What's your proposals to hire ratio? And how to improve it?

[bombayblack]

Hi there,

to all designer and illustrator, what's your average proposal to hire ratio?

I feel like I need to send a huge amount of poposals to be hired at least once.

I'm quite new here, and I think my skills and prices are well balanced, but still I can't get hired often.

For example in the last 90 days I applied to 94 jobs, and I got hired only 6 times. Is it normal?

What are your suggestion for the "perfect" proposal or to get hired more often?

Soon I should get the Top Rated badge, if I'm not mistaken. Does people take it in consideration when hiring someone?

[silw]

I don't think the main focus should be regarding HOW MANY jobs you get, but how many you need to land to be able to pay your bills.

With your extremely low rate you position yourself within the giant pool of other low-rates freelancers.

At this segment the chances to get hired are the lowest.

If i were you I'd get rid of the works in your portfolio that aren't on a professional level and raise your rate by at least 3-4 times.

[bombayblack]

Thank you for your feedback.

I'm new to freelancing, so I'm still trying to set a proper hourly rate. Do you really think that my rate is extremely low? I've checked the profile of many illustrators, and it seems on par with the average, ok maybe on the lower end of it. And more than 90% of the jobs I see on UpWork have low or mid-low budgets. 

Well, I might give it a shot, I'll try to rise my rates and apply to the few high paying job I see. Let's see if it works.

[silw]

You can't compare "upwork rates" to a reasonable prizing.

Compare to the industry standards regarding salary, which is somewhere around 45k$ for a junior 2d illustrator position and somewhere around 60k$+ on a senior 2d artist position in the US, if i remember correctly.

Keep in mind that those numbers are within a fixed contract, so you have to add costs for all sorts of work-related expenses, ensurances, downtimes, time you invest for lead-generatio, and so on, to your rate. PLUS the upwork fees.

Taking all this into consideration gives you a realistic number.

I think there are statistic that talk about 95-99% of all artists that try to become a freelancer went on to a different field within the first 5 years.

One of the major reasons for this is that they aren't aware of how business works, how to sell their services properly, and how to charge a reasonable amount for their work.

I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you the information that learning about the business of design/art, is equally as relevant as your art-skills.