wrote:
My skills are the among the most in-demand skills in the industry. Again, please stop saying that's the cause of proposals not be VIEWED, since it's impossible for the person hiring to know someone's skills without first viewing the propsal.
It's not impossible. There's some confusion between proposals being "viewed" vs. being opened (which isn't helped by the terminology used by Upwork in the stats section of our profiles). A client can look at the list of proposals and see your name, photo, profile title, earnings, JSS, badges, skills, and - perhaps most importantly - the first two lines of your proposal. They then have to click to open/see the rest of your proposal, and it's only when they do this that your proposal is counted as "viewed".
Most of the time - especially when a client gets a long list of proposals - it's not necessary to click/open each one, because they can rule out most of the people on the list just from glancing at the basic information that they're given. Some clients will eliminate candidates based on price, or insufficient Upwork experience, or a bad JSS, all of which they can easily see but won't count as being "viewed" in your stats. For example, when I post a project, I automatically eliminate anyone who addresses me as "Dear Sir" or starts their proposal with something time-wasting like, "I hope this message finds you well, my name is so-and-so and I live in blah blah." If the first two lines don't grab my attention, I don't read any further, and you'll find that most other clients do the same. Therefore, it's important to make those first two lines count, generally by getting straight to the point and telling clients how you'll solve their problem.
However, even if you write top-notch proposals, most of them won't be viewed - that's just how things are here (and on every other freelancing site), and a relatively small fraction will result in a hire. If you charge high enough rates and/or get long-term clients, you can still make it work, but it isn't easy.
