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albattrikhi-moha
Community Member

How I decide which Upwork projects to bid on

There is projects I bid on but after while client did not hire or even interview any one

so what sholud I care about when I bid on projects like:

 

hire rate

number of proposals

reviews

and what about new clinet how I can decide to bid on 

 

Thanks

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
wlyonsatl
Community Member

Mohammed A.,

 

Every successful freelancer who has used Upwork for a while probably has a unique approach to each of these elements of their search for new projects. Mine are:

 

!) Hire rate - I only pay attention to this if the client as been on Upwork for at least six months and has posted more than 10 jobs. A hire rate under 20% would be a client I wouldn't spend connects on.

 

2) Number of proposals - I don't apply to new projects that already have more than 20 proposals. (Clients apparently have no incentive to close their projects to new proposals even after they have hired the freelancer they need, so applying to jobs that already have lots of proposals may be a waste of time. And I assume, for no specific reason, that most clients want to hire quickly and get worn out after reviewing 20 or so proposals.)

 

3) Reviews - Because so many freelancers are not as negative as they should be when reviewing clients, in hopes even difficult clients will hire them again, I take freelancer ratings with a grain of salt and assume they are generally rosier than they should be. So, if a client's reviews are largely negative, that is a big red flag. But more important to me, usually, is the client's ability to describe the work they need done, to answer my initial questions, etc.

 

The other things I look at are:

 

4) How long has the job been posted? Similar to 2) above, I assume the longer a job has been posted the more likely the client has no intention to hire or has already hired a freelancer and hasn't taken down the ad. (No telling how many connects are wasted due to this.) My hard limit is usually 1 day. If a job has been listed for 2 days or more, I don't bother applying. However, if I have done a search for a couple of days I might relax my maximum limit to 2 or even 3 days.

 

5) The more of Upwork's canned questions a client uses in their job ad, the less I expect they know about their own project. I have found such a client is likely to think I don't know what I'm doing because (s)he doesn't know what I'm doing. Such clients can be hard to work with.

 

I stay plenty busy on Upwork. If I didn't, I'd relax some of the above criteria (especially Numbers 1 and 2) to see if that led to more successful proposals for me.

 

Good luck!

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5 REPLIES 5
NikolaS
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Mohammed,

 

Every beginning can be difficult and everyone, including new freelancers, are experiencing highs and lows, but you shouldn't lose hope. You may check these great topics in our Resource Corner to help you create proposals that win jobs:

 

Let us know if you need further assistance.

 

~ Nikola
Upwork

Thanks 

these topics really helpfull to make my proposal 

better

wlyonsatl
Community Member

Mohammed A.,

 

Every successful freelancer who has used Upwork for a while probably has a unique approach to each of these elements of their search for new projects. Mine are:

 

!) Hire rate - I only pay attention to this if the client as been on Upwork for at least six months and has posted more than 10 jobs. A hire rate under 20% would be a client I wouldn't spend connects on.

 

2) Number of proposals - I don't apply to new projects that already have more than 20 proposals. (Clients apparently have no incentive to close their projects to new proposals even after they have hired the freelancer they need, so applying to jobs that already have lots of proposals may be a waste of time. And I assume, for no specific reason, that most clients want to hire quickly and get worn out after reviewing 20 or so proposals.)

 

3) Reviews - Because so many freelancers are not as negative as they should be when reviewing clients, in hopes even difficult clients will hire them again, I take freelancer ratings with a grain of salt and assume they are generally rosier than they should be. So, if a client's reviews are largely negative, that is a big red flag. But more important to me, usually, is the client's ability to describe the work they need done, to answer my initial questions, etc.

 

The other things I look at are:

 

4) How long has the job been posted? Similar to 2) above, I assume the longer a job has been posted the more likely the client has no intention to hire or has already hired a freelancer and hasn't taken down the ad. (No telling how many connects are wasted due to this.) My hard limit is usually 1 day. If a job has been listed for 2 days or more, I don't bother applying. However, if I have done a search for a couple of days I might relax my maximum limit to 2 or even 3 days.

 

5) The more of Upwork's canned questions a client uses in their job ad, the less I expect they know about their own project. I have found such a client is likely to think I don't know what I'm doing because (s)he doesn't know what I'm doing. Such clients can be hard to work with.

 

I stay plenty busy on Upwork. If I didn't, I'd relax some of the above criteria (especially Numbers 1 and 2) to see if that led to more successful proposals for me.

 

Good luck!

what about if the client make interview for one freelnacer 

and the number of proposal is few what should I do in this state 

There are, apparently, millions of freelancers registered to use Upwork, so I expect it is quite a challenge for at least some clients to find just the right freelancer for their project. We've been told this is why the Job Success Score system was set up - so clients could pre-judge whether a freelancer could be a good choice based on a single, blackbox "rating" system and ignore freelancers whose "rating" is not at a minimum level.

 

I pay no attention to whether a client has invited other freelancers to submit proposals but didn't invite me. If I think an open job is a very good fit for my skills, experience and pay requirements, I submit a proposal. (I submit something like 500 - 600 proposals per year. About half - maybe more, maybe less - are jobs for which I was invited by the clients to submit a proposal.)

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