Logo
  • About
  • Reflections
  • Burnout
  • Systems
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Letters
How To Find Media Buyers on Upwork

How To Find Media Buyers on Upwork

Upwork is a online job hiring/finding platform. It is totally free to use, for both freelancers and Clients looking to hire team members or contractors. In this module, I’ll go over how you can use it to not only find TikTok Media buyers, but also any other contractor you might need for your business.

Finding talent on Upwork can be a long process, but there’s a few ways you can get around it and find the best talent in a relatively short amount of time.

STEP 1:

Firstly, you will need to go to Upwork (https://www.upwork.com/i/how-it-works/client/) and sign up for a Client account, which will then let you post Job Posts and start looking at talent to hire.

STEP 2:

After you created your account, you need to verify your payment method. Even if you don’t plan on hiring directly on the site, having a verified payment method will give you a trusted badge on the site, which will then lead more freelancers in applying to your job posts and trusting you as a serious client.

image

To get this badge above, you need to login to your account and after logging into your Upwork account, click Settings in the drop-down menu in the upper right and select Add Billing Method. You can pay for your freelancer’s work in a number of ways like with PayPal or a Credit card.

After your credit or other payment method is accepted, this will automatically grant you the payment method verified badge.

HOW TO POST A JOB POST ON UPWORK

Click “Jobs” on the menu along the top of the page, then select “Post a Job”. As shown in the image below, you’ll then be prompted to create a new post for a short-term project or longer term work. I usually always pick long-term project even if its less than 30 hours per week, but either of the two will work:

image
image

The next step is to pick a title and description. It’s important that you write in them the deliverables, the end goal and a good explanation on what the requirements are. You can also find a pre-made template for Media Buyers at the bottom of this page (by clicking here) that you can freely copy and paste directly in the title and the description without having to change much. You will also find the questions to add in the questions section.

An example for Title could be “Looking for TikTok Media Buyer for a Marketing Agency”.

image
image

The next step is to select the type of project and the screening questions. In here, I’d suggest to always put “Ongoing Project”, especially if you are planning on working long term. But this won’t matter too much, you can change most of these when you hire them.

For screening questions, ask anything you’d like to know. I usually just ask related questions. So for media buyers, something like “Will I be able to leverage your Case Studies if I will send the customers directly to you when I sign them?”, “Which platforms can you do Media Buying on?”, “Do you have any Case Studies you can share for me to look at and get an understanding of your skills?” etc.

image

In the expertise tab, you can just pick as many skills as possible and needed for the role you are trying to hire for. These are almost like tags, contractors in those niches will be able to see your Job Post directly on their feed. For Media Buyers you can use: Marketing, Facebook Marketing, Tiktok Marketing, PPC, Social Media Management etc.

For visibility always put Anyone and for how many people it’s not as important, you can pick whichever you want.

image
image

Next step is to set your Talent Preferences, this is an optional step - you can skip it. If you have specific requirements though, such as the languages they need to speak, be sure to add the Location preference. For Job Success Score and Amount Earned I’d skip it, as it can limit you more. Sometimes people have a low amount earned because they are new to the platform, but are in fact very skilled at their job.

image

In the Budget tab you can set the ideal amount you’d like to pay and also whether you’d want to pay a Fixed Amount or a hourly rate. I personally do Fixed Rate and then talk to the contractor when I interview them to see the best option. You can also decide not to set a budget and just ask people to apply with their desired rate, you can mention this in the description of the job post as well.

image

Last step finally, is to review it and post it!

image

👀 Secret Trick That Will Get You More Qualified Applicants

Here’s some extra advice on how to get more qualified applicants in a shorter time:

STEP 1:

Go in the Upwork front page, and in the search bar type in the type of contractor you are trying to hire. If it’s for Media Buying on Facebook for example, you can type “Facebook Media Buyer” and then you need to select the last option, so search Jobs posted by other clients:

image

STEP 2:

Sort the search results by Client Spend, which means the people that have spent the most, will rank at the top. The more someone has spent on the platform, the more candidates they will have saved on their profiles for you to “steal”.

image

STEP 3:

Click on a Job Post that is the closest to the type of job you are trying to hire for and also make sure to check that they have a good number of proposals, so that there’s more candidates as well.

image

STEP 4:

After finding the job post, scroll down to the Client’s Recent history and from there you will be able to see the hiring they made in the past as well as the feedback they have given to that contractor:

image
image

From here, you will be able to click on the name of the Freelancer ^ and open up their profile:

image

STEP 5:

The last step, is to click on the invite button and send them an invitation to your already posted Job Post. This will send them a notification of your Job Post and help you get more attention from qualified prospects:

image
image

🤝 How To Hire A Contractor On Upwork or OUTSIDE Of Upwork

To hire a Contractor on Upwork, you can simply go to your Job Post and review your applicants. You will be able to see everyone that applied, their cover stories (almost resume) and then either Hire them right away or chat with them. You can chat and ask them more questions or even schedule a call to interview them 1 on 1.

image
image
image

If you hire them right away ^ you must set the terms for the hire, such as the Fixed Rate you will pay or the hours rate you agreed on. From there, Upwork will take your money in Escrow and only release it to the freelancer when and if they deliver your work.

⚠️
If you want to hire someone from Upwork outside of Upwork, so paying through Paypal and so on, you have 2 options. It’s EXTREMELY important that you don’t mention moving outside of Upwork in the written chat you have with the prospect, Upwork has bots and systems to detect that and it could result in a BAN, which would make you lose all your applicants and any saved prospects you had. Option 1: If you want to work outside of Upwork, you can either schedule a call with them, and on that call mention that you’d like to work outside of Upwork (usually mentioning that that will reduce their % fees they have to pay to Upwork will help your case) - from there, you can share your screen or even just spell out your email/phone number etc so that the freelancer can add you and you can start talking and working outside of the platform. Option 2: The second option that you have, is to start a “milestone” or payment with the freelancer, you can even set it at $5 and after that is sent and paid, you can mention communications (still don’t mention payments) outside of Upwork and then share your email or phone number in the chat directly. From there, once you connect with the freelancer on that external contact point you can mention to them the plan to do payments outside of the platform from now on.

TEMPLATE YOU CAN USE:

Job Post Title - TikTok Media Buyer Needed For Growing SMMA Agency

Description -

I'm looking for an experienced media buyer to run and manage TikTok ads for multiple clients for our Marketing Agency. We plan to scale it quite rapidly and need help managing all the clients ads.

If this is something that can interest you and you're a highly motivated person with a LONG TERM mentality, feel free to send a proposal. If you have previously worked with a SMMA agency and have case studies/examples please link them.

The price point is not added yet because I want to keep an open mind and see what the majority asks for and I'm more leaning towards a monthly retainer rather than an hourly fee.

This would be a LONG TERM job.

Screening Questions -

⇢ Have you worked for a Social Media Marketing Agency before? Can you link some of your work with them?

⇢ Can you link some case studies you have gotten with your media buying?

⇢ If we were to work together, would you be able to let us leverage your case studies to close the clients we would then send over to you?

⇢ What is your monthly fee for Media Buying on Facebook (for example) for each client? Is it flexible?

⇢ Would you be available for an interview? (If you want to get on a call with them)

Logo

Terms

Privacy Policy

Terms Of Use

Links

About

Reflections

Books

Podcast

Letters

Guides

Burnout

Systems

© 2025 Isak Vidinghoff · A non‐commercial creative study conducted during rehabilitation. No services or sales are offered. Privacy respected under GDPR.

InstagramLinkedInFacebookTiktokXYouTube