Drew,
There a few things you can do to reduce your chance of wasting your time and connects. These are the ones I think apply to the types of jobs I apply to:
1) Don’t bid on projects posted by the client more than a few days earlier. If you can search every day for the specific types of jobs you’re looking for, do it until you're so busy you don’t have time for it, then just do searches as often as you can. (Clients have no obligation or incentive to close their Upwork ads even after they hire a freelancer and they have no intention of hiring a second freelancer.)
2) Don’t bid on projects where there are already 20 or more proposals. The competition will be fierce and unless you think your bid will be at the low end of the range of bids received by the client for that project, your chances of you sending the winning bid are low. (But always consider bidding on projects where you think you are the ideal freelancer, regardless whether you expect to be the lowest cost bidder. Some clients know they will get the quality of work they are willing to pay for.)
3) Don’t bid on projects that mention something like, “There is a lot more future work for the right freelancer.” This means the clients wants to lowball you on your rate for this job. And there is unlikely to be any future work from this client at a reasonable rate of pay, if at all.
4) Don’t bid on projects for clients whose historical pay rate is well below the range acceptable to you. If a client has paid freelancers an average of $4.00 on previous projects and you are looking for projects that pay $20/hour or more, it is unlikely the client will find your proposal the most attractive one (s)he receives. (It appears Upwork recently changed the form clients use to submit hourly jobs, so maybe the range you now see on such projects is more indicative of whether the client will look at your proposal.)
5) It can be smart for a new Upwork freelancer to submit proposals at pay rates lower than the range they want to earn over the long term, but don’t bid too low. Quality clients will ignore very low bids because they have low expectations of the quality of the work they’ll be paying for.
6) Don’t avoid submitting bids on fixed price projects if you prefer hourly projects, or vice versa. It is not unusual for a client to be primarily looking for the right freelancer and willing to revise the project type for that freelancer.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
