#257 · blue collar work is the future (i'm serious)
On Upwork, avoid narrowing your niche; there simply aren’t enough specialized clients (e.g., dog‑walking businesses) to sustain you. Instead, treat the platform as a way to get repetitions—apply to any automation job you can find and take whatever work comes your way to build experience and reputation.
You don’t yet have a real agency—you have a hobby with zero clients, so no niche strategy will help until you build something. Go to Upwork, search for “automation,” and apply to every relevant job you can, regardless of confidence. The goal is simply to get in front of people and validate your business model; worrying about a specific niche is premature. Start by sending lots of applications to gain experience and traction.
On Upwork, you don't really choose a niche; Upwork is your zero to one, not just getting $60 but maybe $600 or $6,000. To maximize your odds of success, come up with a good advanced search—a set of filters for terms like automation, N8N, Claude code, or make.com. Each day, use that filter to get a big list of matching jobs, open them in 50–100 tabs, and quickly verify which are good. You'll end up with maybe 10 jobs you can actually apply to, across various niches and technologies, so having some technical ability helps you talk about platforms confidently. Then record a quick video and apply to each job. This SOP isn't magical; it's just a strategy that works a bit better than others. By stacking it up volume‑wise, you'll eventually succeed—like investing a dollar and getting $1.50 back. If you repeat this daily for many years, you will succeed.
Focus on revenue‑proximate automations—sales, marketing, and lead generation—because they directly increase income. Upwork is the simplest and most accessible platform, though it costs more than alternatives; its ease of use makes it a good starting point.
Accept any and all work on Upwork—think of it as an elevator that instantly connects you to large businesses you’d never meet otherwise. Even as a total newbie, you can land a client doing $10–$20 million a year within a week, giving you a powerful case study like 'I helped a $10 million/year business achieve X, Y, Z.' At this stage, don’t worry about qualifying or tightening the funnel; go broad to bootstrap experience, collect case studies, and start making money. The creator shares a personal example: a friend who jumped on Upwork while he was door‑to‑door went from zero to a legitimate $30 000/month income in three‑to‑four months by maximizing opportunity and landing a big‑ticket client whose needs matched his skill set—something the creator missed while grinding door‑to‑door for $5 000/month.