Business

The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Proposals Are Not Landing You a Job on Upwork

Here’s how you can improve your chances of landing a job at Upwork

Your commitment to work doesn’t start ‘after’ you have landed a job. It is actually your commitment ‘to’ land a job that counts more.

Ever since the transition into the gig economy, the freelance market has been expanding rapidly. But then the Coronavirus pandemic came knocking on the door and opened a whole new world of prospects for freelancers from across the globe.

If you have recently taken the decision of stepping into the freelance market, congratulations on your first step towards building a new source of income.

Chances are that you have already come across a few names, including “UPWORK” as recommended platforms to kickstart your freelance career. Or perhaps, you may even have been on Upwork exploring opportunities for a few months, but the clients just won’t catch interest in your profile.

Naturally, the frustration is now starting to push you into questioning if you are a good fit for the freelance market in the first place? If so, I have some good news for you. More often than not, the problem lies only in the proposal that you have been sending to your potential clients.

With over ten years of experience as a freelance content writer on Upwork, today I’d like to share my two cents about what you could be doing wrong in crafting your proposals on Upwork that might be preventing you from striking a good deal.

1. You Sound Like A Robot

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to be formal in your communication with the clients. Of course, using slang language is not encouraged at all. However, try not to be too obsessed with the idea that you end up sounding like a machine.

Let me tell you why being too formal rarely ever works on Upwork. When you are sticking entirely to a formal framework, unfortunately, you risk coming out as someone who might just be using a fixed, generic template to apply on a bulk of projects with only a few minor tweaks.

I’ll even go to the extent of recommending NOT addressing your potential clients as Sir or Ma’am. Instead, scroll through and look at the reviews of the freelancers they have worked with before. More often than not, you’d be able to find their name in the feedback section.

The point here is to make your proposal as personalized as possible. Your potential employer is on the platform in search of a person, someone that they can feel comfortable with in discussing the nitty-gritty of their project. Put yourself in place of your client and ask yourself:

“Are you going to be more comfortable talking to a person who’s addressing you by your name, or someone who calls you Sir/Ma’am?”

Psychologically speaking, calling people by their name is fundamental to putting them on rest, relieving them of the unnecessary stress that is commonly attributed to excessively formal scenarios, and welcoming them to a semi-casual conversation where they can open up and speak their minds.

That’s precisely what your clients are looking for. Communication is the key to a job well done. You know that, and your clients know that too. Once you invite them to a non-structured conversation, they’d know that the communication thereafter, will result in an impeccable delivery.

Secondly, when you address them by their name, they’d know that you’ve actually gone through the trouble of exploring the reviews section to find their name. That speaks volumes about how serious you are in collaborating with them on the project.

2. You Are Writing An Essay

The commonest mistake that I have seen people making on Upwork while writing a proposal is committing to telling every single detail about their professional careers to the client. If you think it’s a good practice, I’d like you to answer a very simple question:

“What exactly do you suppose your Curriculum Vitae or Resume is for then?”

In my experience, I’ve found it much more effective to be short and concise in the proposal. The information in there must only relate to the job at hand. Again, let’s put you in place of your client to get a better understanding of “WHY”, shall we?

Imagine that you have posted a job on Upwork and are looking for a suitable candidate to get it done for you. Naturally, you are going to receive tens of proposals from freelancers across the globe. Since you are paying for the task, it is evidently important for you, and it is only fair for you to seek a professional who can promise value for money.

Therefore, you will now be inclined to scrutinizing all applications before finalizing your decision about hiring a freelancer. Say that you have to assess 20 different proposals. Would you really care to even go through the one that looks like a 1,000-word essay when there clearly are others that are offering ample, relevant, and valuable information that is sufficient for you to make an informed decision in as little as 200 words?

Simply put, in the digital era, our attention span has been shrunk to no more than a few minutes, and your clients are no different in this regard. If you are unable to catch their attention with the first couple of sentences, your chances of landing that job are already slim to none.

That is exactly where a long, essay-format proposal fails you. It seldom captures your client’s attention because in the first paragraph or probably even in the second, you are rambling about who you are, what you have previously done, and how many years of experience do you have on your portfolio. It may come as a surprise for you, but your clients don’t care about any of that.

So, what do they care about, you ask? This brings us to our next pointer.

3. You Are Making It All About Yourself

As mentioned above, who you are, what you have done, and how long have you been around, is all irrelevant to your client. What he is asking you to answer through your proposal is why would it be the right decision for him to choose you from a pool of other freelancers that have also applied to the same job.

And how do you do that? By making your proposal revolve entirely around your client and his project. One of the tricks that have almost always worked for me is starting the proposal by reinstating the client’s problem or what he is looking for, right after greetings. That way, he would know up front that I have a good understanding of what the project is about.

Much like anything else, though, it wouldn’t suffice to just state the problem. The solution is what he is seeking from you. Instead of bragging about your experience and past projects, therefore, choose to elaborate on the approach that you’ll take to get his task done up to perfection. This would include briefly outlining how do you plan on going about the job; a prognosis of his project, if you may.

Let me explain it with an example. Since I’m a content writer, when I’m applying to a job posting, I always make sure to create an outline, sort of like a list of subheadings to give my client an idea of what do I intend to cover in the content that he is requesting.

Again, it’s really a tiny effort, but it creates all the difference in the world in making my proposal outshine the rest. A little bit of research beforehand, investing your time into writing an outline, these are some of the ways to create a tacit understanding that you mean business.

4. You Are Not Sending In Samples Of Your Work

I hate to be the bearer of the bad news, but your proposal is good for nothing if it is not supported by an equally good work sample. Why? Because walking the talk, unfortunately, is not a skill known to a lot of us. Making promises in the proposal is easy, but delivering on those promises is a whole another story.

Your work samples are means for your clients to rest assured that they can count on you to deliver the quality you promised. For instance, in my case, I can outline the project all I want, but it is only samples of my written work that attests that my writing skills or narrative are developed enough to undertake their task. It’s what helps them judge if my writing style is suitable for their project.

Another thing to keep in mind while attaching samples of your work is to ensure relevance. If someone is on Upwork looking for a web developer to create an e-commerce website for a business, sending in a link to this website that you previously built for a service-based business is not going to do you any good.

So, if you are open to working on multiple categories of projects under the same niche on Upwork, invest your time into preparing samples relevant to all such categories so that you won’t have to miss on an opportunity that you were highly interested in, just because you didn’t have an appropriate sample to show.

At times when you come across a job posting that you are confident is suitable for your skillset but you don’t have a relevant sample to show, you can offer to work on a part of the task without a contract with an agreement that if they like your work, they can hire you for the entire project. As I’ve mentioned it repeatedly in this article, it’s all about showing your interest in the job.

A word of caution, though. Before playing such a stunt on Upwork, do your homework and make sure that the client is verified to avoid any unnecessary inconvenience at a later stage.

5. You Are Slow In Sending In A Proposal

Lastly, what aspiring freelancers frequently do is waste their Upwork connects on job postings that already have twenty or more proposals. What’s even worse is that the client is already interviewing a few of the candidates as well. Upwork puts these stats on display for a reason, but oh well, we are too busy to explore.

What I have learned being on Upwork for almost ten years, is that the likelihood of getting a response from the clients is that much higher if you are focusing on applying to the recently posted jobs. As a rule of thumb, I usually only send a proposal to the job that has under ten applicants with none being interviewed at the moment.

Such a strategy is particularly useful with two types of clients; those that are in a hurry to hire and get the ball rolling, and those that are hiring on a first-come-first-serve basis. In both these cases, they are unlikely to even look through the proposals that are sent in later. They are looking forward to hiring the first applicant that they find suitable for the job.

If you come across such a client, wouldn’t you say that the probability of your proposal outshining the rest will be exciting if there are only five to ten proposals on the job so far? Especially if you are following the tips mentioned above while crafting your proposal, you might just end up being the applicant that they deem perfect for their project.

Thankfully, Upwork now displays the recently posted jobs relevant to your skillset on the homepage under “My Feed” when you log in. Instead of searching for jobs via keywords, I have a habit of scrolling through “My Feed” at least thrice a day and seeing if I can find a listing that interests me. Those are the only jobs that I apply to as they rarely ever have more than five to ten proposals already.

So, What’s The Key Takeaway?

If only I had a nickel every time someone told me how convenient it is for me to make money since I get to work from the comfort of my home..!

Freelancing does come with a few unique benefits, yes. But if you are under the impression that it is “EASY” to make money in any profession, in any part of this world, you could not be farther from the truth.

The key takeaway of my article, I would say, is how important it is to stay committed to hard work. Contrary to popular belief, your commitment to work doesn’t start after you have landed a job. It is actually your commitment TO land a job that counts more.

In other words, if you are not willing to put your blood and sweat into crafting an impeccable proposal to get a job on Upwork, your entire freelance career will be in the hands of luck. Now, I don’t know how that makes you feel, but personally, I’d be very uncomfortable if my success in life was entirely dependent on luck.

So, what are you waiting for? Now that you know a few of the ways that you can improve your proposals on Upwork, it is time for you to start from scratch with a brand-new passion. Start applying the tips that I have mentioned and please; I can’t stress this enough, please be patient.

Success is right around the corner. All you have to do is stay focused, stay committed, and continue to work hard. I can promise you that you are bound to succeed only as long as you commit to not quitting.