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smkiger
Community Member

Question: Client Proposal Limits?

Is there a limit to how many proposals a client may receive on a single job?

 

If not I think there should be. Clients should have to pay more to increase limit on number of proposals received so they are not inundated with 50-100 proposals per job taking up ridiculous amount of time for clients to read proposals, consider, interview 50-100 people per job. 

 

Do clients need to choose from 50 or more qualified freelancers, especially on simple jobs like creating a ten page website? 

 

Imagine how much more quickly clients could cycle through hiring and get more freelancers working if they are not bogged down with hundreds of proposals per day.

 

I don't even bother to submit a proposal to clients that have 20+ proposals. 

 

I wonder what the client's perspective is when they get 40+ proposals. Like we are a bunch of starving freelancers? Could this lower the client's impression of freelancers?

 

Could this effect our average hourly rate expectations? Drive our rates down?

 

 

 

ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Stick to your rates. Those clients looking to low-ball aren't the clients you want anyway. 

 

Be picky about the jobs you apply for. Read descriptions, feedback, review hire rate (I don't submit to jobs where hire rate is < 50%), hourly prices and fixed-prices they have paid in the past for similar work. 

 

Write proposals that really stand out. Call out specifics from the job post. Address the "why you". The fact that you're a native English speaker and writer should give you an edge over others in your field. 

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7
robin_hyman
Community Member

No, there is not. That is why connects were introduced. 

 

If you see 50-100 proposals submitted, move on. 

 

If you see >20 proposals submitted I usually move on. 

 

There are other fish in the sea. 

Agreed but connects are so cheap we can afford to overwhelm clients with proposals.

 

I wonder if there needs to be something on the client end to keep the client from being overwhelmed with proposals. This promotes clients using a large number of proposals on a job to negotiate for much lower hourly or fixed rates. The average rates, budgets for web design are already so low it's hard to take some of the jobs and expect to profit.

 

I have about 20 hours in two days invested in submitting about 20 proposals, reading through about 80 jobs and not one interview or hire. So I am wondering if hiring is much slower because clients are overwhelmed with proposals.

 

Stick to your rates. Those clients looking to low-ball aren't the clients you want anyway. 

 

Be picky about the jobs you apply for. Read descriptions, feedback, review hire rate (I don't submit to jobs where hire rate is < 50%), hourly prices and fixed-prices they have paid in the past for similar work. 

 

Write proposals that really stand out. Call out specifics from the job post. Address the "why you". The fact that you're a native English speaker and writer should give you an edge over others in your field. 

I took another community member's advice and setup my portfolio and projects display. I have some specialized experience with internet radio broadcasting, audio editing etc as well as website development. 

We are seeing 300-400 proposals to jobs in our category? It's making it impossible to compete.

f1490991
Community Member

I've used upwork for almost a year now as a client and I can definitely say that I agree with the idea of limiting the number of proposals I receive for my job posts. If limiting isn't an option, I should be able to at least lock the job from receiving anymore proposals. There's a lot of very well qualified applicants and deciding who to hire can be very challenging, especially for cases when I would need just 1 candidate to hire.

nipuntyagi
Community Member

Yes! There should be an upper limit of Proposal on a job post. It will not only help the Clients but also the Freelancers.

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