Here are some points I want to share which I feel are the most effective way to send proposals on Upwork. That will save your time and make you stress-free and focused on winning jobs. The method I am sharing is through the experience of 3+ years working as an independent freelancer on Upwork
Your goal here is to advertise your skills and availability to hot leads out there ready to get sold on for a good freelance service. First, choose the niche – remember less is more so choose only those topics which you feel you are an expert at or can solve clients’ problems.
Send proposals from Monday to Friday only, avoid sending on Saturdays. Consider Saturday as an optional working day where you are free to do anything but also interview your leads and prospects. Consider Sunday as no workday or very emergency workday
Set a time for yourself for freelancing i.e. probably 6-8 hrs which will include all work except extra work that you might have to do because of work lagging behind the deadline or you are doing it for some extra money.
You need rest so do not forget to sleep well and also take weekends off. Do not plan work for weekends as it might hamper overall freelance work experience.
Do not send more than 3 proposals in a day as you know each submitted proposal will cost you certain “connects” and your balance connects will soon be showing 0 if you just kept on submitting proposals in large numbers.
Also, it takes 3 days for a client on Upwork to award a job on an average (information as per Upwork) so you need to think today’s submitted proposal can work for the next 1-3 days or even beyond it.
Í have been awarded for proposal sent as long as 15 or more than 30 days ago also. So you need to keep in mind that the proposal sending is just as marketing or advertising side of the freelance business.
Do not send more than 15 proposals per week, focus on sending high-quality and specially created proposals for each job post.
Do not copy-paste paste same language/text on all proposals as it might be considered as spamming by Upwork and client and general proposals work very fewer times than specially designed proposals for each job as each job is different.
Do not make your proposals very large, it just needs to contain what the client asked for and a bit more information you can add is how you will help the job to be a success and some past examples or experience on related jobs that you had accomplished.
you can start your proposal with a friendly greeting as simple as “hi there,” or “Hello there,” or “Dear name of the client,” (which you can search from the historical jobs data of the client ) most probably listed at the bottom of the job-client information
Also, do check for any red signs, it’s just signs that you might not be the right candidate for the job and the client might just ignore your proposal.
Nowadays, there is a boost proposal section which you can now use to boost your proposal to the first 3 position that client sees on their side. Proposals that were sent early will list on the first page of the proposals in the client’s dashboard and others will be paged.. client will most probably interview or hire candidates from the first page. But it’s not all the time, it depends upon the client to client.
Keep yourself free from all kinds of distractions like Youtube, Facebook, games, friend calling and messaging, making a plan for the evening and weekends on work time as this will divert your attention and you may just forget to concentrate on sending high quality and insightful proposals.
Don’t keep checking proposals after they are sent for any client activity as it is just a waste of your time and not the part of your job as you can do nothing except change a few editable fields