How to write a winning Upwork proposal

As a freelancer, one of the most frustrating things is sending Upwork suggestions and never receiving a response. There is no other way. Spend a few hours putting the right ideas together, and… Cricket, it doesn’t feel good.

After experimenting and tracking my own Upwork proposal response, I found that it usually boils down to three things:

Our proposal is not the best
Our pricing does not match the needs of our customers
We have applied for a job that the owner is not particularly committed to advancing

Through practice, we can write great Upwork proposals, but the other two points are only within our control. If our rates are not suitable for customers, we can lower them or find other customers, but it is difficult to know when to send a proposal because most projects do not have enough information to pre-evaluate.

I know that some experienced Upwork freelancers are dominated by pricing, which is usually not a good idea, but because they waste too much time promoting customers who can never afford their rates, it works for them.

Once, I performed mathematical calculations on my Upwork proposal to understand their shortcomings and what I can do to get more projects. I will show you the results in a minute, but before we delve into it, let’s make it a fun quiz.

Which of the above three points do you think has the greatest impact on whether customers will respond to the Upwork proposal? The proposal itself, the rate, or the client’s commitment to start the project?

Drums, please…

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I found that about 55% of all the projects I applied for have never hired any freelancers from Upwork. half. And I did not use my “connected” machine gun recommendations everywhere. I chose the job carefully and sent a personalized suggestion to everyone.

It’s hard to say why. It may be because their business priorities have changed and they do not need to complete the project. After all, they may not be able to find suitable candidates, or they may have found suitable freelancers outside of Upwork.

This is the result of a “batch” of proposals.I tracked a few, and each contained 20 proposals-the results of each batch were almost the same.

After each project, I checked who the client had hired and tried to find out why. Of all the jobs I applied for, I managed to find about 22% of the jobs, while the remaining 22% were hired by other people—usually those who chose a more affordable price. This means that for every five proposals I send, I get a new client.

What can you do to increase the likelihood of benefiting you?

End your client’s downturn on Upwork this week

Since you have no control over whether the client is ready to start the project, you can only try to reduce the application for jobs that are unlikely to go anywhere. Instead, let us focus on the areas we can control:

Projects you found and applied for
How do you apply

If you are ready to do something about the frustrating experience of not being able to acquire customers, there are two ways to end your customer downturn: write different styles of proposals or expand beyond the free website.

If you try to apply for a job but have not yet received a response, I will not shy away from Upwork’s advice. If you can find a relevant job to apply for, it means that we need to make some adjustments in the proposal, rather than completely abandon the idea.

On the other hand, if you are having trouble finding items that interest you, leaving the site may be a good sign.

In this article, we will discuss how to write an Upwork proposal that gets customer response and what it looks like to be completely out of the free website.

Attract customers with your Upwork proposal

When I found a job on Upwork, I found two things that made the biggest difference:

The job application has enough details to write a good proposal
Write a personal proposal for each client

I will explain them one by one. Let’s dive in!

Looking for excellent Upwork projects

The easiest way to stand out among the large number of proposals that customers tend to receive is to share with them what you have in common with them personally to show common interest.

For example, if a customer needs help about living abroad on a blog, you can share your experience of studying abroad.

I find that bad job descriptions often make it almost impossible to write relevant things and win customers. If the job we apply for has enough information to write something specifically for them, then life will be much easier.

It may take a while to dig out great projects. According to my experience, there are not many good projects encountered every day. I noticed that applying for a few of the most exciting ones every day is more effective than applying a bunch of them in one day.

There will always be new jobs, and I find that jobs a few days ago or jobs with more than 20 proposals are often more difficult to obtain.

I also like to look at the number of projects the client has hired. If it’s less than 35%, I’m not willing to send a proposal because they probably won’t hire.

We can often ignore the project budget because many customers simply don’t know what to enter. They may be afraid of being overcharged, so they just put something like 100 dollars.

In fact, I found that this principle applies to many features that Upwork allows customers to add.

Another situation is that they have to choose whether they need entry-level, intermediate or expert-level freelancers. What the customer puts there seems to be a bit random, usually you will see people who want an expert but only want to pay $5/hour.

All these filters are good, but the best indicator is the job description itself.

When reviewing projects, I use this simple rule of thumb: Does the job description provide enough information for me to write a personalized proposal specifically for this project?

This is a good working example that makes sending personalized proposals challenging. Customers were vague about what they wanted and didn’t share any details, allowing you to understand and show them how good you are.

The good news is that you can save some time by using Upwork’s excellent “Save Search” feature. This way, you can save the search that provides you with the best results and reuse it in the future.

I found my first client because I noticed a project from my home country and talked to the client in our native language, which is more convenient for him. I found this customer by using search filters to find customers in my native language or from my home country.

My favorite Upwork saved search

Upwork said customers should not add their personal information or website directly in the project description, but they still do. Probably my favorite search of all time is to find items in which a particular website is listed.

Not because I want to contact them outside of Upwork, but because it allows me to delve into their business and write customized proposals with direct ideas for their business. This usually attracts their attention. This is what the search looks like:

As you can see, I used the “OR” operator, which tells Upwork to search for A or B. This way, I can list content that I know may be part of the site, such as www or. com, usually not used for any other words. You can even add your services as additional keywords or categories to further narrow your search.

The more familiar you are with the types of keywords your customers use, the better you will find them. For example, if you want to work exclusively with startups, you may know that they often talk about growth as a department, while other types of companies do not. I know you might search like this:

When you find an exciting project with a detailed project description (shown below), it’s time to write a killer proposal.

Write a killer Upwork proposal

This may seem counterintuitive, but a good proposal is usually not to get the project to land immediately, but to get the customer to write back to you. This way, you can better understand whether they are right for you before you dive into it, and it’s easier for customers to decide to know more about you instead of awarding them projects on the spot.

The word “proposal” can be a bit misleading, and when you consider what it should contain, “cover letter” is a more relevant term.

This means that you usually do not include pricing, but instead strive to understand the more specific needs of your customers, what problems they are trying to solve, and what part of your experience is relevant to this particular project.

If we continue with the project description example above, here is a proposal that gets a response:

Hello, I can’t find your name anywhere.I have participated in many language courses before, including German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and I created my own course to teach Danish.

Please ignore the pricing for now.Before we decide, we need to figure out what to do to bring results.I would love to hear more about goals and what you have done in the past.

I wrote a few articles about my method of promoting sales specifically for language schools, but it seems that Upwork does not allow me to share them directly in this proposal.

Can you send me a message?This way we can interact, which should allow me to share articles with you.Thanks!

Writeback:

Hi Asker,

Thank you for applying for this project.I would love to learn more about the work you have done for previous clients and how you can help us achieve our goals.Can you make a quick call sometime next week?

What did you notice in the example? Why do you think it works?

It starts with what we have in common, and then continues to suggest that I need more information to better measure how I can help, while pointing out specific examples of relevant experience attached (for example, only with their industry instead of me Entire resume).

This is not one of the best Upwork proposals in the world, and this is the point-even so, the relevance of what we have in common and the few specific examples I want to share will be different.

Compare it with these proposals for another similar content item:

Hello,

I am interested in your project.I understand that the quality of the content is most important to you, so please work hard to meet your expectations.I take guidance seriously to provide content that is consistent with what you are looking for.More importantly, I make sure that you complete the work as soon as possible within the set timetable.Please feel free to discuss with me the requirements for a successful project.

Kind regards,
name

—

Hello,
I won’t bore you with long articles, because I know you will have a lot of proposals to read to find the right freelancer for your project.

My native language is English, and I have many years of experience writing articles for blogs, university magazines, fashion magazines, news media, SEO content, technical documents, etc.

All content will be 100% unique, error-free, and can attract readers according to your needs.

Expect the following:

=> 100% unique content
=> excellent grammar and punctuation
=> content that attracts readers
=> timely submission of work

Thank you for your time and consideration.I look forward to working with you.

—

Good day, I am NAME.I want to work with your project, and of course I can provide the detailed information you specified in the project description.I am a graduate of [X] and I am a newbie to freelance, but I can confidently say that my knowledge is sufficient to complete the tasks you require.I hope I can get a response.Thanks!

Sincerely, the
name

Have you noticed how blurry they are?

Not to mention that the things they emphasize (high-quality content, unique content, etc.) are easy to declare, but these proposals imply the opposite because it is very versatile. In fact, all these qualities are bets-they are just for getting into the room, not as an impressive way to stand out.

This is another example of a project that got a response. project description:

I have a course that teaches user experience design.

I am looking for an experienced consultant who can plan and guide me through a comprehensive release strategy through webinars, magnets, etc.

Set up FB ads for me.

I am a very creative person and I need an experienced guide to success.

I have had some success here and there, but I need to make a serious plan for the next release!

proposal:

Hey NAME, I remember when I made the first few sales through online courses.This is an exhilarating experience-you must be very excited!

Your project description does not mention a specific product price, so I will give you a short example of how to generate sales for an online course of $50-100 through Facebook ads. If it is different, we can discuss the specific details.

Courses are sold on Facebook in different ways. The whole process can be divided into three categories according to the price of your future products:

1. Less than 50 US dollars
2. $50-$100
3. More than 100 US dollars

Because people need more persuasive power to buy expensive products rather than cheap ones.So, assuming you are actually selling online courses for $50-100, I will build a funnel:

1. Use videos to target similar audiences (based on your current customers)
2. Retarget people who watched most of the videos, send them to the website, and ask them to sign up for the newsletter
3. Retarget and pass based on the products they viewed Email to them

If you are selling cheap courses, we can link them directly from Facebook ads to the sales page, but we need to perform more split tests on audience configuration, images, copywriting, and sales pages to generate profitable sales.

This is a simplified version just to give you an idea of what works and how I did it.I’m sure you are very busy, so I will keep it short for now.I have attached some recommendation letters from clients with similar projects in case you are interested.

Out of curiosity, how much does your course cost? Do you have an audience that you have already sold to, or do we need to attract customers from other places?

Writeback:

The course fee is 1300 USD.[Calendar link for scheduled meeting]

When a client receives a large number of generic proposals, your specific proposal will stand out. The work description of this project is quite specific, with some directions, but still left some questions, so the attack plan is to share an example of how to complete, and then listen to their past attempts.

The Upwork proposal that yelled “Don’t hire me” was wrong

The first proposal error I often see is not showing that we take time to take care of customers instead of sending something quickly.

This means looking for their name in the comments of previous projects, or pointing out that we couldn’t find it to show that we have tried it. It also means treating the customer as someone who may not know our field of expertise as we do, and catering to them by explaining things in simple English.

The second mistake is to tell them our expertise in a general way, such as “I have X years of experience and I have ABC skills”, or to throw our entire portfolio to them. Instead, plan and guide the client by highlighting specific examples and explaining why these examples are suitable for their projects. Don’t let them guess because they won’t.

Sharing specific insights about their project or industry is powerful. For example, if you work in the language learning industry, you might share that you have noticed that students often find it difficult to practice speaking a foreign language because they don’t want to say something wrong and feel stupid.

Or, if you use a logo design, you might emphasize that for a business with a large amount of printed material, changing the logo may become expensive due to all the reprints, so if they don’t do it right the first time, it will be very expensive .

Here is another example of an Upwork proposal to summarize:

job description:

Upwork proposal:

To my surprise, they were very satisfied with this project and even added a 25% bonus to my total income (wow!).

Beyond the Upwork proposal

If it is difficult to find a project you are interested in on a free website, another way is to contact the company directly to find a job. It may be scary at first because they have not posted any job advertisements, and you may not want to leave the impression of vulgar and spam.

It turns out that you don’t have to do this, but before we start, allow me to share an example of what happened before and after I started direct contact with freelance clients. It was an amazing experience to say the least.

A few years ago, I quit my job and started working as a full-time freelancer at Upwork. In the beginning, I landed on a big project, and my life was great! But it turns out that finding the next long-term project is surprisingly challenging. Although I quit my job and technically realized my dream life idea, it didn’t feel like what I thought.

What’s wrong.

I complete 10-15 billable hours per week for my clients. Then another 30 or so new customers paid an average of about $650 before Upwork’s fees and taxes. I spend almost all of my time sending proposals.

During the day, I search for hidden gems in Upwork’s news feed-this rare project may last for more than a week or two.

Just like an addiction, I check two to three times a day, using my carefully optimized filters to find the best items. Sometimes I even try to defend a vague job description, and obviously someone needs two seconds to sort it out and tell myself that I should be more open-the client may just be busy.

But in fact, it’s not.

Since then, I have tried my luck elsewhere and worked 10-15 billable hours a week, but I haven’t pitched anyone for a few months. When I feel it is appropriate, I will accept another client from time to time. Usually my income doubles or triples that month. My clients send me new projects, never argue about my rates, and like the work we do together. This is a completely different experience.

It feels like freedom.

I noticed three things in particular from this experience:

Good customers tend to pay more and cooperate more easily
They usually like to collaborate on new projects with people they already trust, because finding someone they can trust is harder than developing good technical skills
Compared with past experience, they may be more concerned about how freelancers solve their problems and are willing to work with them

If this makes you curious, there are a few places to find customers who don’t have a free website.

Where can I find customers (if not on a free website)

There are many ways to solve this problem, and they are usually effective, but they have different benefits. For example, writing an article that shares your expertise, such as an article about running Google ads for doctors or an article about finding the right healthcare keywords, is a great way to attract customers to us, but it will take a while to get started.

On the other hand, the fastest way to get customers that I know is to contact them first. The media, whether it is LinkedIn, email or Instagram DM, are not as important as we tell them.

You can find them through a Google search, or you can use services like SolidGigs to collect companies that are already seeking freelance help.

When you find a business you want to work with, it is effective to market to them by following a structure similar to what we did on Upwork. First, an idea is proposed, then a discovery call is made, and then a summary proposal with pricing.

If you have ever worked for a company, you might receive some terrible spam that you will never reply to, and think this is the only way to find new customers.

Although there are many people who buy long random email lists and send them spam with general messages, there is another method that tends to work better and does not make you feel scared.

The idea is as simple as talking to them, as if you were talking face to face in real life. Treating them as a person rather than as a number in a spreadsheet can make potential customers startle with your service – even if you are a stranger.

This means finding common ground to connect with them, rather than general information like “I like your stuff.”

If you are curious about this method, check out the converted cold email program.

takeout

If you can’t find any exciting jobs on the freelancer website, it may be worthwhile to find clients elsewhere. If you can find exciting projects, but your Upwork proposal did not get a response, please personalize them more for each specific project
The key to writing a proposal that gets a response on Upwork is to write fewer proposals and spend more time on each proposal. It will be easier if the job description is detailed
Go beyond free websites to find customers without sending spam, there is a way to make you feel less vulgar

Upwork is the first step towards freedom and a great way to start making money online, but if you can’t find any shows that excite you, it may be worth looking elsewhere.