High Amount of Proposals

[nick_scumaci]

Hello,

I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed the significant uptick in proposals being sent to clients the past few months. Seems like proposal amounts have skyrocketed even though the changes to UpWork were designed to have the opposite effect. Seems like every other job has 20-50 proposals. Over the summer these were few and far between. I never saw a 50+ proposal in those months, last week I saw 4. Every single job over $200 has 20-50 proposals almost guaranteed now. And the bids are ALL over the place no matter what skill level the client prefers. This can't be good for anyone, especially for clients who aren't going to want to pour over 30ish proposals or so (based on what I've heard.) Not sure what the solution is here since the changes UpWork made were supposed to curtail this. Wondering if anyone else is seeing the same things and how they're going about it. Thanks for the responses! Have a great day!

[jtwdesign]

I actually have noticed that very thing, however it has not been a recent development, Typically, I can predict which jobs will have that many proposals submitted. It's typically the type of job that the majority of freelancers can complete with any issue, and therefore they flock to them. I avoid these jobs. I typically submit proposals for very specific projects that require either a reasonable time investment on the part of the freelancer or that are very specific to my field which is commercial print design. these projects tend to lead to repeat business because the applicants are few and far between. I write fewer proposals, and get a pretty large percentage of the ones I actually do bid on. Being selective, may be your answer as well. 

[nick_scumaci]

Hey Jason,

Thanks for your reply. I actually have been selective in the past few months because of the high increase in bids. You are correct in saying that you can predict which jobs will get a high amount of proposals, and I too avoid those. You can pretty much guarantee any job over $500, no matter what it is, is going to have 20-50, 50+ proposals. However, as of the past 3 months, MOST jobs are hitting high proposal marks, so it's becoming more and more difficult to be selective because the pool is shrinking. I'm super observant, its a curse, haha so I definitely have seen a significant change around here. If you have somewhat of a niche, like yourself, it's definitely a bit easier since there is less competition. I'll look to see if I can focus on specific things like you're doing and I'll continue to be selective as much as I can, but I hope maybe some other solution comes along down the road. Best of luck to you on here Jason!