One of the most frustrating things about being a freelancer is sending Upwork proposals and never hearing back. There is no way around it. It doesn’t feel good to spend hours putting together the right ideas and then… crickets.
After experimenting and tracking my own Upwork proposal responses, I found that it usually comes down to three things:
- My Upwork proposal wasn’t the best.
- My pricing does not meet customer expectations.
- I applied for a job that the owner doesn’t particularly care about.
With a little practice, I started writing great Upwork proposals, but the other two points are only partially in our hands. If my prices don’t suit the customer, I can either lower them or look for other customers. However, this is difficult to determine when submitting the offer as most projects do not have enough information to assess this in advance.
Pricing issue in Upwork proposals
I know some experienced Upwork freelancers who are charging at the top tier in pricing, which isn’t usually a good idea, but because they’ve wasted so much time pitching to clients who could never afford their prices. However, sometimes it works for them.
At one point, I ran my Upwork proposals through to understand where they were falling short and what I could do to land more projects. I’ll show you the results in a minute, but before we dive in, let’s make this a fun little quiz.
Which of the three points above do you think had the greatest impact on whether the customer responded to Upwork’s suggestions? The offer itself, the price, or the commitment of the customer to start the project? Share your thoughts in the comments!
How many Upwork proposals win?
According to our own statistics, 55% of all the projects I’ve applied for have never hired a freelancer from Upwork. In all cases, we carefully selected the jobs and sent each one a personalized offer.
It’s hard to say why. It could be because their business priorities changed and they didn’t need to complete the project, maybe they didn’t find the right solution, or they had already found the right freelancer outside of Upwork.
After each project was complete, I checked who the client hired and figured out why. I managed to get about 22% of all the jobs I applied for, while the remaining 22% was hired by someone else, mostly someone who had chosen cheaper rates. That means I would get a new client for every 5 proposals I sent.
What can you do to increase the odds in your favor?
Start sending winning Upwork proposals this week
Since you can’t control whether a client is willing to start the project, all you can do is do your best to minimize applications to jobs that are unlikely to go anywhere. Instead, let’s focus on the aspects that we can control.
When you’re ready to do something about the frustrating experience of not acquiring clients, there are two ways to end your client slump: write a different style of Upwork proposal or expand your client search beyond freelance sites.
I wouldn’t avoid Upwork suggestions if you’ve tried applying for jobs and haven’t received any responses yet. If you find relevant positions to apply for, it means you need to make some adjustments to the proposals rather than abandon the idea altogether.
In this article, we will discuss how to write Upwork offers that get customer feedback and what it looks like to move away from freelance websites entirely.
There are two things that I think make the biggest difference when you get jobs at Upwork:
- Applying for positions with enough detail to write a good offer.
- Writing a personal offer to each customer.
I explain each one individually. Let’s dive in!
But first, here’s a video that may help:
Find awesome Upwork projects
The easiest way to stand out from the sea of proposals clients get is to share something personal that you have in common to show mutual interest.
For example, if the client needs help with their blog about living abroad, you can share your study abroad experience.
I’ve found that with a bad job description, it’s often virtually impossible to write anything relevant and convince the client. Life is much easier when we apply to jobs where we have enough information in advance to write something specifically for them.
It can take a while to dig up great projects, and in my experience, it’s not often that you find more than a handful of good projects each day. I’ve noticed that applying for a few of the most exciting applications per day worked better than applying in batches for a batch in one day.
How to avoid bad clients on Upwork
There are always new jobs and I’ve found that jobs older than a few days or with 20+ offers tend to be harder to come by.
I also like to look at the number of projects the client has hired on. If it’s less than about 35% I’m reluctant to send an offer as there’s a high chance they won’t be hired.
We can often ignore the project budget since many customers simply do not know what to enter. You might be afraid of overcharging and just enter something random like $100.
In fact, I’ve found that this principle applies to many of the features that Upwork can add to clients.
Another is when they have to choose whether they are looking for a freelancer that is entry-level, intermediate, or expert. It seems kind of random what clients put in there and often you will see those who are looking for an expert but only want to pay $5/hour.
All of these filters are good, but the best indicator is the job description itself so you can write an Upwork proposal.
When considering a project, I use this simple rule of thumb:
Does the job description provide enough information to write a custom proposal specifically for this Upwork project?
Working with Upwork Save Search feature
The good news is that you can save yourself some time by playing around with Upwork’s brilliant Save Search feature. This way you can save the searches with the best results and reuse them in the future.
Upwork says clients shouldn’t include their personal information or websites directly in the project description, but they do it anyway. Perhaps my favorite search of all time has been looking for projects with the specific websites listed there.
Not because I want to contact them outside of Upwork, but because I can thoroughly research their business and write a tailored proposal with direct ideas for their business. It usually gets their attention.
Once you’ve found an exciting project with a detailed project description, it’s time to write a killer proposal.
How to write winning Upwork proposals
It may seem contradictory, but a good proposal is often not one that gets the project on land immediately, but simply gets the client to write you back. That way you can better see if they’re a good fit for you before you dive deeper, and it’s easier for a client to decide to learn more about you than to give them the project on the spot.
The word “offer” can be a little misleading and “cover letter” is a more relevant term when you’re thinking about what it should contain.
This means you typically don’t include prices but instead work to understand what the client needs more specifically, what problem they are trying to solve, and what part of your experience is relevant to that particular project.
Continuing with the project description example above, here is a suggestion that got a response:
Hello, I couldn't find your name anywhere. I have worked with many language courses, including German, Italian, Japanese, and I have developed my own course in Chinese. Please ignore the prices for now. Before we decide, we need to figure out what to do to get results. I would like to know more about goals and what you have done in the past. I've written a few articles about my approach to sales promotions specifically for language schools, but Upwork doesn't seem to allow me to share them directly on this site. Could you please send me a message? That way we can interact and that should enable me to share the articles with you. Thank you!
What do you notice in the example? Why do you think it worked?
It starts with something we have in common and then suggests I need more information to better assess how I can help and points to specific examples of relevant experiences attached (e.g. your industry and not the entire resume).
This isn’t one of the best Upwork proposals in the world, and that’s the point — but the relevance of what we have in common and the few specific examples I wanted to share make the difference.
Compare that to these suggestions for another project with similar content:
Hi there, I am interested in your project. I understand that the quality of content is most important to you, so strive to meet your expectations. I take instructions seriously to deliver content that suits your preferences. In addition, I will make sure that you have the best results possible within the established deadlines. Feel free to discuss with me what you need for a successful project. With best wishes, SURNAME Here's another example:
Hi, I won't bore you with a long story because I know you will have many suggestions to read to find the right freelancer for your project. I'm a native English speaker with years of experience writing for blogs, college magazines, fashion magazines, news outlets, SEO content, technical documentation, etc All content will be 100% unique, error-free, and engaging to your readers as you wish. Expect the following: => 100% unique content => Excellent grammar and punctuation => Appealing content for your readers => Timely submission of the work Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to working with you.
—
Hello, I am NAME. I would love to work with your project and I can certainly provide you with the details you have provided in the project description. I am an [X] Graduate, I am new to freelancing but I can say with confidence that I am knowledgeable enough to complete your required task. I hope I get an answer. Thanks very much! sincerely, SURNAME
Do you realize how vague they are?
When the client gets a sea of general suggestions, your more specific ones stand out. The job description for this project was fairly specific with some direction but still left some questions unanswered. So the plan of attack was to give an example of how things could be done and then hear what they have tried in the past.
Upwork proposal mistakes that scream “Don’t hire me!”
The first mistake in the offers that I often receive when looking for freelance writers is that we didn’t take the time to take care of the customer instead of sending something quickly.
That means looking up their name in reviews of previous projects, or pointing out we can’t find it, to show we tried. It also means treating the customer like someone who may not know our subject as well as we do and responding to them by explaining things in plain English.
The second mistake is to tell them our expertise in generic terms such as “I have X years of experience, I know ABC” or throw our entire portfolio at them. Instead, curate it and guide them by highlighting specific examples and explaining why they fit the client’s project. Don’t make them guess, because they won’t.
Sharing specific insights about your project or industry is very helpful. For example, if you work with the language learning industry, you may have noticed that students often have a hard time practicing speaking a foreign language because they don’t want to feel stupid saying something wrong.
Or if you work with logo design, you can point out that for a company with a lot of printed material, changing logos can be expensive due to all the reprinting, so if it doesn’t get it right the first time, it becomes very expensive.
Extending beyond Upwork
If it’s difficult to find projects you’re passionate about on freelance websites, then another approach is to contact companies directly to find work. It can feel scary at first as they haven’t posted any job ads and you might not want to come off as sleazy and spammy.
Turns out you don’t have to, but before we get into that, allow me to give an example of what happened before and after I started recruiting freelance clients directly. It was a surprising experience, to say the least.
A few years ago I quit my job and started freelancing at Upwork full time. First I landed a big project and life was great! But finding the next long-term project turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Even though I had quit my job and was technically living my vision of my dream life, it didn’t feel the way I envisioned it.
Something was wrong.
I completed 10-15 billable hours per week for clients. Then another 30 or so new customers who would pay, on average, about $650 before Upwork’s fees and taxes. I spent most of my time sending Upwork proposals.
During the day, I scoured Upwork feed for hidden gems—that rare project that could potentially last longer than a week or two.
Like an addiction, I would check it two or three times a day, using filters to find the best projects. Sometimes I’d even try to defend a vague job description that obviously took two seconds to create, telling myself to be more open-minded — than the client was probably just busy.
It never was.
Since then I’ve tried my luck elsewhere. Every once in a while I would take on another client when it suited me well and often doubled or tripled my income that month. My clients send me new projects without a pitch, never argue about my prices and love the work we do together. It’s a completely different experience.
It feels like freedom.