Upwork is a freelancing marketplace full of opportunities for freelancers worldwide. It has gained popularity as a freelancing platform very quickly due to it’s nature where freelancers send proposals to clients to get projects. Upwork proposal is basically a cover letter to get a job on Upwork. This helps clients to recruit their desired freelancer very easily.
You might be one of those who are trying to get into freelance business through Upwork. And not yet successful in getting significant number of clients. You might be asking yourself “What am I doing wrong with my proposal?”, “Why clients are not seeing my proposals?”, “Why am I not getting enough clients?” or “What is taking so long for me to be a successful freelancer?”. Honestly they are very frustrating sometimes. Seeing yourself not achieving your goals in freelance business can be devastating.
Couple of years ago I was no more different than you. And was really struggling to get my first client on Upwork. Even after getting my first couple of clients I was not growing at an expected pace on Upwork. That was the time I started asking myself the same questions. But after that I started to follow some successful freelancers already in the industry and followed their advices.
I took some people as my mentors and read their content very frequently on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc. This changed me and my direction and believe me I became Top Rated on Upwork in few months of time. I am working as a freelance web, wordpress and woocommerce full stack developer producing high quality website for business and online stores for my clients on freelance basis since 2020.
Now it’s time to get you to the point where you can easily win jobs on Upwork by enhancing your proposals with these awesome Upwork Proposal Writing Tips. Winning jobs on Upwork is all about psychological play and gaining trust of the clients. But you should not be doing any kind of deception of something like that.
Before applying to any proposal, keep in mind to only select relevant projects and not the ones you are not able to do. This will lead to frustration and a bad reputation in the industry because it will leave a mark on your Upwork profile which is visible to everyone. Here are the tips you have been looking for:
Tips for Upwork Proposal Writing
Tip 1: Client’s Name in Upwork Proposal
This is a very powerful psychological technique used by millions of marketing agencies where they start any kind of proposal with the potential client’s first name. You might have received emails from different companies selling their products and you will probably find your first name at the beginning of the email, for example “Hi Samiullah! We would like to offer you a great discount”. This is because using first name for someone tells him/her that you are very friendly with him/her. You can probably try this in your marriage proposal next time 😂.
Anyways, the real problem can be how to know the client’s name because Upwork doesn’t reveal the client’s name directly. The easiest answer is to look for the client’s reviews portion of the client which is the last portion in the job post. Some freelancers might have left feedback using the client’s name. This will also give you the benefit over other freelancers because not many of them know this or use the client’s name.
Tip 2: Understanding of Project
Before even starting you proposal writing given a double read to the job statement. Try to fully understand what client is expecting from the winning freelancer. It is about the problem the client is facing. If you are smart enough you will already have an idea of what you will be creating for the client. After having a good understanding of the project, write a brief about what you understand from the job post. Take the following sample job description as an example to a job post. We will use it throughout the post:
“We are a family business having an old and popular shop in London however to expand our business we are looking to create an online store to reach a bigger customer base. We had the design ready by another freelancer already. What we need is here is to convert this design into a woocommerce based online store. Along with this we need a couple more functionalities added to the store, which are the newsletter and stripe payments. The website must be fully responsive so ideally we are looking for someone who is really good with frontend development along with a strong knowledge of woocommerce development. Please share similar work details with us.”
Now as you can see that the description is very clear and understandable and we know exactly what the client needs from it. Let create a brief about our understanding which we are going to send to the client:
“Hi John! Your job post got my attention and it looks like you need a beautiful and responsive online woocommerce store for your already running offline store. Also you need newsletter to engage with your potential customers and stripe for an extra an great payment method added in the website….”
So this is how you will describe your understanding. These first lines will be able to catch the interest of the client. It will lead the client to read your full proposal. Some clients ask to include or start with special words so that they are sure that you read their full job post. Be very careful and read the full job post for such triggers otherwise your efforts can go worthless again.
Tip 3: Potential Solution in your Mind
As a skilled individual and expert in your field you will know exactly how to solve the problem of the client. Or you may have a basic idea of how you will start towards solving it. Giving a brief summary about your potential solution to your client will not only tell the client that you can do that job but also will help clarify client’s own goal towards the projects. This may lead to further projects eventually. Your goal should be improve the client’s revenue if any through your work which will make the client keep you as his/her permanent resource towards similar work. Now here is an example of how you can reach to the above job post sample:
“I will start by adding Astra theme and then it’s child theme. After that using custom coding the child theme can be modified to get the required design. I want to use Astra child here because it has bunch of other features and is compatible to many plugins you may want to use in the future. To develop this quickly I can take help of frontend frameworks like Tailwind CSS which will speed up the development without compromising on quality.”
You can see here that I am using future prospects of the project to gain the interest of the client. Don’t worry to use some technical words as they can help define you as an expert in your field.
Tip 4: Similar Project
If you have done some projects not necessarily on Upwork, you can discuss them with the client. A lot of client demand to send them one just like the statement above. The project you are discussing can be off Upwork. Discussing this can increase your image in the eyes of the client as an expert. As he/she will know that you have done it before and have the necessary skills to complete the project.
For example, you might have created an online store for another company, you can discuss about that and also send the link if there is any.
I did a project named Modesthive and used it a lot of my proposals to get the clients. It created a cool image of mine in the eyes of the my several clients making me win the project.
Tip 5: Attachments on Upwork Proposal
There is section under the cover letter where you can add attachments to your proposal. It is highly recommended to add an attachment to you Upwork proposal. Visual aid is always helpful in increasing the value of content. You can add screenshots of your previous work. Or you can probably create some flowcharts to describe your process and add them there. You can use Online Flowchart Maker in order to generate flowcharts easily.
Bonus Tip: Ask Questions
Another tip that is very effective is asking questions related to the job post. This will trigger that you are highly interested in the job. Ask questions to clarify any details or just ask questions related to company which generally be helpful in gaining client’s attention. Because everyone has an urge to give an answer to the questions asked. This way the client will possibly reply to your proposal and a conversation can be started leading to winning the job.
Best of luck with these and your freelance business. If you need any further help you can contact me personally to clear up things. I can probably review your Upwork profile to see if it’s up to the mark for the potential clients.