This guide is all about how you can become Top-Rated on Upwork — and the small but powerful steps that help you stand out. One of the most important factors is certifications. They may seem simple, but they play a bigger role than most people realize.
Why Certifications Matter
How could you get certifications, and how could you certificate your skills or not work, through Credly.com? And what you should do? Let me talk about it a little bit.
If you're a beginner on Upwork, it's really hard to get jobs. Maybe you check the job postings and think, “Okay, these job postings are quite competitive. There are many proposals. Nobody sees my proposal.” Yeah, that's how it is in the beginning.
But here's the truth: many of those proposals are sent by bots or not‑qualified people. This is a main issue on Upwork. And honestly, I feel sorry for clients, because imagine you're a client looking for a freelancer who will handle your job — and your chance of finding a good freelancer on the platform is too low. It's too low.
So if you know these facts about the market, all of those proposal counts and competitiveness become meaningless. You start thinking: “Okay, these guys are not good enough. I can compete easily. I can beat them.”
When you check other profiles, you'll see it yourself: they don’t have a presentable profile picture, not a professional description, not even a clean, trustworthy profile. So the first thing I would suggest to you is this: if you have any certs compatible with Credly.com, you can easily import your certifications from Credly.
What Credly Gives You
What will it give you? Let's say you are adding your skills on your profile, like Python, databases, etc. By default, you will not be able to see certifications connected to those skills.
But if you really want to show customers that you are qualified for that expertise or specialty, you can literally add your Credly certificate — and with those certificates, your skills become verified.
So customers will see your skills differently. How? When they come to your profile and check your skills, they will see some certificate connected with those skills. And this is really important.
If you can do it, do it now.
If You Don’t Have Credly Yet — No Problem
You can go into Credly.com, it's totally free. You can search for skills related to your expertise. And when you find a certificate, Credly gives you hints about how you can get those certificates.
Some of them are free, some are connected to paid services like Coursera or Meta. You can invest in yourself and get those certificates for your Upwork journey.
And after you add that certification into your profile, related skills with that certificate will be shown as verified. This is really important — and this is something nobody talks about when it comes to Upwork.
These little differences make you stand out against others and improve your profile instantly.
I added mine from Coursera, so this is it. You can do it as well. And it's really a good thing to do for your Upwork journey.
Final Words
I will keep posting about other stuff that you can do to improve your profile on Upwork. Please read more, and you can read other Upwork guides from my profile.
Check it out — and thank you so much.
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