Hey, what's up everyone Paul here with Profitable
Freelancer and today we're going over a very highly requested topic and that is how to send
out the best proposals on Upwork that actually get noticed and that can land clients. So today
what I'm going to be doing is opening up the discussion on how you can really craft a winning
proposal, what the different elements that go into a winning proposal are, and then how can you start
to take action towards crafting consistent winning proposals that help you make more money as a
freelancer on Upwork. Now, this video is going to be helpful if you have experience on the platform
and you just want some other tips and tricks to land more clients or if you're just getting
started and you want to know more about what the process is even like and what are clients looking
for. We're going to be getting exactly into that. So I want to just start off with a proposal is
how you reach out to a specific client on Upwork. So as you start to browse through different jobs
based on different skills and different services that you want to offer, you're going to be able to
start to see different applications that you can send out and that is what's called the proposal.
So when you're crafting your proposal you want to really make sure you think about three different
things.
Just as a point of reference just to make sure you're kind of hitting each one on the
head and you're not missing out on them and now the first this one is all about just being
original. So you want to find a way to stand out from the competition and you know you don't have
that much room to do that. So there's a couple different ways you can do it but the first thing
is really making sure that you fully read the job description and then you want to pick out the
most important pieces of that job description and touch on the client's pain points in that initial
cover letter section because I'm going to dive in. I'm going to show you actually because I've also
worked on the client side of Upwork.
So I've hired freelancers on the platform so now I'm going to
give you a behind-the-scenes view of why that is so important in a little bit so stick around
to see that but just understand that's the first thing you need to be original. You don't want to
just blend in with the pack because your goal with the proposal is to stand out and have the client
actually open it and to check out who you are. That's just the first step so make sure it's
original now the second thing you want to do is never copy and paste. So craft every
single proposal from scratch and of course, you can have kind of a template that you work
from and that you craft and you mold for each job but if you're just sending out a generic copy
and paste cover letter you're really just gonna blend in. The client's gonna know that you're not
taking it seriously and they're really just gonna understand that you're not the best fit even if
you have a bunch of experience or if you have no experience on the platform at all.
Make sure
that you're writing out every single proposal by hand and you're not just copy and pasting to save
time because a lot of this is going to be on you to take the attention to detail necessary to
really have success and if you don't it's so easy to just blame it on the process blame it on the
competition but really remember it's all on you. So don't blame it on other people, look at where
you can get better as you craft your proposals and the third thing I like to really do in all
of my proposals is really go that next step and what I mean by going that next step it just means
try to go above and beyond what the competition is going to do.
Try to really encapsulate the
other two things I said being original crafting everything not copy and pasting and now what I'm
saying is to add in some other level of value. Whether you're providing something that's some of
your time for free to really analyze the project tell them why you're the best fit maybe you're
providing a small sample of work based on their project just so you can show that you can
really provide that next level of value.
Or maybe that means you're just maximizing all of the
opportunity to attach different files case studies and past testimonials from previous clients but
remember like we went back to the beginning it's all about standing out. So not only do you want
to just stand out but you also want to be original and you also want to go above and beyond and
offer some level of value to the client as they go when they scroll through and see who's the best
freelancer for them. So now let's jump into Upwork we're on the back end so I'm actually on my client
site my agency side where I've hired freelancers in the past and I pulled up this job description
that I posted a couple years back where I needed some help for one of my clients I needed a
copywriter and you can see that I actually have archived 23 people.
So 23 people reached out and
this is what it looks like, you can see that it's just a bunch of different freelancers and all it
has is the first one to two sentences of their cover letter available for us to see. So what
you need to do to really look at these people is you need to click on them further to open
up their entire proposal, their cover letter, and then their profile is connected on the
bottom. So you can see exactly how much earnings they have, where they're located previous clients
they've worked on, and then you can see how they answered the different questions.
So the reason
I'm showing you this is so you can start to see what it looks like on the client side because
if you kind of mess up your cover letter in your first one to two sentences you are likely throwing
away your whole proposal. So really make sure that you're doing enough especially when you don't
have much earnings yet to really try to separate yourself so the client can even open up one of
these. Now I want to show you what clients do they go through all of these they're going to
archive the ones that just don't seem like the best fit and then they're going to start to
shortlist a specific amount of them and then from there they're going to kind of narrow it
down and then open up the interview process. So when I was doing this I narrowed it down to
these three freelancers.
You see on the screen and as you can see I actually had someone in
there who didn't have any earnings yet along with two other people who have some earnings and who
Upwork is to actually telling me is a best match. So remember that the more work you do
on Upwork the more you do to kind of elevate your profile, get ahead of the algorithm,
the better chances of success you're going to have. Now it doesn't mean when you don't have any
earnings that you can't get started and what I'm trying to show you is that you have a very very
limited amount of room, in the beginning, to get them to open it. Once they open it once the client
opens your letter that's when they're really going to start to do the comparisons between you and the
other freelancers that have applied. So as you can see here you can see that this freelancer gave me
a bunch of different articles that they written on Medium that fit exactly in the niche that
I wanted and this is just really a good way to show you how this person took the time to
write out a specific proposal just for this job and they really went into depth with it here and
you can see that that is what really stood out to me as well as we go down to the bottom
here and this was kind of the same where she included her profile and her portfolio for me
to review here.
Really went into what interests her about the project and you can see that really
it's just a pretty well thought out proposal and of course, you know we're not gonna go super into
detail exactly what was said because that doesn't matter but what does matter is that you are doing
everything I said, in the beginning. To start to separate yourself from the competition and then
what I want to go over now and this is really the other side of the token because it doesn't
matter how perfect of a proposal that you can craft.
How many attachments you put in there
how much of a case you make that you're the best freelancer that is only one side of the token and
the other side of the token is what I like to call doing the freelancer math. So now let's jump over
to a presentation I have and this is actually a sneak peek of one of my courses I have on how to
build a profitable business on Upwork that you can get 90 off link in the description right now but
this is a sneak peek because I want to show you that this is a numbers game. So don't get
discouraged if you did a couple proposals you didn't hear back. Don't really get too hard on
yourself because this is what I want to show you. Out of 20 proposals sent out I did a little
case study just when I was building the course out of 20 proposals sent out. On average I got
about six clients that actually responded to me. They said either they want to get
on a call with me to interview me. Maybe they actually asked me a question something
like that but they got in touch with me again. Now out of those six on average around four of
them turned into legit phone call opportunities demonstrations where I really walked through my
proposal etc and then from there only two of those really led to a paying opportunity of paying high
ticket client.
So out of those 20 proposals sent you can see that each time you go down and you
really tried to see how many people responded how many times do we actually get on a call then
how many of those are closed that is not going to be a large percentage of all of the proposals you
sent out. However, that is what is needed to have success finding those two good clients in those 20
jobs I sent out is what is needed to have success. The odds are you won't send out two proposals
and just get those two clients. You need to think about it from a business perspective from
a sales perspective that you're going to close a small percentage of deals. So it's a numbers
game and increasing the top of the line funnel, the amount of people you're driving in, and the
amount of people you're getting in front of. That is what is going to separate you from the
competition who doesn't put in this consistent work.
Now if we start to think about how much
time is required for this I like to really put in an hour for each proposal. Now I know this
might sound a little bit on the extensive side and I'm not saying all proposals need to
take you an hour but when you're really doing everything I said, you're reading the whole job
description that's kind of part of the process. That should take you at least 10 to 15 minutes to
review what the post is look at the client's past work.
See if it's a good job for you then you're
going to craft your cover letter out you're going to answer all the client's questions about the job
and then you're even going to add in what I said before all of that extra value. Those attachments
going that next level and when you do that should take you around 45 minutes to an hour. So that
leads to 20 hours right then we go down to the client responses. This I estimate around two hours
for me to reach back out to the different clients answer their questions maybe sometimes I provide
some more information. Takes a little bit less time than the proposals did but it's still more
time that is going to pay off. Then as we go down and into the four client calls I like to allocate
two hours for each call. One hour to get ready for the call research, put everything into
place in my notes in a call script in the CRM, and then getting on the phone that can take
anywhere from a half-hour to an hour and a half or even more but that is also a big
part of this that you need to factor in and then when you add this all up and you really
look at how much time was put in to get those two deals it equals around 40 hours of work.
Now
i'm not saying this to kind of scare you off or that this takes a full time a full week of
time to land any clients but what I'm saying is that get realistic with this and understand that
if you didn't send out all those proposals you wouldn't end up with the winning ones and that's
really what it what it comes down to because once you do the work down the line it will pay off
but you need to really remember the big picture and be careful spending your time on like tiny
jobs that just really aren't a job that you want that you're applying to.
Make sure you're only
applying to the best jobs because as you can see it is a time commitment but it will pay off if
you stick with it and you follow everything I went over and lastly I want to end with a note
of optimism. That one good week of freelancing can change your entire freelance business and
what I mean by that is that all it really takes is a handful one two three four clients to
change your entire income on a monthly and even a yearly level because the kind of clients
I suggest working with are those clients that you can charge an ongoing fee every month from for
your freelancing services. So even though it did take that 40 hours on the front end to put in all
that work getting those two clients, out of that can end up paying for that tenfold.
So remember
that there is so much opportunity out there don't listen to all the haters, all the naysayers that
say this isn't possible. Go out there yourself see how many people are having success on the
platform and I guarantee if you stick with it and you don't give up and you keep putting in the
work and you keep expanding your skillset how much value you can offer to clients you will have so
much more success on Upwork and crafting winning proposals. So once again like I said this part was
a small piece from my course if you want to get up to 90% off, click the link in the description
to get that. If you want more freelancing content just like this please subscribe I'm growing my
channel.
You guys are loving this content on Upwork on freelancing, making money online,
and ultimately building freedom in your life. My name is Paul Mendes with Profitable
Freelancer and I look forward to your success..