I was brand new to freelancing. No idea what I was doing.
But I won 5 gigs in less than a week, and you can do the same.
A bit of background to this story: I come from the passive-income writing world where I create my own products and all the work I do is for myself. I didn’t know how to write up a freelance proposal, let alone how to successfully deliver services to a client! But I decided to try freelancing for two reasons.
- To create a backup income I could lean on for cash if anything went wrong with my passive income writing.
- To test a theory I had about business and life in general: that the way you communicate matters more than your background, and that you get more if you give more.
I’d outsourced many aspects of my passive income business through the Elance platform, so I was familiar with that system and how the flow of bidding worked. I figured I’d set up as a freelance service provider there.
[Note from Sophie: Yes, I know some of you hate Elance with a passion. But Lior’s approach to sending proposals got him started and hired fast, so set aside your Elance-flaming reaction for a few minutes and consider how you can adapt this to your own proposals, no matter where you find your clients.]
Lessons Learned from the Client Side
Before, I was always in the hiring position and had noticed a couple of things from that side of the table:
- I hated it when I received copied-and-pasted proposals that weren’t unique to the project I’d described.
- I was more likely to respond to people who gave me advice or asked a question regarding the job.
On Elance, you can’t contact a potential client directly until they express an interest in you. I knew I couldn’t rely on my Elance profile alone to impress potential clients, because it was almost empty — I had no published blogging clips to show for all my self-employed experience.
I had to find a way to implement what I’d learnt from my time in the client’s shoes and use that in my proposals as a service provider.
Turns out my empty profile wasn’t a problem. My proposals won me 5 gigs in 3 days.
The total time I spent sending proposals on Elance was 30 minutes, plus an extra 20 minutes of e-mailing back and forth to discuss and confirm the details. The total value of my gigs for the week was over $1,000. Not too bad for a “nobody” without a portfolio.
Here’s How to Do It
These are the main two tactics I used in my proposals to attract clients to respond. Remember, the idea was to prompt the client to reply to my proposal so that I could show them my experience and build the relationship from there.
“I looked into that for you and…”
The idea here was to show them that I went ahead and investigated what their job posting was referring to. Often they post a link to a website as part of the project description, so this leaves a great opportunity to separate yourself from the other proposals by basing yours around their website content.
Familiarize yourself with their world and customize your proposal around that. This will show you know what you’re talking about, making your potential client more inclined to accept your proposal.
“I’m not sure why you would do that, but…”
Here I’m giving criticism that leads into advice. I love this one because it works so well with clients — often, they’re outsourcing the work because they don’t know how to do it themselves. They definitely don’t want to spend money to have something done wrong, or to find they asked for the wrong thing in the first place! This leaves a lot of room for suggestions to improve the job specifics, and almost always elicits a response.
It’s another great opportunity for you to show that you know what you’re talking about. Once a potential client has spent time discussing a project or problem with you, they will be more likely to choose your proposal as they’ve already invested time planning with you. Your proposal is more likely to win, even if it’s at a higher price point.
The main thing I learned from this successful week of Elancing is the common theme between the two methods above: “If you give, you will get”.
This was the foundation of my experiment, based on my experiences in the hiring position. It always boiled down to that one point of human nature. And I plan to use it over and over again in my business and personal life.
If you give, you will get.
So you tell me: What can you give in your proposals to boost your chances of getting hired?
Hi Lior,
I think this could work for me. I have applied to jobs at oDesk (never tried elance yet) in the last few years. Before landing a job, I had to send anywhere from 5-20 cover letters and applications.
I’ve never done what you did above. Although I had stopped applying to oDesk jobs, I can still do that, provided I get good gigs and not mere pennies for my work.
I can provide tech help and advice, so that’s what I’ll try with, today and the next few days. Thanks for this post. Will let you know how it goes.
You just have to think creatively and be different than the others proposing. Good luck!
Great advice, Lior and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I actually just heard back about a pitch I sent last week and they were asking me more information about myself. I will definitely be using this tactic to reel them in even more. Thanks!
That’s awesome. If you don’t have much to show off about yourself, try steering the conversation towards how the service will benefit them.
Once they start imagining the benefits they almost never remember to ask about your qualifications.
Hi Lior,
I like that approach, it’s more or less the same I do. Especially giving criticism seems to work perfect. It shows involvement, know-how, and that it is a unique proposal.
But what really interests me here is: how did you do all that in a total of 30 minutes? You wrote at least five proposals, but probably one or two more. I think you would have mentioned a 100% success rate (at least I would have done that). So: how did you do this? How did you manage to spend not more than 5 minutes per proposal? And this including research, looking at attached documents and scanning linked homepages. To me, this sounds more or less impossible, but I would be glad if you could let us know how you do this.
In any case: congratulations and thanks for the post!
I didn’t include a true proposal- remember that the goal was just to illicit a response and open dialogue. I would read their job posting, take a look at any docs or sites if necessary, then shoot them the question or criticism. Shouldn’t take more than 2-4 minutes per proposal.
Hi Lior, I was also wondering how you could have sent 5+ proposals in 30 minutes. But, I get you now and I think I will try that.
Quote:
> I was more likely to respond to people who gave me advice or asked a question regarding the job.
Exactly! This is somethings that has quite the success rate when you’re out looking for nice gigs.
Actually, I have used this point/tip before on oDesk, but lots of clients don’t even check everyone’s applications/cover letters for days and weeks. For such applications, our hard work, time and advice goes like waste.
This may be better to use outside sites like oDesk and Elance.
Absolutely, Raspal. These principles apply equally well to direct proposals or job ad responses — especially the “I did a bit of research and…” tactic.
I am curious about the elance “flaring up” reaction.
I have had that reaction to freelancer.com .
I don’t even respond anymore when I get a notification.
Does elance work the same as freelancers.com?
If you aren’t familiar with the site I will try to briefly explain it as best as I can since it was confusing to me.
Clients post projects with a budget. Hopeful writers bid. They pm you and demand “high quality article” “700 words for 1.50” “rich seo content” “how soon?”
Then get offended when you ask for the milestone payment to be deposited in advance.
I don’t understand why the budget says 500.00, the bids are even made, and why quality content is expected for 1.50.
Thankfully the only thing I paid for was a 5.00 exam that improved my chances of being hired.
Is Elance like that?
Yep, pretty much. There’s a ton of sites like that, and you’ll always find a *few* people who’ve successfully built up a high-paying client base there… but a lot more people who only got the “500 words for $5” clients.
“What can you give in your proposals to boost your chances of getting hired?”
The opportunity for them to talk to you anytime over Skype (offering a face to face conversation).
It is a great way to offer a more personal touch to your proposal and helps to build trust with your client.
Only reason I’m not fond of this idea is that personally being the client sometimes I really don’t want to give them the chance to get on the phone or Skype with me.
1) It’s time consuming
2) I don’t like talking on the phone
3) I feel like they feel that they have the opportunity to sell me better or create a personal relationship if they could just get me on the phone.
As a freelancer I never suggested that outright. First I would do either of the methods I mentioned, and then almost always THEY ask ME to go on Skype to learn more.
I should mention that I’ve never once closed a client that wanted to go on Skype. Usually they add tons of freelancers and you get lost in the mix. Not so personal.
Great post thanks for the tips will be trying it out.
Elance is somewhat not bad if you avoid the low paying gigs. Another method I want to consider for finding clients is to contact clients that post jobs for website design, they will definitely need content for the site.
Glad you enjoyed the article, Aisha! And let us know how your “website design” tactic works out for you!
This is an answer to a question I’ve been asking myself, “What do I tell a client to convince him I can do the job considering I don’t have much on my portfolio. Thanks for this post Lior!
😉 Good luck!
This was a great post and came in time for me. I’m at the point in my business that I need more clients and though I’ve been tailoring my proposals to what they are looking for in a freelancer and looked at their site, I didn’t think to tell them that I did. (duh!) Will definitely use that next time. 🙂
One of the methods that I use in order to talk about myself (and how I would uniquely serve my potential clients) is to think of myself as a product: http://littlezotz.com/2013/05/thinking-of-yourself-as-a-product/ It helps me to distance myself enough to not feel weird about “bragging” about my features + benefits.
I love the way you worded the tactic of reviewing their website. Such a simple tweak to the way I was saying that same thing but not getting any response! I kept wondering if I was wasting my time even looking at their site if they “didn’t care” about the writer being familiar with their world. Thanks for this great advice how to rework that part of my pitch for, hopefully, better results!
Hope things go more smoothly for you from here on out! Let us know if the tweak(s) helped. 🙂
Thanks for writing this, Lior. I will keep your pointers in mind when I send out another proposal.
Glad you found the article helpful, Maricel. Thanks for stopping by!
Lior – I love that you wrote this. It’s something I’ve been experimenting with lately too.
As a copywriter, my challenge is to understand the voice of the client, plus the needs of their audience, before writing the copy. For a ‘cold’ proposal, I can understand their voice through their recent writing. With their client’s voice, it takes a bit more digging and creativity.
But the result? The proposal is tailored directly for that business and my success rate is 100% so far (only 3 clients pitched, but it’s a start!).
Your post is spot on with the advice – actually caring about the client and pitching with some work done up-front is the way to get results.
– Razwana
You’re absolutely right. I’ve noticed that copywriting clients (and ghostwriting clients in general) tend to have larger egos and LOVE hearing (reading) their “own” voice. It’s a nice little trick when looking for work — or keeping the work you already have. 😉
Lior – Thanks for this.
I’m new to freelance writing as well and have to say this seems like really useful advice.
I’ve tried my hand at pitching for jobs on sites like Elance but after little success and reading all the bad press I turned my attention elsewhere. After reading this i’ll be implementing your advice on all future proposals and am probably going to give Elance another chance.
Thanks again for the great info!
Everyone’s freelance writing journey is their own and ultimately we each do what’s best for us. 🙂
That said, we usually try to discourage writers from using bidding sites. They tend to not pay very well what with writers in constant competition to “out cheap” each other.
You might like to join our free forum – http://beafreelanceblogger.com/forum – and talk to some of the other bloggers about what they do to get hired. We’ve got a nice mix of newbies and old salts in there. 🙂
Hello Lior,
When I started reading your post, I was with an impression that someone is telling my real story and how I feel about bidding gigs 🙂
One of the most unfortunate thing that I’ve observed in bidding gigs particularly at Elance is that most of the buyers don’t bother to read your proposal if they have already read their favorite one (Only a few like to dig deep).
One of the most fortunate thing about bidding gigs is that you’ve a chance to get hired even over high star freelance writers if you hit your clients’ mind 🙂
But yes, writing a proposal is actually an ART + SCIENCE and again, luck works out.
Lior,
As a person just starting to look at freelance blogging for an income, this article hits the nail on the head. It will let me have a real chance of getting some paying work. Thanks so much for the help and knowledge.
Carl
Hi Lior,
Great ideas and I have been applying them. Plus I try to tailor one of my samples to the client’s needs/project. I have offered advice to a couple bids and even asked questions. I’m new but I still offered bids that were above average or higher. when asking questions I don’t seem to get a response even when I’m one of the first to bid? Am I doing something wrong? I have been awarded one job…yeah. It’s a start. Thanks for the post and the great advice. Jessica