I apologize for bothering y'all yet again, but I'm in need of advice. Again. I'm doing my best to write winning proposals: I'm following the guidelines in the Upwork articles that people have repeatedly directed and redirected me to, I've searched outside help from the likes of John Morris and others for their words of wisdom, and one of the biggest pieces of advice I've seen from some of these gurus is that I should help differentiate myself by pairing a winning proposal with an above-budget bidding price. I've tried implementing that piece of advice for the past month, and I've gotten absolutely nowhere. No matter how detailed and thorough and positive my proposal is, especially if it's the highest bidding proposal, it gets overlooked for one that is either on-par or beneath the client's budget, not even considered for interview, let alone selection for the job.
I have to ask, am I simply not at the point where this would work? I only have one job under my belt in the two months I've been here, and am only getting by financially with the scant basic editing I'm doing to help out a family member who's a professor - I desperately need more money than that, but I'm stuck at the point of being a measly minnow in a sea of fish that are more suited to and more savvy with this environment than I am. Please don't take me for being some entitled millennial - I honestly am split on the issue. On the one hand, I don't believe I have any right to earn money above budget most of the time. I'm new, I'm unproven, I might stay unproven because I'm too much of a risk with no work experience. But on the other hand, despite my misgivings...I need money to live, just like everyone else. I know freelancing is a business, and I'm doing my damnedest to treat it as such, and I also know that I have no right to be complaining about this - I'm not the first and I won't be the last to go through these first few months of no work, and I'm certainly not searching for sympathy, I know I won't find it here. But at the end of the day...I have to find a way to make this work. Freelancing isn't just an aspiration for me, it's literally the only way I can earn money. Thanks to stupid life decisions, working a regular 9-5 while trying to do this on the side is an option I simply don't have.
So, I have to ask... At what point do I have a right to charge above budget? Is there a way that I can reliably charge above budget and crash past the obviously prevalent mindset of most clients to go with someone at-or-below budget? Am I currently at the point where I have to participate in the race to the bottom (I know a lot of people say that the risk of hiring someone cheap should be stressed, but I'm convinced most clients here don't care, and I don't find my skills competitive enough to make the argument directly work in my favor)? If I have to, how critical is it to have a killer profile compared to writing killer proposals? (I can't afford the premium prices gurus require for their advice in crafting profiles, and I've already read through the Upwork guidelines in profile crafting).
...Or am I just overthinking this and should just sit back and continue to bear this burden like every other newbie here has to?...
