How do I win the first bid on Freelancer and Upwork? I have tried to put 150+ bids in last two months, but I haven't won even a single bid. Can anybody suggest some ideas that really work?
manny years ago I couldn’t get a client on Upwork to save my life.
I’d tried every method out there, from writing “professional” cover letters to creating videos for each individual client…
But after wasting countless hours and getting no results, I knew something had to change.
At first, I blamed it on Upwork and all the “cheap” clients on there…
But seeing how I’d already failed at every other type of marketing (i.e. content marketing, paid advertising, etc.) — I didn’t know where else to turn.
This led me onto a rabbit hole of research, and after days of combing through information, then weeks of testing…
I’d finally found a proven strategy that started landing me clients right away, in various industries:
Which is what I’m going to share with you today.
Our example
As with every “how-to” article I write, I’ve learned it always works best when we have an example we can relate to, so let’s use this job posting for our example today.
As you can see, this job posting is looking for somebody who can create a vehicle that’ll capture email leads, that way they can email them when their crowdfunding campaign is ready.
And if you’re not familiar with this process, they’re essentially looking for somebody who can setup a landing page that converts like crazy, then drive traffic to that landing with Facebook Ads — which happens to be one of my primary specialties.
Anyway, now that we have our job posting in front of us and know this is something we can do, let’s jump into the actual proposal.
Step #1 — Engagement
So the first thing you want to do with any proposal is simply making sure you get their attention right away.
This is extremely important in a crowded marketplace, especially when there’s 20+ other freelancers who are also competing for their attention…
And the best part is that it’s really not that hard to do.
As sad as it sounds, simply showing the client that you read their job posting is enough to stand out on Upwork anymore (as most freelancers use template proposals)…
So to start things off, I always just acknowledge that I read their job posting.
There’s a few ways to do this, but in this case, I’d start off with:
Hey there, I see you’re looking for somebody to create a highly-converting landing page…
One that’ll not only capture leads right away and keep your ad costs low, but also build a list of targeted leads for your upcoming crowdfunding campaign.
Why this works so well:
When clients look at the list of applicants, they only see the first sentence of a proposal…
So to start things off, it’s always important to acknowledge that you see what they’re looking for.
This should be enough to get them to click on your proposal, then after they do, they’ll immediately read the second sentence…
Which is essentially showing them that you know EXACTLY what they’re looking for.
I guess you could look at this as a form of mindreading, where you’re acknowledging the underlying request…
But either way, this is always enough to grab their attention and that’s when I jump into:
Step #2 — Authority
I’m not sure how familiar you are with “ethical persuasion”, but one of the most important parts of sales (i.e. ethical persuasion) is showing that you know what you’re doing.
There’s always more than one way to do this, but either way, in the authority section — it’s important to display your expertise.
This is also the one area where a lot of people mess up, even if they’re aware of this concept…
As they think it’s a time where they need to talk themselves up, but as the first rule of marketing goes…
Clients don’t care about you, they care about what you can do for them.
So how do you do this?
By simply sharing a portfolio item that’s relevant to their job.
The only thing to remember with this is that there’s two types of “portfolios” in the freelance world, and that’s:
- Results based, or
- Non-results based
Now I know the difference looks pretty straigthforward on the surface, and it really is, but you’d be surprised how many people confuse this…
So let’s give a quick overview on the two.
When it comes to results based, that’s going to include any skill where the client measures results over cosmetics or job completion.
To give you an example of this, when I first started as a landing page copywriter…
I had zero clients or experience under my belt, so I simply built a landing page of my own, drove traffic to that page, took a screenshot of my results:
Put it on a Google Doc, shared it with the client — and had my first landing page gig a few days later.
I’ll actually share that with you later on, but before we get there, the other form of portfolio is “non-results” based…
And that’s going to contain everything that can’t be directly measured.
A few examples of this would be blog articles (as the client just wants to see your writing style), ebook covers (as they want to see design your design capabilities) or Wordpress websites (as they want to see how advanced you are).
To give you an example of this, I actually won my first content writing job without any experience, education or client reviews…
By simply writing a 637 word article on a Google Doc, then sharing it with the client and landing my first role a few days later.
Okay, so now that’s all out of the way, let’s jump back into our current example.
As I explained a second ago, this type of skill is always going to be results based, so I’m going to take a couple screenshot of my results, then share them in the proposal — as shown below:
Hey there, I see you’re looking for somebody who can create a highly-converting landing page…
One that’ll not only capture leads right away and keep your ad costs low, but also build a list of targeted leads for your upcoming crowdfunding campaign.
I understand exactly what you’re looking for, and to give you an example of my previous results — here’s a few similar campaigns that I’ve recently completed:
Why this works so well:
As you can see, I spend zero time bragging myself up and instead, let the results speak for themselves.
This works well for many reasons, like how I’m not bragging myself up…
But it also works well as I’m keeping the proposal short and to the point.
Instead of wasting their time with my credentials, experience and how amazing I am..
I simply give them 2 results to look at, and trust me, that’s all they really want to see.
Bonus hint: Always give them a URL that leads to 1 (maybe 2) portfolio items. I’ve seen a lot of freelancers do this but instead of giving 1–2 relevant items, they give them their entire portfolio…
And that’s counter intuitive to our goal right now, as clients don’t want to search through an entire portfolio — which will likely make them run away.
Okay, so now that we have that completed…
It’s time to:
Step #3 — Finish the proposal
So this is quite possibly the best advice I can give you, as very few freelancers actually understand this…
But whenever you’re contacting somebody for the first time, you NEVER want to go for the sale right away.
No matter how helpful you’re trying to be or how good your intentions are, if you don’t warm up to the client first, they’ll always (subconsciously) view sales as a low-guard threat…
So the purpose of a cover letter should be one thing and one thing only, getting them to respond.
This is why you always want to end with a question, as that’s what’s most likely going to get them to respond…
And that part is self-explanatory, but here’s a few rules you want to follow:
- Make sure the question prompts a “knee-jerk” response. In other words, you don’t want to ask something that’s way too difficult (i.e. do you plan on using lookalike audiences followed up with retargeting ads and building a funnel?), but at the same time — you don’t want to ask something that’s blatantly obvious (so are you going to do this with a landing page?)
- When possible, ask a question that’s relevant to their product or service. People love talking about themselves
- If you can get them on a phone call, that always works best. I’d say I honestly close 90% of clients that I get on the phone, but if you’re an international freelancer — I realize that’s not always possible
- Lastly, if you can do this in a way that shows your expertise — then that’s always going to work best (I’ll show you this in a sec)…
So for our example, there’s actually a lot of ways we can do this, but in this case — I’d put:
Hey there, I see you’re looking for somebody who can create a highly-converting landing page…
One that’ll not only capture leads right away and keep your ad costs low, but also build a list of targeted leads for your upcoming crowdfunding campaign.
I understand exactly what you’re looking for, and to give you an example of my previous results — here’s a few similar campaigns that I’ve recently completed:
And you did a good job of explaining the role, but just curious — are you using a lead nurturing funnel right after the landing page, or are you simply building an audience so you can send out an email when the campaign is live?
Why this works so well:
It’s essentially a form of “hidden authority”, as we’re showing them we understand what happens after the email address is collected as well.
This will either:
- Give us the opportunity for more work (i.e. creating the funnel), or
- At least show them that we completely understand the project, and skyrocket our chances of landing the role
Then after this happens, the client will generally respond with some form of answer…
And after that, they’ll usually ask how long you think it’ll take you to complete this role (if they posted the job as hourly, and if so, that honestly happens 90% of the time).
Then once they do, just tell them your honest answer…
But here’s the key, offer to mitigate their concerns with a fixed price contract.
This works extremely well as nobody likes the uncertainty of hourly billing, and even though it won’t benefit you much in the beginning stages of your freelance career…
Once you get some experience under your belt and turn projects around 2x as quick, then those contracts get profitable — real quick.
To recap:
- Always start your proposals with engagement. This doesn’t need to be too complex, just tell them you read their job posting and essentially repeat what they’re looking for
- The next step is always authority, and with this step — you want to show them you know what you’re doing. Again, this doesn’t need to be complicated as you really just want to share a relevant portfolio item (or results)
- End the proposal with a question, as you want them to respond (main goal of the cover letter)
- Once they’ve responded, that’s when the sales starts…and the good news with this is that since they’ve already responded to you, then your chances of landing the job has already skyrocketed
Long story short…
Getting clients on Upwork really isn’t that hard, you just have to understand strategies that work.
Trust me, as somebody who’s landed jobs in a bunch of different categories:
I can assure you, these principles work for any skill.
P.S. Also, if you’d like to see how I now use these same fundamentals - to land freelance clients with automation…
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