How To Write Upwork Proposals for Web Development

hey what's going on amigos my name is Taylor and today we are going to get professional because it's time to learn how to write up work proposals that win you those freelance jobs I remember it really wasn't that long ago that I was just scrolling through the jobs on up work wondering if it was even possible to find success on the platform because at that time it really was a total mystery to me but I got my first job on the platform about exactly a year ago last April and since then I've worked on 34 different contracts and I also have a top-rated badge on my profile and many of those 34 contracts are either hourly or their contracts where the client just adds another milestone when we finished the previous one so up work is no longer such a mystery to me and I've learned during that time that the proposal is everything your proposals are more important than your portfolio your profile it's more important than your past experience because your proposal is the chance to make a good first impression on the client otherwise why would they even look at your profile so if you're someone who's waiting to finish another portfolio project before you start freelancing or you're waiting to do this or that just get started now because the proposal is by far the most important thing in determining whether or not you will get that job so here's what I've got on the docket for this video first we will talk about what clients are really looking for in a freelancer because I think that's so important then we're going to look at some proposals that top rated up work freelancers sent me when I posted a job and then I'll go through how I write proposals and I'll show you my templates and where to find those templates to use for yourself if you want and lastly I will go on up work and I'll apply to to a job I think I think we'll only have time for one but you'll really get to see what my process is and how I do it and I hope my goal is that by the end of this video success finding success on the up work platform won't seem so scary so intimidate such a mystery and you'll feel more confident about writing proposals and actually winning those freelance jobs now I think all of us have seen that picture or that meme of a programmer with a job and a freelance programmer and if you haven't seen one of those there are lots of them on the Internet I'll show you a couple over here and I even found places that were selling these as t-shirts and mugs the point here is that freelancers have to make a good first impression if you want to be a freelancer who charges a lot for your time or your services you need to act like it and you need to show the client that you are that freelancer right and so the most important thing is that you believe it yourself that you believe that your services are worth that money because otherwise why would the client want to pay that why would they give you the chance instead of someone else who is confident and sure that they can deliver what the client is asking for let's talk about what those clients are looking for in a freelance web developer when they post their job what what kind of picture do they have in their mind of the perfect freelance web developer who will make everything run smoothly and they can pay and hopefully they can even work together again in future projects well as I was writing my own blog post I found this great blog post on the up work blog about how to write a solid proposal and I recommend you read it I'll link it below in the description and I just want to show you these three points from the post before you start three invisible questions that your proposal must answer invisible question one are you capable of doing my project can you do the project and can you do it well that one is pretty straightforward very understandable invisible question - will you make my life easier are you a good communicator are you a good person to work with do you respond quickly do you listen well if they give you instruction do you do things right the fur time or do they have to review every little thing that you do every little change that you make and then send you further revisions if a problem arises can you offer solutions to the problem potential solutions or will you just tell the client there's a problem and let them try to figure it out and invisible question three do you care about helping me succeed kind of the same are you invested in the project do you want your client to succeed because that's really how you can provide value for them and that's what they will hire you for for their next project and I had written my own list of the top three things that clients are looking for and you'll see it's very similar can you do the job and can you do it well are you a good person to work with and if I have a deadline will you meet that deadline or at least communicate with me if you're not going to meet it so basically they're looking for someone who can do the job who is a good communicator and a good person to work with and that's it that's really all clients are looking for most clients don't know all that much about technology and you're supposed to be the expert anyway so they don't they don't really think so much about programming languages or frameworks or CMS's they might know kind of what they want but really more than someone who's a great programmer or a great developer they're just looking for someone who is good to work with if you can do the job great there are lots of people who can but the communication is much more important and if you don't believe me just take a look at my profile it's linked in the description over 50% of the reviews I have specifically mention the word communication or responsive and if you add the word professional almost 80% of them refer to communication in some way so it's really really important to clients that you are professional and a good communicator so now that we have a better idea of what clients are looking for in a freelancer let's take a look at some proposals that top-rated freelancers on upwork sent me when I posted a job on the play form for the job description I really just posted something very simple I said I was looking for some help with a wordpress and learn - project specifically with the design and learn - is an LMS or learning management system because this website was going to be an an eCourse website so this will be very quick and I'm sorry if the text is small but these are screenshots so I don't have to share their names I invited this freelancer it says here I'll shrink out of this out of the way here there we go it says first of all I'm genuinely thankful to you for inviting me for this job I am truly excited to take on another learn - gig I think that was a great introduction and you might notice at least I did right away and I think most native speakers would that this is not a native English speaker but right away in that introduction they showed me that one they're polite and two to their English is definitely good enough for the project and three they've done learn - gigs before they are excited to take on another learn - gig then it says I definitely need to know more about the job awesome that tells me they read my very brief job description and then it says I have been working with learn - since 2017 and I've done over 50 learn - projects that's great they are the expert that I'm looking for and finally they share some previous projects or some some portfolio projects so I can take a look at those and see that they really do know what they're talking about let's look at the next one this person starts out with a nice introduction - I would like to offer my skills to work on your website I have extensive experience and specialization in the setup configurate configuration and customization of WordPress and learn - LMS systems so they've worked with the technology that we would be using and then they list several other plugins that can be configured with the plugins I mentioned and so they have experience building all kinds of websites in this realm or in this genre right and they actually list some of their related expertise and skills below and they also sent me some past projects that they've worked on so again so that I could take a look and see and and see that they really do know what they're talking about and they didn't actually show this but both of those freelancers had a very nice conclusion to their message it said thank you so much for your time I'd invite you to get on a Skype call with me so we can talk about this project further I hope to hear from you soon and so you can see that there is a pattern there there's an introduction where you say who you are basically and that you can do the project that you're interested then a body where you talk about where why you are the right freelancer for the job you can mention your past experience and then a conclusion just to say you're excited about the opportunity and you want to talk about it further and both of those freelancers were from countries where the cost of living is not very high but they had both made well over twenty thousand dollars on the platform and they had obviously really built a business for themselves we've finally gotten to the part where I talk about my process for writing proposals and before anything else I really want to say that I send out a lot of proposals and I think I have a very good response rate but it is a numbers game you won't get a response to every proposal but if you write quality proposals and you take a little bit of extra time to really personalize or tailor that proposal to the job description you will have a much better response rate and it will all be worth it I promise you that so with my proposals I strive to do a few things with every proposal I strive to show that I'm friendly and a good person to work with I want to show that I read the Job Description thoroughly so I always always always try to include something that will show the potential client that I did read the job description and I try to stress that I'm a good communicator those are kind of my three main goals with every proposal and when you write your proposal I think you should have a proposal template what I do is I just save almost every proposal that I write and then when I'm looking through jobs I just copy a past proposal and change it and customize it based on what the current the job description for the current job says and I send it off I try I never really spend more than maybe 10 minutes on a proposal so you don't need to spend a lot of time on these but you should try to show that you read the job description you can do the job and you're a good person to work with so just think about your approach and how you want your proposals to come off to the client so as I mentioned every time or most of the time when I submit a proposal to a job on up work I save that proposal and that way I can reuse it in the future for a similar job posting remember this is a numbers game and you won't get a response for every proposal that you submit but it's important that you take a little time to tailor that job posting to the job description because really it's worth it if you can win even 50% of the proposals that you submit so you don't want to spend too much time on these proposals and I thought about making some you know basic templates to show you but I'd rather just show you real real proposals that I've submitted to jobs and if you need a proposal template check out the coding for tacos website coding for tacos com I just added a blog post to go along with this video and at the bottom there are some proposal templates that you can use as you're starting out and as you are applying to those up work gigs so let's let's look at these and you can see that mine are quite a bit shorter but I think I have a pretty good response rate this one it was for a new WooCommerce site and I pretty much use this intro for every single proposal I submit hi my name is taylor wilkinson and i am a front-end focused freelance web developer with experience using PHP and building custom WordPress themes so I introduce them I tell them my name is and what I think I can do best I generally apply to WordPress jobs so if I'm applying to a job that's more front-end and and less WordPress you know I might customize that then here's here's the body I am relatively new to up work but I assure you I take every job seriously I would love to build your WordPress website for your supplement brand and I actually remember this one it was a very short job posting but I like I said I always try to sneak something in there that shows that I must have really read the job description I think you've chosen a couple of excellent themes so they must have added a theme or two that they would like to use I enjoy working with WordPress and WooCommerce and this is a project I would be excited about I always make sure that my clients are satisfied with the work that I do then a basic conclusion lastly I take great pride in my prompt and professional communication I would love to discuss the job further with you and hope to hear from you soon and this is important think about what is the goal of submitting an up work proposal it's very rare that a client will just send you a contract after your proposal the real goal is the real goal is for them to respond to you you want to get them on a call you want to chat with them and ask them some questions a video chat a call through upwork through Skype but if they respond to you the chances of you getting that job are very high that gives you a chance to seal the deal so the goal of every proposal should be to get a response let's look at the next one Weebly - WordPress so they had a Weebly site and they wanted to transfer everything I believe they wanted it to even look exactly the same and work the same but they wanted to get it off Weebly and have it be a wordpress site so this is exactly the same introduction as the last one and I've since taken this out I'm feel like I'm no longer relatively new but I keep this I assure you I take every job seriously I care about your project I would love to help you make the move from Weebly to WordPress and make sure it's clear user friendly and optimized for SEO and speed those were all things mentioned in the job description so I'm telling them that I read the Job Description and I can do the tasks that they want me to I've coded themes and templates from scratch but I also have experience with all of the most popular page builders so we have a lot of flexibility there and I basically I've built several WordPress websites I can do the job and again I take pride in my prompting professional communication I would love to discuss the job further and hope to hear from you soon thank you so you can see nearly all of my proposals are very very similar but I try for them to be friendly to show that I read the job description and to show that I am professional and a good communicator the last one will look at regular work for a wordpress agency same intro as always let's look at this so again I'm I am directly responding to something that they said in the Job Description I would love to be your go-to front-end developer for WordPress work like you described in the job posting I'm passionate about front-end work front-end development and WordPress development so naturally I'm very interested in this opportunity yeah I want to work for these people and I'm not afraid to say that I'm really interested I want the job it's the kind of work I love doing and so I want that to come across in my proposal and I always make sure my clients are satisfied with the work I do one thing I wish I would have added or something I would add if I was applying for another job like this is that I am a team player and I want to work on a team if this is for an agency likely it's going to be a team environment so it's important that I work well with others and communicate and so I wish I would have said something about that but you can see that all three of those proposed are very simple you can probably see that it it took maybe five minutes maximum for me to to copy and then change each one and submit it and that's it so again you don't need to take very long but make sure that you respond directly to the job description and try to try to tell the client what they want here try to instill confidence in them that you are the person for the job you are the freelancer they have been looking for okay so if you're still here with me thank you so much and let's actually find a couple jobs to submit proposals to I'm not sure if I'll actually submit them but let's see I'll at least write up a couple proposals let's try this developer needed for creating a responsive WordPress theme for an existing site so let's let's check this one out it was posted 53 minutes ago that's good if you can try to post at least within a few hours or even within the same day that the job was posted all apply to jobs that are a day or two old but I really especially try extra hard to apply quickly if I notice a good job posting that was recently posted the deliverable is an optimized version of the existing website the website needs a new design that includes the call to action above the fold of the page okay the page also needs a consistent font I mean this seems like a very straightforward job I would apply to this most likely Windsong family and Psychiatry we're taking a look at the current web site and I have this nice plugin WAP eliezer so this actually is already a wordpress theme it's pretty up-to-date WordPress 5.4 just came out but this is the last version I think so that's good good so it's not an ancient website that is really great to know but they want a new theme for some reason and it sounds like they want a complete redesign the nice thing is is they probably already have their content and everything more or less ready to go and then they have some questions that will be asked so let's go ahead submit a proposed doo-doo-doo-doo okay good I'll keep my profile rate generally what I do for this is ice I just try to keep it close to what my hourly rate is and I base it on what what the clients budget is all right I'll just write one for here and maybe this one here let's refer to the job posting and base our proposal on that an optimized version of this existing website so I am going to find one that's kind of similar yeah let's let's use this one actually it's not super similar but you'll see how quickly this can be customized all right down here I'll just keep my intro the same because this is a wordpress job and it involves design take this out I assure you that I take every job seriously so here here's what I'll say done today done I would love I would love to help you with the redesign of your WordPress website I've taken a look at the current website and I'd love to talk to you about your vision for the new design then I'll leave this I've coated themes and templates from scratch but I have experience with the page builders so really I might just send that off and then so I'll put that in there do you have any questions about the job description here I would have a couple of questions yeah for example have you chosen a new theme or do you have a theme in mind that you would like to work with and I'll include this no problem if not I'm happy to suggest a theme do you have a timeline in mind for this project and well we'll leave it a bet I think that's enough here all I would mention for the project to run successfully I would just say I normally just say that clear expectations and good communication is important for every project to run smoothly what challenging part of this job are you most experienced in I have completed several redesigns of WordPress websites what else would I say and I might just remind them that I'm passionate about WordPress development what part of this project appeals most to you this does not need to be very long really it just needs to just you just need to convince them that you're interested and then I would send them a link to a past project that's that's similar maybe where I did a redesign or or a website that has a similar number of pages okay I am NOT going to apply to that one so I won't submit it let's find one more to apply to and if you'd like to see a second video or another video of how to find good upwork jobs how to find good clients I'd be happy to make that video this is just all about the proposal oh here's another very similar one a responsive WordPress site so WordPress people pay attention this is a very very common posting let's find one more job to apply to so let's see web app development hmm this one looks interesting let's check this out this is a different looking one web designer developer needed for website redesign we're looking to update modernize our existing website with late design features the existing site is template-based with some ijs HTML using existing themes and templates is fine you'll have access to the existing source code and we will provide all the content logos and design inspiration I like this this is great they are providing the design all the content and you will be asked the following questions not all of these have these follow-up questions most of them are just the job posting but that's ok usually if you take the time to fill out all of these questions that's another way to show that you're interested and serious about the job so I'll write up something here we go oh this is a good example by the milestone so first I'll write the proposal I'm gonna use this same one that we used before hi my name is taylor wilkinson so I'm gonna keep the intro here the same I assure you I take every job seriously hmmm what should we say I might use the same language some a lot of the time I try to use the same language as the job description so I would love to help you update and modernize your website based I'll so here we go I can't type hmm based on your vision and needs for the website basically it's a static site so I love working with HTML CSS and JavaScript and also naturally I'm very interested in this job you'll have access to the existing source code and we will provide all the content logos and design inspiration ok so I probably wouldn't even make this one all that long so I'm gonna take that out that's mostly WordPress I'll say I say this kind of thing all the time I do my best to be a good person to work with and I I'd love the chance mm-hmm yeah and I'd love the chance to talk or to learn more about your project so I can do the job I like working with these languages that they mentioned and I'm a good person to work with just just tell them all right when it's bye milestone or buy project if the project is any bigger than like a hundred dollars I always do it by the milestone and I in the description here's generally what I say let's how much is this job for $600 ok $600 so I'm going to put three milestones and I almost always do it this way so a description first draft of the website and all pages ready for review the date doesn't matter I that just depends on what kind of vibes you're getting from the posting so I'll put that one as $200 and I'm just going to break this up into thirds basically sometimes I make the the last milestones the largest ones but this time I'm going to make them all three 200 then I'll say first round of revisions complete per feedback I'll put another there we go and their date on that one and the third milestone all revisions finished and website complete project complete something like that put the due date and another 200 if the reason I do this is because I want them to see these stages I want them to see that I'm okay with one or two rounds of revisions at least and I'm dedicated to working with them throughout the project so we're going to be in communication and I'm not just going to say up the websites finished where's my $600 and then they have to review every little detail and maybe maybe I got a lot of it right and maybe I didn't that's why I do that and as a freelancer it really gives you the opportunity to say okay we've done one round of revisions we've done two rounds of revisions and you can kind of set some limits there because most clients are very good at understanding but you don't want to get that client that just thinks that you know they can pay you $600 and then you are their slave for the next few months you want there to be defined milestones and a defined finishing point to the project so there we go so I wrote out I'll just paste that in there that's the cover letter for this one I always how long will this project take I almost always say less than a week unless it's really big and most clients will understand that's not realistic if it's a large project that is something that you can talk with them about if you get a response because remember your goal is to get a response from the client it's not for them to just send you a contract all you're looking for is a response so then you just answer these questions and don't take too long on them but make sure that you answer them well because that will show that you're in interested so that was a long video but thank you so much for watching I really wanted to include a lot of information to help people because like I said it really was a mystery to me how people were doing so well on up work just a year ago and now almost all of my work comes from up work so you can do it you can find success on the platform and go ahead go to coding for tacos comm grab those templates and use them but come up with your own process refine your process for submitting proposals make sure that you're not spending too long on them and that you're getting them out quickly but make sure you're tailoring them to the job description itself so I hope this video helped you if you have some questions or you'd like to see another video maybe about what kind of jobs to look for on up work or something like that leave me a comment down below again I'm Taylor and this is coding for tacos go out go out there and earn those tacos and I hope to see you in the next video thanks so much take care

Channel: coding4tacos

Views: 7,843

Keywords: WordPress Development on Upwork, How to write winning proposals on Upwork, How to write proposals on Upwork for web development, Upwork proposal templates for WordPress development, WordPress, Freelance WordPress development, Freelance Web Development, proposals on Upwork, Coding4Tacos

Id: XoguJ_ZYOKQ

Length: 31min 33sec (1893 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020