Overview
Upwork is probably the best platform out there when it comes to finding potential freelancing work. It has tons of opportunities in all sorts of industries, and it makes the proposal and payment aspects of finding clients as easy as it can be. However, due to its popularity, the competition for projects is very high. It can be very difficult to get new clients, and can be disheartening when you spend all your connects submitting proposals but don’t see any results.
I have been working on Upwork for over ten years, and in that time have developed a system that greatly increases the likelihood that your proposals will be seen and that when they are viewed they will result in the potential client reaching out. The process I follow is simple but very effective and can be broken down into six parts.
What Types Of Clients Are We Looking For
Before we dive into the content of this article, let’s take some time to talk about the type of clients we want to find and work for, because not all clients are created equal. On Upwork the majority of people posting jobs aren’t going to hire anyone or are looking for “something for nothing”, meaning that they have very high expectations for the work they want done, but don’t want to spend any money. This can lead to a lot of worthless contracts and a lot of clients who you honestly don’t want to work with. They will gravitate towards non-U.S.-based workers because the rates are lower and then provide poor feedback when the communication isn’t flawless and all their expectations aren’t met. These are not the types of clients we are looking for.
However, there is a set of potential clients on Upwork who do need work done and have a budget to get that work accomplished. These are the types of customers we are looking for, but it takes some work to filter out and find these contracts. In this article, I will discuss my process of finding these clients so the connections you spend and the proposals you submit are only for contracts that you have a chance at getting and will actually make you some money.
What Is Our Goal
Our goal is simple, to make money on Upwork. We can do this by using filters and other information Upwork provides on clients, finding valuable contracts and applying to them with a certain formula so we don’t have to spend a lot of connects and the client has a high chance of responding. The process outlined in this article applies to both U.S. and non-U.S. based freelancers, and is based around submitting proposals to these high-value contracts based on the U.S. industry average and below their top budget threshold. Our goal is to paint ourselves as a freelancer who is more than capable of the task we are applying to and effectively weeding out and ignoring the low-paying jobs and poor clients.
Breaking Down Badges & Ads
As a freelancer on the Upwork platform, Upwork offers various badges and advertising options to help clients identify top talent and boost freelancer visibility. Additionally, while Upwork is a great tool, its main business is to make money and getting freelancers to spend connects is one of the primary ways they do this. Because of this, some of these features are more valuable than others and knowing which ones are important and work in landing more clients can save you a lot of money in the long run. Below are the different badges freelancers can get as they work contracts on Upwork.
Badges
Badges are far more valuable on Upwork than ads. You don’t have to pay for them (Expert-Vetted Badge excluded) and they are shown under a freelancers name when a client views a list of submitted proposals. By their very nature they do nothing but help you stand out as a freelancer and you should do what you can to get badges and keep them when they are awarded. Below is the list of badges you can receive.
Rising Talent Badge
The Rising Talent Badge is given to new freelancers who show string potential based on their early performance. To get this freelancers need to 100% complete their Upwork profile, regularly submit proposals, and receive good reviews from clients.
Top Rated Badge
The Top Rated Badge is awarded to experienced freelancers with a string work history and excellent client feedback. To get it freelancers will need to maintain a Job Success Score of 90% for 13 out of the last 16 weeks and have a minimum of $1,000 in earnings over the past 12 months.
Top Rated Plus Badge
The Top Rated Plus Badge is given to freelancers who have successfully completed large and complex projects with great client satisfaction. To get it, freelancers must maintain a Job Success score of 90% or higher 13 out of the last 16 weeks, and have earnings of at least $10,000 in the past 12 months.
Expert-Vetted Badge
The Expert-Vetted Badge is supposedly given to the top 1% of freelancers on Upwork, and is meant to highlight freelancers who are true experts with the goal of landing larger enterprise clients. Got get this freelancers will need to spend a lot of connects to apply, pass a skills assessment and interview, and have a strong work history with good client feedback.
When it comes to the badges listed above while all are valuable they get more valuable down the list with the most valuable being the Top Rated Plus and Expert-Vetted badges. The top rated plus is a strong badge because it shows you are active on the platform, have a high rating recently, and is arguably harder to get than the expert vetted badge. Upwork is a place where people are looking for the best deals, and it is hard to find the clients willing to pay real money. When these clients look at their proposal lists and the choice is between someone with the Top Rated Plus badge and someone without it, they will most likely go with the person who has the badge. The issue is to get the badge you already have to be somewhat successful, which is where the first two badges and the rest of this article come into play.
As for the Expert-Vetted badge, there is no denying it is valuable. I would say it is as valuable, as the Top Rated Plus badge simply because it is more rare. However, you do have to pay for it and it was created with the intention of bringing in more enterprise level clients to Upwork. Honestly if I had to pick I’d rather have the Top Rated Plus.
Ads
Ads are a different story than Badges as they cost money, and serve the purpose of showcasing freelancers to potential clients. In my experience I have not seen a lot of value in running ads, and 95% percent of my clients have come from me submitting proposals, not from someone reaching out from seeing my profile. Honestly, my view on Upwork ads is they are just another way for Upwork to make money and don’t provide enough value to freelancers to make them worthwhile. The types of ads freelancers can use on Upwork are below.
Boosted Proposals
Boosted Proposals allow freelancers to bid for a top spot in a client’s proposal list by spending connects. This can become very expensive and I find it hard to recommend ever boosting a proposal. Instead, I would recommend using the filter strategy I have below.
Sponsored Profiles
Sponsored Profiles allow freelancers to pay for their profiles to be shown more prominently in client searches. This is only effective if you have a very strong profile and Job Success Score. Even then since it costs money to keep on if you don’t continually get business from it, it will end up costing more than it ever brings in.
Filtering for the best contracts
When it comes to finding valuable contracts the search and filter are probably your strongest tool. When used correctly you should be able to get a relatively short list of refined contracts that are in the best position for you to land. The filters that you use may vary a little based on your industry and your experience but whether you are starting our or an established freelancer the formula is the same.
Step 1: Search for your industry
It is important to start your filter with a specific search. You can always update your search but I recommend starting broadly. For example, as someone who does full stack web development, I start my search with Web Development so I get a very large list. Let’s take an actual look at the results.
As you can see there are thousands of results, but that’s ok. We can then use the filters on the left to get a specific list of the items that are best suited for us. So let’s start breaking down the filters.
Step 2: Filter the search results
Now that we have a large list of results in our industry we can start narrowing that down to contracts that are going to be best suited for us. Here are the filters that I think are the most valuable.
U.S. Only Filter
The first filter offered to us is to filter for contracts that are looking specifically for people in the US. Now this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone since there is a large number of freelancers outside of the United States but if you are, then you want to make sure you check this as they pay is likely to be better.
Sort By Filter
The next filter is the option to sort by newest, relevance, client spend, and client rating. Keep this on ‘Newest’. The contracts we are looking for are the ones that have been recently created. Essentially we are trying to find and bid on contracts that have been created recently as they will have the highest likelihood of being viewed. Once people start applying you’ll get lost in the list.
Experience Level Filter
The experience level you select will be based on what you feel your experience level is, but you should factor in your track record on Upwork as well. If you haven’t worked any contracts in the past year, even if you are an expert you’ll probably want to select down on the experience level. The contract price may be less but when you’re first starting out or starting again that’s ok. When it comes to success in UpWork, consistency is key.
Job Type Filter
The job type filter is an interesting one since it allows you to filter by fixed price or hourly rate. I recommend sticking to the hourly rate. Research standard rates in the United States for the industry and then base your number against that, your location, and what you have your hourly rate set as in your profile. At this point, your profile rate should be lower than the researched rate and the rate you are actually willing to work for should be lower than what your profile says. From there you can filter for your experience level and that researched rate, knowing that you will be able to submit a competitive bid for the given contracts. The key thing to keep in mind is that the clients we are looking for are posting bids to Upwork to get a deal, but they also are willing to spend some money.
Number Of Proposals Filter
The number of proposals filter is another valuable source for narrowing down contracts you should apply to. My general rule is that I select
- less than 5
- 5 to 10
- and 10 to 15
Any more than that I don’t think they are worth submitting anything for. I believe this because I base my submissions completely around submitting bids for contracts that were recently created that I am qualified for. The ones you want to find are the contracts that are over your hourly rate, have been recently created, and don’t have a ton of proposals yet. This is your highest chance of getting seen.
Sample Filters
Let’s run through some samples to see the filters in action. Sticking with web development because it is what I know.
Example 1
Assume there is a freelancer from the United States who just started freelancing. They have some knowledge and a personal website, but no real experience or clients. With a basic Google search, we can find that the average rate of web developers in the United States is around $120 an hour. Now we know that since this freelancer is just starting out they aren’t going to want to be charging the average rate, they will want to be below it. So, let’s say they set their hourly rate at $50 an hour on their profile and they are ready to start searching.
They would start their search, searching for web development, and then once they get the list of results they would want to
- check U.S. only
- Select Entry Level and Intermediate experience
- Select an hourly job type with $50 an hour
- select less than 5 to 15 proposals
This is going to give us a list of around 100 records sorted from newest to oldest. The freelancer would then need to look through the list finding the contracts that are best suited for their experience. The older the contract the more specific the fit should be with minimal contracts older than 5 days being applied to.
Example 2
Let’s take the same example but say the person is not from the United States. Keeping all the same filters and unchecking U.S. only the list of available contracts in our list instantly more than doubles. In this case, while maybe counter-intuitive I would recommend raising the rate to $100, which should reduce the number of options in our list. When this is applied our list drops down to 67 results. At this point, the freelancer can then use the same strategy listed above where they apply with a rate that is a little lower than what their profile rate is.
Filters Conclusion
In conclusion when it comes to filtering for worthwhile contracts to bid on, you want to try to get a record set of around 100 records. All the records in the filtered set should be in your experience level and above the hourly rate you have set on your profile. Additionally, each of these records should have less than 15 proposals and be filtered from newest to oldest. One key thing I want to call out here as well is that you may be tempted to drop the rate to find more contracts. Making that choice is up to you and could work but I generally don’t recommend it, even for freelancers outside of the United States. The cheaper the client the worse they are going to be and your Job Success Score is going to suffer. The goal isn’t just to find contracts but contracts with clients who are looking to hire a freelancer and actually have a budget for one.
Reviewing The Client Proposal
Now that we have a condensed list of potential gigs, it’s time to start looking for ones that could be a good fit. Since our list is filtered by newest to oldest we just need to start at the top and go down the list. I will use my current list as an example highlighting a bad contract and a good one.
Bad Proposal
The proposal featured is what I would consider a bad proposal, even though it falls within our filtered search. I would consider this a poor proposal first and foremost because if you look at the average hourly rate they are spending $10.28/hr which means while they may have an hourly rate of $100 listed they will never hire someone for probably more than $15 an hour.
Additionally, if you look at their past contracts around 80% are the same project asking people to buy their product on Amazon, and the ones that do have to do with their website are for under $15 an hour and with different contractors all working for less than ten hours.
This contract isn’t worth the time it took to review it. The client will be nothing but trouble if they ever even hire for the job and they are looking for the lowest rate they can find and will not stay with you.
Good Proposal
This proposal is one that I would consider a good proposal. The Client clearly writes out what they are looking for and lists the skills they would want. The amount billed is consistently a high amount signifying long-term relationships and while the average rate could be higher it may be worth taking a change and applying. Add to this the job was posted 2 hours ago and has less than 10 bids, it is a good option.
Bidding & Writing The Proposal
Once we have found a good contract we want to apply to we can click into it and start writing our proposal. Let’s stick with the good proposal we saw in the above section. In this contract, the budget listed is $20 – $60/hr, and looking at their past work they hired contractors for $30/hr and they all seemed to be non-U.S.-based freelancers or an agency. However, we did have the U.S. only filter click. Using this information we can then determine what we would want to bid for this.
I would recommend bidding anywhere from $30 – $40 an hour for this contract. We already know that this client is comfortable paying $30 an hour but their budget indicates that they are probably willing to pay more. probably not $60/hr but they would probably pay $40 for the right candidate. How much you bid should really depend on your location and experience. I have experience so I will bid $40/hr.
The next thing we need to do is schedule the rate increase. I always set this to never. If you want to increase the rate do that after the contract has started. Have them close the contract and create a new one. No reason to say they will be paying more before you ever even get the gig.
Finally comes the cover letter and additional questions. When it comes to the cover letter I have a particular format that I use for every contract I bit on. I will adjust the content but the general structure remains the same. Here is an example using the sample contract.
Job Details
About Us Driveline Baseball is a data-driven baseball development organization that combines technology, biomechanics, and cutting-edge training methods to help athletes reach their potential. We’re seeking a talented contract designer to help evolve our digital presence.
Position Overview – Part-time/seasonal contract position – Remote work possible – Project-based compensation – Flexible hours – Opportunity to work with a leading sports performance organization
Responsibilities – Collaborate with our internal team to create responsive web design elements – Develop and refine assets that align with our brand identity – Deliver concepts, prototypes, and final designs on a project-by-project basis
Required Skills – Strong web design capabilities – Experience with responsive design – Proficiency in modern design tools (Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, etc.) – Understanding of current web design trends and best practices – Ability to work independently and meet deadlines – Sports industry experience is a plus
Equal Opportunity Employer We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.
Cover Letter
Hello! My name is Matt Morgan, and beyond my love of baseball (Go Cardinals!!!) , I am an expert in web design and development. I would love to talk with you more about your project.
I have been working as a freelancer designer for over 10 years and I am confident I can deliver the results you are looking for. I have experience in Figma, Canva, and Adobe and also have experience developing websites, so I fundamentally understand how designs are used when creating products. Given that I have worked as a freelancer for so long, I have plenty of experience working independently, tracking projects, holding myself accountable to gathering requirements and deadlines, and delivering tasks on time. Additionally, I have worked with both small and large teams from major companies such as Thomson Reuters to smaller companies such as Search Solutions Group, and anything in between.
The foundation of my business is not just freelance design, but ultimately to make your life easier and your business grow. I pride myself on establishing trust, clear and consistent communication, and professional working relationships with all my clients. I like to call it a professional business with an individual personal touch. I complete all of my work personally, I don’t outsource anything, and I track all of my projects on project management boards so you will always know the work that is being done and the status that it is currently in. If you would like to find out more about me or see some of my previous work, you can do so at https://www.morganwebdevelopment.com/
Thanks for your consideration,
Matt Morgan
Breaking down the cover letter
I start each cover letter with some form of the first two sentences. I introduce myself, add a personal touch around their business if I can, and list my expertise with keywords taken from their job description. The second sentence is always the same.
In the next paragraph, I will always call out that I have been working as a freelancer for a long time. You don’t even have to call out the specific amount of years, you just want to state that you have experience and the following sentences will give them confidence on that. Your next sentence should be specifically about how you have experience in the specific skills they are looking for, and how you have more experience than they need. You want to give the impression you can’t just do the job but could do even more if they needed you to. Finally, in the final sentences, I always call out that I meet deadlines and have worked independently and with teams for small and large companies. Essentially trying to convey that I can fit into their current business structure no matter what it is.
The Third paragraph is where I tell them about how great I am as a freelancer and this paragraph always remains pretty much the same. I call out how I care about their business, communication, and tracking projects, and I link my portfolio. I will always only link my portfolio because I get to directly control the marketing text that is on there and the featured businesses and work that I want to showcase. The other content is there because the reason most freelance relationships fail is because the client doesn’t feel like the freelance is communicating with them enough, isn’t professional, or meeting their needs. These few sentences do a lot to drive home that you are a professional they can trust.
Communicating With The Client After Connection
After a client views your profile and reaches out to you, the chances of success go way up, but there are things you can do to make sure you are the one who gets the contract. In general, the client is going to reach out to multiple freelancers, and as mentioned above, communication is one of the key ways to get a client interested. Your goal should be to get them on a web call so you can make the sale.
Here is a list of communications you should send once a client has reached out.
- The first message you send should be right after they have connected, and should thank them for reaching out and offer a chance to meet to talk more about the contract. “Hey {Person’s Name} thanks for reaching out. I think I could be a great fit for your project, and I would love to talk with you more about what you are looking for. If you have time feel free to book a time to meet with me here on Upwork or through my Calendy Link {meeting link}.”
- If they respond to the first message keep pushing for a meeting and try to make the sale. People on Upwork are trying to move quickly so don’t feel bad about trying to speed things along. If they don’t respond, send them a message the next day. Don’t send more than one message a day without hearing back from them.
- If after a week you still don’t hear back from them, move on.
Really, the key is to be proactive about initiating the conversation. The sooner you can get them on a web call the better as that is where you can make the sale. If they are super eager and don’t need a call then don’t push for one, get the contract signed, but in my experience, web calls have an extremely high conversion rate. If you can get them on a call you can get the contract finalized.
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