experts who charge hundreds of dollars for their services on Fiverr, some experts also charge less than $20. The key is to discover them.

Since you’ve already chosen your niche on Upwork, there should be an equivalent category on Fiverr.

Sign up to Fiverr and click on the category if you can find it in the sidebar. If you can’t, then search for it in the search bar. Either way, you’ll still be able to find some freelancers selling your service.

Now, you have to browse through the results. Fiverr ranks its freelancers in levels. You should look for a level one or level two seller with a good rating and over 100 reviews.

Don’t choose any top-rated seller. It’s extremely unlikely that they’d want to participate in your business. Plus, their prices might be too high to net you any profit.

Once you’ve found several freelancers that match the search results criteria, you can now investigate their gig descriptions. Look at their response and delivery time. Check out their work samples (if any) and reviews.

Then, if you’re satisfied with what you see, you can contact them. This is important for two reasons.

One, to make sure the person is still active and can do the work.

Two, to establish a rapport for a better business relationship. After all, you’ll be business partners from here on out.

Establish business relationships like this with two or three freelancers. It might seem excessive, but it’s a failsafe to ensure that you can still operate even if one of your freelancers disappoints you.

3. Create Your Service on Upwork

While both are freelance platforms, the way Upwork runs is very different from Fiverr. Upwork gives most of the power to freelancers.

They choose what jobs they want to apply for and how much they want for it. Then the job poster will decide which freelancer they want. Of course, buyers can also offer jobs directly to freelancers.

Sign up to Upwork, fill in the needed information, and verify your account. You’ll need to answer a video call to do this. Once you’re a member, you have to start creating your profile.

Upwork requires freelancers to apply for work, so you should try to pretty up your profile as much as possible to make a great impression on prospective buyers.

Use headshots and be descriptive about your skills, where you’ve worked, etc. If you don’t have any skills related to your service, you can be vague. You may also ask permission from your freelancer to take snippets from their profile and use their portfolio if your service requires one.

Make sure your description is optimized with the right keywords for search engines, and you’ve used the correct keywords.

Not sure which keywords to use? Take a look at freelancers in the same category and see what phrases or words they repeatedly use in their profiles.

4. Finding Clients

It’s time to find your clients. Head over to “Find Work” and enter your service name into the search bar. Jobs related to your niche should appear.

Sort the results by relevance so you can avoid unwanted or unrelated jobs. Choose one that is similar to what your freelancer usually handles and check out how much the buyer is willing to pay.

If it’s enough for you to make a profit after deducting your freelancer’s share and Upwork’s service fee, apply for it. However, you shouldn’t apply for long-term jobs.

Please remember that freelancers also have to deal with other jobs while they’re doing yours. If they’re unable to finish a large job by the deadline, it can cause conflict with the buyer, and as the link between them, you’ll get the worst of it. 

Upwork uses a currency called “Connects” to allow freelancers to apply for work. These Connects cost $0.15 each, and depending on the size of the project; you may need more than one.

However, for $15 per month, you can get 70 Connects per month. If you choose the basic option, you’ll only need to buy Connects when you want to submit a proposal. You decide which option is best for you.

You’ll have to send in a cover letter when you submit your proposal, so prepare for that. It could be the reason why the buyer chooses or dismisses you.

5. Selling

All that’s left is the best part: selling! When a buyer accepts your proposal, you can now collect the details of their order and deliver them to your freelancer. Then, when the deadline arrives, collect it and send it to your customer. Then, rinse and repeat.

Pro Tip: Tell your freelancer to deliver the work a day or two before the deadline. This way, you can check for errors and have a little time to correct any mistakes.

Conclusion

Are you already drop servicing but not making any money? You could take a drop servicing course to ensure you’re handling things correctly and to learn new strategies. Then, you can apply that knowledge while you continue drop servicing without a website.

As you continue to sell excellent services, you may start getting repeat customers, which is great news. The way to ensure repeat customers is to provide great services while maintaining good relationships consistently.

And if you prefer a completely passive income, you can hire someone to answer your messages and collect the orders for you. What a beautiful life!

3 thoughts on “How to Start Drop Servicing Without a Website: the Upwork Way”

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