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derepavadim
Community Member

How to edit the "Cover letter"

Hello everyone \🙂/ Sorry for my clumsy English.... In general, I am a music composer and recently decided to register on the "upwork" site. Filled all the fields .... looking for work - ok, found and submitted a proposal. But I didn't think that writing "Cover letter" is so important ...
Well, I wrote: "I am ready to compose a great music for your movie! 😉". This is all I wrote 😅..... because the site told me that my page and portfolio will be shown to the client. Then I read, that type of "Cover letter" like mine is very dumb 🤦‍:male_sign:. Guys, here is no button "edit letter".  What do i do???🤔😥😬😯

22 REPLIES 22
niag
Community Member

You can follow the instructions below to withdraw your proposal. Then you can re-submit it.

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211060288-Withdraw-a-Proposal

However, a poor first impression may have already been made. Now that you know a bit more about the importance of a cover letter and what goes into a good one, submit your best every time so that you'll not have to withdraw any more proposals.
derepavadim
Community Member

Thx *)  It's all clear ....but it is so strange why they cannot add an edit button......21 century btw ......

niag
Community Member

There are more bases to cover with an edit button.

For example, what if you edited a proposal that the client already saw? Either the client wouldn't know or there would need to be an alert created so that the client could look at it again. (This would be in addition to maintaining the current withdraw feature.)

On the other hand, there would inevitably be people who abuse the edit button using it repeatedly to fix minor mistakes or to draw more attention to their proposals. This would quickly frustrate clients and perhaps drive them away from the platform.

It's much less likely that this abuse would happen with the withdraw feature since no one wants to write and re-write the same proposal over and again.

It's smart on Upwork's part to have avoided this feature thus far. Our main concern should be writing effective proposals so that we don't need to withdraw or edit 😉
florydev
Community Member


Nia G wrote:
There are more bases to cover with an edit button.

For example, what if you edited a proposal that the client already saw? Either the client wouldn't know or there would need to be an alert created so that the client could look at it again. (This would be in addition to maintaining the current withdraw feature.)

On the other hand, there would inevitably be people who abuse the edit button using it repeatedly to fix minor mistakes or to draw more attention to their proposals. This would quickly frustrate clients and perhaps drive them away from the platform.

It's much less likely that this abuse would happen with the withdraw feature since no one wants to write and re-write the same proposal over and again.

It's smart on Upwork's part to have avoided this feature thus far. Our main concern should be writing effective proposals so that we don't need to withdraw or edit 😉

Thanks for writing this and saving me the trouble!

fahdjan
Community Member

Nia G,You said "For example, what if you edited a proposal that the client already saw?" but I could not understand why there is a button "change terms". I wanna ask , "What if someone changed his terms that the client already saw?", what would be your response?. It is like saying, people are abusing internet so one has to close it down as it's being abused. Does it seem logical?

78bcdb61
Community Member

How about allowing one edit per proposal with an alert message that it's the only free edit allowed?
that way there wouldnt be a way to abuse it.

felycita
Community Member

Followed your instructions - Lost connects (boosted as well), lost ability to apply again. Don't withdraw a proposal, if you wish to have a chance.
P.S. In my case I had a typo in the link attached, that was the main key of winning the project, so I tried to fix that part...

I wish I had seen this first!! I also lost the ability to apply again. I understood losing the connects and boosts and having to pay again and it was worth it, but now I lost the potential business as well.

I followed the first person on here saying to withdraw the proposal and resubmit, I did this, now I can reap. This is a terrible business model. Not allowing freelancers the ability to edit their cover letter and then not even allow to reapply, it makes no logical sense. Plus on top of it all, it cost me! 

_mayukhaditya125
Community Member

Unfortunately, you have no other way to edit your cover letter that you have already submitted to the client. There is only one way (If I am right) here to withdraw the proposal and submit again (if you wish) with "correct" cover letter.

kat303
Community Member

You can't edit a proposal/cover letter that you've already submitted. You will need to withdraw your proposal (cover letter) and then submit the new version. NOTE: It will cost you another 2 - 6 connects to do so. Your best bet, is you don't want to do that, is to learn from that mistake and next time write a much better proposal. 

tahaalian
Community Member

Hello

In my opinion, do not withdraw the cover letter because the client already saw it, unless there is important information to add. Prepare an efficient proposal for the next time.

kirsti_f
Community Member

I think its fine not to have an edit option on the cover letter, however, it would be useful to have a preview option before submitting so that the freelancer can check that link addresses are showing up as green clickable links etc.

This is a good idea, especially since the cover letter has to be typed into a small resizeable textarea, which may occlude some text. 

andresr7
Community Member

Just add the feature, and notify on the edit. Proposal costs us money. Writing proposals it's the worst.

Uggghh this is really the worst, I just withdraw the proposal and  I cannot apply again, because I boosted it ? The best job I've found in months, such a waste of time and so narrow minded.

 

So why did you withdraw it if the jobs was so interesting?

Yep the worst! It's so frustrating. 

Making the client experience worse is not a solution. Just write a proposal you don't want to withdraw later. 

6d599b19
Community Member

Just wrote a cover letter for an offer. There is nothing wrong with the letter itself, but attached files, somehow wasn't sent with it. Now I only left to hope that client will be curious where the heck those files mentioned in the letter. We all know that chances for that are extemely low. 😅
I really do not see any reason to not allow users to edit this stuff like 5 minutes after we sent it or before client will view them.

ebd860f6
Community Member

All content in the proposal should be easily editable at least before the client sees it, and if the change was made after, then upwork should send an alert message to the client and add a tag in the proposal that indicates that it was reviewed, and when the client opens the proposal again it should highlight what changed and when.

 

Like many here say, it cost us money, in many cases upwork makes more money from the job's connects than the job's value itself, plus the 10% from the selected proposal.

 

So they should be more flexible.

joederr
Community Member

How about if you accidentally uploaded the wrong cover letter (I personally now come up with a new procedure for myself about the naming conventions of my files) and if they haven't yet seen the proposal, then why can't it be edited?  I just need to swap out the wrong uploaded cover letter.  Then when they DO view the proposal it locks it down, with no editing.  Even put in Freelancer edited this proposal if needed... If they haven't yet seen it, then WHY can it be edited until they have?

I mean you can edit your rate and that "scheduled increase" ... does anyone actually schedule proposed pay increases?  ... then why can't you edit the cover letter, or what you uploaded as attachments or maybe someone attached the wrong resume.  

I have a feeling ALOT of upwork users will agree with me. Editable until viewed... if not viewed... then we can upload the right files, coverletter or resume.  Seems like Upwork doesn't care about their bread and butter, US who use this platform and get a chunk of our hard work.  But not listen to us.  Any one agree?

Oh and the withdrawl propsoal doesn't even have an option for "Uploaded wrong files" or I wanted to beef up my cover letter or resume or attached a picture of my wife and not my work example.  (I am sure as long as Upwork / Elance has been around, SOMEone had to have done that.  I guess that option leads to proposal removal, but just seems to me that Upwork is greedy with their options.  Withdrawl and lose your boost as another poster said and also connects just because they refuse to let us edited an UNVIEWED proposal.  Oh but you can buy more connects.  People we are looking for jobs, we don't have extra funds for buying more connects.

For me, new to Upwork, this is a lesson learned.  And will reply to the  "Will you tell others about Upwork" ... yeah I will, just with a 1 star review.

So many things are broken in Upwork, are they even trying?  Or just taking our money?

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