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.