TOP 5 Upwork Proposal Tips from a $700k Freelancer

hey how's it going my name is josh burns and welcome to josh prince tech upward proposals will either make or break you as a freelancer and they're typically the number one reason why freelancers struggle to get jobs on upwork in this video we're going to cover the top five upward proposal tips that actually work and will help you win more jobs on upwork i'm also going to show you upwork proposal samples to give you inspiration when creating yours as well if you're new to my channel i started freelancing on upwork in may of 2016 and since then i've earned over six hundred and seventy thousand dollars worked over 8 500 hours i have numerous five star client reviews i'm a top rated plus freelancer and at the time of recording this video i've won 123 jobs on upwork with my proposals it's pretty rare if i search for jobs and submit your proposals on upwork because i have long term consistent work i think i have around 280 connects at the moment so just keep that in mind when submitting job proposals for the most part you're not competing with the top freelancers on upwork because most of them have long term consistent work and on this channel i don't keep any secrets i share everything with you that's worked for me as a freelancer so go ahead and subscribe to the channel and also drop a like on the video so that youtube will recommend more videos like this to you i have tons of new freelance and upwork content planned out which i believe will be very valuable to you and your journey as a freelancer and if you want to take it a step further then check out my patreon link down below patreon.com forward slash josh burns tech which offers tons of benefits like a private discord server freelance mentoring exclusive content and more access to me as well i really appreciate everyone who's joined my patreon it allows me to put more time into youtube and creating content allowing me to create more content for you the number one upwork proposal tip is to crush the introduction here's an unknown gym for a lot of new freelancers on upwork the top things that the client sees first are your profile photo your title rate submitted and most importantly the first few sentences of your job proposal or cover letter so i hired my youtube video editor alex who's amazing and super talented don't let that get to your head alex on upwork around two years ago he's edited the majority of my videos on youtube offered tons of great advice to improve my content and he's made around 25 000 on my contract alone now let's jump over to my upward client account so i can show you exactly what stood out to me in his job proposal okay here we are on my upward client account and now i'm going to show you what stood out to me in the introduction of alex's upwork proposal so what you're seeing right now is what clients see when they're looking through all their job proposals this is what's going to show up for yours it's going to show your profile photo your name your title location rate how much you've earned and then like i said before the first one to three sentences of your cover letter so what stood out to me about alex that made me click on him so first off you can see that alex was recommended as a best match by upwork this means that this freelancer has been selected based on their work history and fit with your job so basically upwork is saying that they feel alex will be a good fit for my job that's great but it's not enough for me to click on him or hire him you can see right here that i had a lot of proposals submitted for this job so what specifically stood out to me and grabbed my attention about alex was his first one to three sentences of his cover letter you can see that he jumps right into saying he's a professional video editor and motion graphics artist and that's exactly what i'm looking for here need a video editor so that's a plus already and your job post jumped out at me now that gave me a feeling like he was really interested in my job and believed that he was a great fit now this next part is really creative and i liked it a lot before he discusses any of his experience or dives into his portfolio he gives me recommendations for my channel now this really stood out to me it grabbed my attention and made me believe that he genuinely wanted to help me succeed on youtube and that's really the main core of his introduction he's given me tips for my channel before he even meets with me before we even discuss the hiring process or anything so what should you do to stand out and create an introduction that separates yourself from all the other freelancers something else that for the most part is unknown by new freelancers is that you can usually easily find the name of the client so most proposals start off with the generic hi hello or something similar without mentioning the client's name okay so let's go ahead and click on this job for sql help moving database to aws let's go ahead and see if we can find the client's name okay now watch how easy this is i'm going to scroll down and once we get right here clients recent history so you need to go through the reviews that freelancers left to the client and here we go looks like their name is spencer here spencer referenced once spencer spencer so this client's name is spencer and the benefit of doing this is that now if i went to submit a job proposal the majority of cover letters submitted for this job are going to start out like this or like this or they're just going to dive right into the cover letter and skip over the greeting but what we can do to stand out is use the client's name or hi spencer or hello spencer you know whatever you want to use there just some greeting like this and now the client's going to think that maybe i've worked with them in the past before how would they know my name and you see sparking that level of interest is going to make them look into you maybe even click on your job proposal and start going through it this was so easy to do and literally just took minutes so be creative and think of ways to stand out with your first one to three sentences it's your chance to stand out hook the client and cause them to take action by clicking on your proposal start off with a grading that includes a client's name if possible and then jump right into the client's issue or problem mention or restate the problem and then give a direct example of work that you've completed on upwork or off of work that directly relates to the client's project the entire reason why a client creates a job on upwork is to find a freelancer who can resolve their problems and ultimately make their lives better you need to think about what the client wants to hear they don't want to hear about all your years of experience they want to hear why you're the best freelancer for them to resolve their problems make their lives better and also see specific examples of your work get right to the point and give them a specific example of work that you've completed which will give them confidence in your ability to successfully deliver this leads directly into upward proposal tip number two which is to provide examples of your work in addition to giving a specific example of your work in the first one to three sentences you also need to include portfolio items as well if possible if you don't have an online portfolio that you can include or link then i would personally recommend adding attachments for example if your skill set is in graphic design then you could include attachments of visual content that you created now it's important to note that you do need to be careful about what you link in upwork job proposals you never want to make it seem like you're trying to take clients away from upwork because that obviously violates terms of service so if you ever have a question about what you can or can't link then my best advice to you is to contact upwork support so they can give you a definitive answer going back to my video editor's upward job proposal another thing that i really loved is that he gave examples of videos that he's edited and also showcased his portfolio as well okay so on this job i included a question or requirement for freelancers to answer whenever they submit their job proposal and as you can see that pops directly to the top please have examples of work that you've completed that fits my job description and as you can see alex gave direct examples of youtube videos that he's edited and if we scroll down a little bit further in his cover letter we can see that he gave a little bit about himself and i like how he broke this out into different sections he listed some youtubers that he worked with and right above here he even asked some questions for me as well and the best thing about these questions is that they're really simple to reply to they're nothing really in depth that may push me away from responding to them they're really simple and made me feel like he wanted to help me succeed upward clients want to know that you can deliver what they need and it's up to you to give them specific examples of your work proving that you can fulfill those needs and give them confidence in you so one thing that i personally do to separate myself from other freelancers is pouring tons of time into continued education and improving my skill set by taking relevant online classes now i believe the best investment that you can ever make in your entire life is in yourself and with that being said i need to take a moment to thank our sponsor for today's video which is one of my personal favorite places to learn new freelance skills skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people examples of topics include freelancing and entrepreneurship productivity graphic design marketing web development and many others skillshare is great for lifelong learners which is something that i believe everyone needs to strive to be skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth as well as offers creative classes that are designed for real life and all the circumstances that come with it it's also super affordable as well at less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription skillshare is designed specifically for learning meaning that there are no ads and they're always adding new premium classes skillshare has tons of great courses for freelance skills like sql server the complete sql server for beginners course is one that i would personally recommend taking if you're interested in sql server and learning about relational databases this course is easy to follow for beginners with over 1800 students and tons of highly rated reviews it has over 30 real world exercises to help you practice and learn more about each major topic in the course and because skillshare is kind enough to sponsor this video and support my channel the first 1000 people who click my link in the description will get a free trial of skillshare premium thank you so much skillshare for supporting the channel and sponsoring this video upward proposal tip number three is to briefly describe your experience and the value that you can offer to their business the goal is to keep your proposal client-centric by focusing on the value that you can offer to the client so rather than just listing off your years of experience achievements education or other related items you should tell the client what value that you're going to offer them and how you're going to make their lives easier so i've actually been using a new approach to this which involves creating a short bullet point list of items that tell the client why they should want to work with me and hire me over other freelancers now let's jump back over to upwork so i can show you exactly how i do this in my upwork job proposals okay here's how i quickly describe the value i offer now what you're seeing on the screen here is a template that i use and by template i never use an actual upwork template where i submit the same cover letter on tons of jobs that usually does not win any jobs for you the template that i use just breaks down all of my sections so i can go into each section and customize it for the job and client that i'm bidding on okay let me go ahead and paste this in here i wrote this section out earlier so i could show you guys how i use the bullet point list this is a great example of how i describe the value i offer this part here is directly tailored to the client's job so if we scroll up and look at the job details you can see right here that this is an exciting healthcare project so you can see down here in the value that i offer i mentioned healthcare transactional databases and data warehouses that i've worked on that's an example of being client centric focusing on the value that i can provide to the client this is something that's going to catch their attention it's something they're looking for and that's why i mentioned it here and the next line down i did the same thing you can see how i mentioned that i have a great understanding of data security best practices when working with pii and phi data which are healthcare related and now these last ones are two that i put in here to make the client feel like i'm someone that can be relied on 24 7 communication they will always be aware of the project status with consistent updates and they're going to get someone who cares about helping them succeed and bringing value to them another way that you can stand out over other freelancers is to create an upwork introduction video for your profile i always mention my video in my upward proposals and often link it as well this causes the client to take action by watching my profile video learning more about what i offer which often increases their interest in me as well i've received tons of comments from clients about my introduction video which proves that it provides huge value in my upward proposals and if you need help creating an introduction video for your profile then i would highly recommend watching the video linked at the top right i created a tutorial full of great tips on how to create an introduction video that stands out to clients and it's on upwork's youtube channel upper proposal tip number four is to add a call to action now if you're unsure what a call to action is it's basically a way to encourage the client to take the desired action the desired action is to obviously get them to move forward in the hiring process by getting them to communicate directly with you i personally add a call to action at the end of all my upwork proposals where i ask the client to schedule a quick 10-minute introduction call with me to discuss their project in more detail and also ensure that i will be the best fit for them now let's jump back over to upwork and take a look at a winning proposal where i use this call to action so this job i was actually invited to which is why i didn't go too in depth on the cover letter they were already interested in me so i kept it pretty concise and didn't really go too in depth however i really wanted to show you the call to action which worked and i was able to get an introduction call with this client you can see right here i would love to set up a quick 10 to 15 minute intro call with you to ensure that i will be the perfect fit i gave the client a few times that i was available and this usually gets them to go ahead and schedule something with you taking action and this job went pretty well it's still ongoing we have a new contract open but let me go ahead and show you this this job is actually one of my recent completed now if we look over here thirty five thousand eight hundred and twelve dollars that i made on that job and the call to action was honestly a big part of them scheduling that introduction call with me that introduction call turned into thirty five thousand dollars which is actually still going because like i said we have a new contract it's so important not to leave the client pondering contemplating your proposal and likely moving on to the next proposal with a high probability of never looking at yours again so now let me tell you why i always schedule a quick introduction call with every client before accepting an offer the outcomes of your jobs on upwork are far more important than the money that you make if you have tons of five star reviews and overly positive feedback then jobs will come to you and this is how you go from submitting tons of job proposals as a new freelancer to having tons of connects and rarely submitting job proposals the introduction call also allows you to identify if anything was left out of the job description identify the urgency and impact of the project and probably most importantly determine if the client will be good to work with the introduction call is so important in setting yourself up for success it's been absolutely instrumental in my reviews feedback job success score and overall success on upwork it's also important to note that you'll need to do the introduction call on upwork to avoid violating terms of service before the contract starts with a client you cannot take communication off upwork so you'll have to use the integrated calling feature or use him which is now built in as well upwork proposal tip number five is to eliminate grammatical errors now this may seem like a simple one but it's definitely one of the most critical grammatical errors in your draw proposal could cause clients to question your written communication skills or even lose confidence in your abilities so recently i've noticed that upwork has grammarly embedded into upward cover letters so now when you start typing a cover letter grammarly actively checks your writing for mistakes however there's definitely been instances like today where grammarly doesn't appear to load for me on upwork if you encounter this issue as well you can still add the grammarly browser extension to google chrome or your preferred web browser i personally use brave browser which if you follow my cryptocurrency content then that will be no surprise to you although grammarly does a great job based on my experience with it on upwork i still highly recommend that you proofread your job proposal several times ensuring that it's error free and if you want to take it a step further then copy your upward cover letter and email it to your significant other friend or anyone that has great proofreading skills i personally ask my wife for her help pretty frequently and because she sees everything from a different perspective than my own she offers great advice that improves my writing also i just want to give a huge shout out to upwork for sending us this coffee plant as a wedding gift okay now it's time to piece everything together from this video and take a look at an upwork proposal sample and here's the full cover letter so as you can see i didn't use the client's name this is a new client on upwork and they didn't have any previous work history taking a look at my intro i tell them that their post aligns perfectly with my skills and experience and these are the direct skills that are on the job dba and db developer so i went ahead and made sure they know that this is my direct skill set and next i actually give them a compliment about their job post i tell them that i love that they're working to obtain visibility into healthcare data this is something that i believe will stand out to the client it's my one creative piece that i put into my introduction i told the client that if they view my upwork profile then they can find direct examples of work i've completed that relates to their project and also i even provided two specific examples where i took screenshots and then attached those to this cover letter and then next i give them just a little information about me things i believe they would want to know so a couple things that would really stand out to clients is the fact that i've been featured as one of the top freelancers on upwork i've been in marketing campaigns and even on the home page of the website and then my youtube channel is something else that's very unique about me i love sharing my knowledge and helping people and clients like to see that i've got various comments about my youtube channel and it's always something that i link in my proposal to show the client that i'm able to teach the things that i'm doing and for the next two sections i tell them what i can bring to their project we covered that earlier and same thing for the call to action my call to action is still pretty similar the only thing that i've added in recently is telling them that if my available times don't work for them to let me know and i'll do my best to alter my schedule to fit them in now this last part is something i feel is pretty unique i give them a few questions that i would like to cover on the call i feel like this gets them thinking even more about the introduction call which leads to them scheduling it with me and finally just a really simple closing i'm looking forward to hearing more about your exciting project best regards joshua burns and i'm a top greedy plus freelancer so i include that here winning jobs on upwork can be extremely difficult without well-written proposals that are focused on solving client needs and making their lives better i consistently update my upwork proposals and customize each of them to best fit the job and client as well if you submit job proposals like every other freelancer then guess what you're going to blend in with every other freelancer if you want to stand out win jobs and watch your bank account grow rapidly then you need to try fail improve and repeat until you start winning consistently one of my all-time favorite quotes about failure is from thomas edison i have not failed i've just found 10 000 ways that won't work failure is an important part in every road to success and you need to hit it head on don't be afraid to fail welcome it embrace it and know that it's going to make you stronger smarter and a better freelancer start today and take action if you watch this entire video and you don't use any of the content to improve the ways that you're creating job proposals then i failed you you have to start creating and taking action more than you're consuming my personal goal with my freelance content is for you to become so successful that you never need to watch my content anymore because you're so busy making money working with clients all around the world if you found this video helpful and got value from it then all i ask is to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more videos like this if you haven't signed up on block fight yet then go ahead and use my link below blockfy.com forward slash joshburn stack to get up to 250 in free bitcoin when you open a new account this is such a great way to make your crypto work for you generating passive income earning compound interest while you sleep or even play rocket league really what a save what about that shot you with three plays ago you can also get two free stocks valued up to one thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars with weeble by signing up using my link down below and depositing a hundred dollars this is an easy way to get free money because you can basically sell your stock right after you get it if you don't want to hold it my patreon is now open as well for anyone who wants to join the private discord server learn how i make over six figures a year freelancing from anywhere i want see my crypto portfolio breakdown get exclusive content as well as alerts on cryptocurrencies that i'm researching and holding this is a great way to get more access to me we're building a great community on patreon and discord as well so i highly recommend checking it out you can go to patreon.com forward slash joshburnstech or click the link down below also i personally always use a vpn when working with freelance clients as well as just simply browsing the internet thanks to nordvpn i'm able to offer my subscribers a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount just click on my link in the description of the video and be sure to use code josh prince tech as always thank you guys so much for watching i hope to see you in the next one on this end screen i recommend checking out these videos and be sure to hit that round subscribe button for weekly tech videos and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything thank you for watching and until next time

Channel: Josh Burns Tech

Views: 22,065

Keywords: upwork proposal, upwork proposal tips, upwork proposals, upwork proposal sample, upwork tips, upwork tutorial, upwork, upwork cover letter, upwork tutorial for beginners, how to bid on upwork, how to send proposal on upwork, how to submit proposal in upwork, how to upwork, upwork proposal cover letter, upwork proposal template, cover letter, writing proposals, lead generation, how to get clients, upwork profile, josh burns tech, proposal, up work, upwork portfolio

Id: BBYNBO6IDn4

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021