From a New Freelancer: 5 Cover Letters That Helped Me Succeed

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Hello, everyone. I hope it will help you to succeed in a short time like me. The proposal is the first meeting with a client, and therefore, it is the most, most, most important to pay attention to.

I am Tural Babashov, and my niche is graphic design. It is just 3 months since I began freelancing on Upwork. Without a Top-Rated badge and any reviews, but thanks to writing unique and great proposals I got 16 jobs with 5-star reviews in Upwork. I would like to share my experience with everyone who can't get work on Upwork. You will have a great experience that will improve your freelancing career very fast in a short time.

Four proposal types will help you to succeed very fast. One type of proposal doesn’t work here. You must have different types of proposals and you must pay attention to the client and choose an appropriate proposal type.

Today, I'm going to give you the 4 Upwork cover letters that helped me become the high-earning and more-hired Upwork freelancer in the world. Read my blog to the end because the last one has earned me most of the 16 jobs and it's going to totally blow your mind.

But first, most people are doing totally wrong in their Upwork proposals.

5 essential keys:

1. Asking for some related and unique questions:

“Hey, I reviewed your job and did a bit of background research. Would you be able to fill in a few blanks?”
Then add three really good questions that will help you scope out the job and just get a better feel for it. Like, do you have any specific examples of what you want as an end product? How long until you need a final version? And what's your budget for this project?

Close it with something like thanks, looking forward to hearing from you on this. And sign your name. The most important part about this is just ask a few great questions. The better your questions, the more likely you'll be to get a response from the client.

You can even take this one further by asking a targeted question about the client's struggles and frustrations, like, how is not having this done impacting your business or costing you money? Go ahead, and ask about the client's frustrations. They want to tell you about their struggles. Then it's just up to you to decide if you're the one to solve those problems for them.

And by the way, on all of these Upwork proposals, you should be experimenting and just seeing what fits for you, seeing what's going to work, what's going to work in your niche.

2. Send them your same previous work for X Company:

“Hey Harry, it seems like an awesome fit. I've helped other clients like ABC Products and XYZ Company boost their sales in the same way that you're looking for. I attached an example so you can get a feel for the level of quality that I produce. Let's jump on a call and talk specifics."

This one is short and sweet for a reason. You're going for a maximum of 3-4 sentences. Basically, you just want to see how the client responds because not every proposal has to be sliced, it dices, and it does everything that you need. Sometimes you just need to get in, get out, and just get the job.

3. Send them your portfolio link:

This next one is especially good when you spend a lot of time on creating awesome work examples. Hey Jim, I'm ready when you are. Send me a message and let's hop on a call to discuss. P.S. Here are a few of my work examples you can check out.

And you just pop in a couple of your URL links to the work examples in your portfolio. This one is super short and that is very much intentional. Clients want to see what they can get with you and if you have great work examples then this one is going to put those front and center.

4. Asking specific questions in proposal that show you are going to work for them :

This next one works super well when you have a very well-defined job when you know exactly what you need to do. It's for graphic designers, but you can modify it to make it your own if you want.

Hey Mike, I'm ready to rock on this project. Here's what I need from you in order to get started:

1. Shoot me your color scheme, logo, and design assets.
2. Press the green hire now button in the top right corner and press send offer.
3. Send me a message with the times that you can meet for a quick 30-minute Zoom tomorrow.

What you'll get from working together, is three different design variations. Web-optimized image exports including PNG, JPEG, and WebP, the fully editable PSD source file, and final delivery on October 17th. Looking forward.

When you're able to really fully scope out something, it can be very useful for a client to just look at your proposal and know exactly what it is that you're going to be doing together, how long it's gonna take, and what they're gonna get on the other side, what they need to do next in order to get started.

From bad experience to success:

Now for the weirdest one of them all. I have personally won 16 jobs in just 3 months. It's beautiful. And as long as you have great work examples and a super clean Upwork profile, then I promise that when you use it correctly, it can be tremendously powerful.

I was working for a tiny little startup company and there was somebody that I really, really, really needed to talk to. He was the CEO of a billion-dollar business, like a super important, very, very busy guy. And I was only able to get him on the phone once or twice. But then we got to the point where I needed him to approve a multi-million dollar deal before the end of the month. If we sealed the deal, my company would make millions, but if we didn't, then my business probably would have gone bankrupt. But here was the problem. I couldn't get him on the phone. He was crazy busy with people that were obviously a lot more important than little old me and this tiny company that I was working for so I'm like alright. How do I get this guy on the phone?

I just keep trying them on the phone, and it doesn't work. Nothing's working, so I'm like right, let's try email, I emailed him once and sent him a message no response I emailed him very politely a second time again no response this guy just would not respond to me. You know that's okay but I'm like sitting here pulling my hair out because for two weeks he's just not responding and if I can't get this guy on the phone then this deal doesn't get done and if the deal doesn't get done then the company that I'm working for literally shuts down and I lose my job and can't send him another polite email because nobody wants somebody who's desperate and needy.

So I'm sitting there just freaking out, thinking we going to figure something out because otherwise everyone's getting fired here. But then I had a moment. Out of nowhere, I had what I can only describe as an epiphany. I knew exactly what I had to write in order to just get this guy to respond.

I go to my laptop giddy like a schoolboy and I bash out this email and I hit send and I am absolutely certain that he is going to respond. I have used the same strategy to get clients to respond on Upwork and I've earned over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars because of this one weird Upwork cover letter: Attach your work examples and write a “hello”, comma. So at this point, you're probably thinking: “um, Hey, Tural, I think you might've forgotten to include the body of the message here.” He thought that too because when we had a multimillion-dollar deal and a company's future on the line, and this guy hadn't responded to me in weeks, I sent him this exact message and he responded two hours later saying:

“Hey Tural, I think you might have forgotten to include the body of the message. Can you please resend it?” Then I sent him the email that I really wanted to send him and blamed it on, you know, some glitch. I got him to respond and we did that deal.

Speaking of deals...

While you do that, there are more extremely important things that I have to tell you about this:

1. If you want to take it to the next level, then use that person's first name.
2. Try different things. For example, different variations. You have to try these cover letters out but understand that they're not for everybody. But if you need a solid, strong cover letter that's going to consistently get you jobs, then check out the next blog that I will share.

In conclusion, don’t choose one way for every client, because, all of them have different characters. A method that is interesting to one customer may be annoying to another. Therefore, quickly develop your Upwork freelancing career using different proposal methods. Thank you for reading and I wish you all the best in your career.

Connect with Tural on Upwork