Why Your Upwork Proposals Gets Zero Replies & How To Fix It — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Nobody is reading your proposals. And I  don't mean that they're reading them and
2. 0:03picking somebody else. I mean they're not reading  them. They're scanning the first line, deciding,
3. 0:07and then moving on. You never find out that's  what happened because there isn't a notification
4. 0:11for a proposal that nobody read. It just sits  there. And every one of those took an X out of
5. 0:17your account. You pay to be ignored. Then you  pay again the next day. And the sad thing is,
6. 0:22you'll keep paying until the first line  changes. I've sent over 5,000 proposals on
7. 0:27Upwork. over half a million to earn top 1%  and I run an agency where freelancers send
8. 0:33proposals to me. I sit on both sides. The  standard advice, you know, be professional,
9. 0:38be thorough, list your credentials. That is the  fastest way to get deleted. So, in this video,
10. 0:44exactly what the clients scan for, what makes  them stop, and what to write instead. By the end,
11. 0:49the whole framework's yours as a doc  that you can write straight from. One,
12. 0:53the first three seconds. Clients aren't reading  your proposal. Not at first. They're literally
13. 0:57scanning it. Go into your Upwork account right  now, open your last five proposals and read only
14. 1:02the first line of each one. Nothing else. If those  five lines are interchangeable, that is the whole
15. 1:08problem. And it's sitting in the first sentence  of your application. Because most freelancers,
16. 1:12they open with, "Hi, my name is whatever and I've  got 10 years of experience in X." People write
17. 1:19that because it feels professional. It almost  feels safe. It's what a cover letter does,
18. 1:24but that's not an opening. That's a CV that nobody  asked for. The first line has one job. It isn't
19. 1:29introducing you. It's not establishing authority.  Its only job is to earn the second line. Open with
20. 1:34credentials and you've spent your only scannable  line answering a question that nobody asked.
21. 1:39They know that you've got experience. You applied  for the job. But what they don't know is whether
22. 1:43you understand their problem. You're not being  professional. You're being deleted. And if you
23. 1:47think that you need experience before any of this  matters, then my first ever job on this platform
24. 1:51paid $374.40. No reviews, no history, nothing on  that profile that was even worth scanning. But the
25. 1:58proposal still won because the first line wasn't  about me. The fix takes 60 seconds. Read the job
26. 2:04post. Read it twice. Not once. Read it twice. Find  the real pain underneath the request. Somebody
27. 2:10posting i.e. Google Ads help, for example, is very  rarely just asking for Google Ads help. They might
28. 2:16have been burned before. They've spent money on  something that didn't work. They're nervous about
29. 2:20doing that again, and you have to write to that.  Now, there's one specific opening line that's
30. 2:24beaten everything else that I have tested. I'm  coming back to it later because before it works,
31. 2:29you've got to fix how much you're writing. Two,  the length war. There's a war going on between
32. 2:34freelancers who write three paragraph essays and  freelancers who send fourline replies. Both sides
33. 2:40think that they're right. Both sides are wrong.  Neither length wins by default. I have tested it.
34. 2:45Some of my highest converting proposals were under  150 words. Some were over 400. The variable wasn't
35. 2:52ever the length. The variable was relevance. A  short proposal that's still about you gets deleted
36. 2:58exactly as fast as the long one. You just wasted  less of your own time writing it. So run this test
37. 3:04on a proposal that you've already got open. Read  it back one sentence at a time and ask, "Does this
38. 3:09sentence prove I understand the problem or prove  I can solve it?" If it does neither, cut it out.
39. 3:14No exceptions. And watch what disappears when you  actually do that. The greeting goes, the I came
40. 3:19across your job post and immediately got excited.  That goes the list of unrelated skills, that goes.
41. 3:25The I'm hardworking and detail orientated, that  goes as well. I've hired people through Upwork
42. 3:30and I have never once hired somebody because  they told me that they were detail oriented.
43. 3:35You're not being thorough there. You're being  scrolled past. All right, those two are about
44. 3:39what you're writing, but this next one, this is  about who you're writing about. And this one might
45. 3:44sting a little bit. Three, you're writing about  you. Freelancers are writing about themselves and
46. 3:48clients are thinking about themselves. Read that  again. Freelancers are writing about themselves.
47. 3:54Clients are thinking about themselves. This is  the single biggest mistake that I see. I read
48. 3:58proposals every week that go, "My background,  my skills, my past clients, my processes,
49. 4:05why I'm great, and the client is sitting there  thinking, that's fantastic, but what about my
50. 4:10project? Do you even understand what I need?"  Your profile is where your credentials live.
51. 4:15Your proposal isn't a second profile. It's a  conversation starter. And in any conversation,
52. 4:20the fastest way to lose someone is to talk  about yourself for three minutes before asking
53. 4:25how they're doing. So flip the ratio. 70% about  their situation, their goal, their concern. 30%
54. 4:32proving you can deliver it. That's not a soft  suggestion. That's the ratio that gets replies.
55. 4:36Second half of this specificity. The test. If you  can swap the client's name for any other client's
56. 4:42name and the proposal still makes sense, it's  too generic and it's going in the bin. Mention
57. 4:47something from their post. Name their industry.  Name the specific challenge that they described.
58. 4:52Not because it's flattering, but because it proves  that you've read it. And most people apply. They
59. 4:56didn't. By the way, everything in this video is  in one free doc. Where to get it at the end. Now,
60. 5:01the first thing that I promised that I'd come  back to, I'm going to be transparent with you
61. 5:06because I got this wrong for my entire first year  for the line that actually works because the most
62. 5:12effective opening I found isn't clever. It's a  specific accurate observation about the client's
63. 5:18problem, not one that they spelt out in the job  post. For the first year, I did the complete
64. 5:23opposite of this. Every proposal, it opened  with my credentials because I thought the job
65. 5:28was proving I was qualified. barely any replies.  I blame my experience, the profile, the rate,
66. 5:33and my cap. It was none of those things. You're  probably doing the same thing now, blaming your
67. 5:37rate. But I was answering a question that nobody  had ever asked. And then look at what happens when
68. 5:42you flip it. The biggest client that I've ever had  on this platform was an ecom business in the US.
69. 5:46$111,000 over the relationship. It started with a  proposal whose first line was about their problem.
70. 5:53It wasn't about me. Not one credential in the  opening. 100k earned plus opened by a sentence
71. 5:58that named what was going wrong in their business  before they'd even told anybody. So, let me show
72. 6:03you how you shape this. Client posts looking for  a paid media specialist to manage Google ads.
73. 6:08Budgets been wasted. We need better results. Weak  opening is, "Hi, I'm a Google Ads specialist with
74. 6:14eight years of experience." But a strong opening  is most wasted ad spend comes down to one of three
75. 6:20things. the wrong campaign structure, bids chasing  the wrong signals, or landing pages that don't
76. 6:25match the intent. I'd want to show you which  one is costing you the most before I recommend
77. 6:29anything. And if you do that, do you notice  what happened there? Not a single credential,
78. 6:33competence demonstrated. And competence shown  is worth 10 times credentials stated because now
79. 6:39you're not just literate, you're perceptive.  And perceptive is rare, right? Perceptive is
80. 6:44what clients pay a premium for. And when you do  bring credentials in, bring actual numbers, not
81. 6:49I've worked with lots of e-commerce brands. Vague  proof is no proof. Instead, eight ecom clients,
82. 6:55average return improvement of 3.4x in the first  90 days. Now, the result is imaginable for them.
83. 7:01Everything up to here has been about getting  deleted. Now, let's earn the reply because
84. 7:05there's one part of the proposal almost nobody  thinks about at all. Five. Most proposals don't
85. 7:10end. They trail off. Happy to chat if you have any  questions. Looking forward to hearing from you.
86. 7:14Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further.  That's not a close, that's a trailoff. It's the
87. 7:19same mistake as the opening, but at the other  end. You've handed the decision entirely to
88. 7:24them. And there are another 30 proposals sitting  underneath yours. A real close does two things at
89. 7:29the same time. It reduces the friction to reply  and it signals you've got a process and you're
90. 7:35in control of it. Something like there are two  questions that I'd want answered before I could
91. 7:39give you a proper recommendation. Happy to run  through them on a quick call or over messages,
92. 7:43whichever suits. a clear low stakes next step. And  it says you're not sitting there waiting because
93. 7:48clients on Upwork are not looking for the most  experienced freelancer in their inbox. They're
94. 7:53looking for the one who makes them feel the most  understood. Understanding signals trust. And trust
95. 7:59is the only thing you're actually selling in a  proposal, right? Not your years, not your tools,
96. 8:04not your certifications. You're not applying for  a job. You're proving you already understand the
97. 8:09client's problem. Before you carry on, go and open  your last proposal and read the first line back.
98. 8:13Is it about you? About them? Drop me or them in  the comments. One word. That's all I'm after. And
99. 8:19be honest because mine said me for a year and  I could not work out why nobody was replying.
100. 8:24If you've got a first line you're not sure about,  paste it down there. I read everyone. Fixing these
101. 8:28will not fill your inbox overnight. But nothing  changes until you do. And until then, your pain
102. 8:34connects to be scanned and skipped. Everyone else  in that client's list is writing a CV nobody asked
103. 8:39for. You're going to be the one who names the  problem before they do. The framework, the opening
104. 8:44structures, the cut test, the ratio, the close is  in one doc linked below. Copy it, write your next
105. 8:49proposal straight from it. And the other half  of this, my profile setup so clients come to me
106. 8:54before I send anything is on screen now. My name  is Michael Elliot. I'll catch you in the next one.