Writing a cover letter

[#1]

Hi,

I have been reading the articles and other posts in the community discussion. It's all great information. I have a pretty good idea of how to write one, but one of the issues I am having is that many of the job descriptions are not very detailed and I'm finding it difficult to write something specific for that posting when there isn't much to go on. 

Also, when it comes to my price I'm not sure what others on Upwork charge so I don't know if I'm in line with the competition. How do others usually do this?

I appreciate any advice anyone can offer.

Best,

Tina

[#2]

Hi Tina

I have read your question carefully. I suggest you get experience with the proposal price.  Try to send proposal at low- mid price initially. Try to get the jobs which are short and low budget initially. Once you get the good feedback then you can send proposals to more budget job. But it's good if you focus on small budget jobs initially. 

As for your proposal is concerned to write as many details as necessary according to the given job description.

You can write your past relevant experience, your skills related to that job and any previous projects related to that job.

I hope this is the breif answer to your question.

Thanks

[#3]

Hello Tina,

I'll start with something you didn't ask hoping that it helps. Your title is researcher and material developer while your experience is tax and finance. I think you should focus on tax and finance and change your title accordingly.

That being said if you get a paid membership to UpWork you can see the lowest/highest bids and the average on every job post, which is useless most of the time IMO. People just bid very low prices to get jobs and their target clients are not the same as yours. If I want someone to work on my taxes I wouldn't want somebody who gets $5 or $25 per hour. I'd want to hire a professional. Therefore I think you should raise your hourly price to at least $75 for tax and finance related jobs.

On the other hand if you want to do research you should adjust your bio accordingly. If I were you I wouldn't even mention typing/transcribing experience. If you want to do that kind of work then your hourly price is too high and your title, etc don't correspond with that.

You should focus on something and stick with that everywhere. Title, profile, experience and the jobs you apply to. About making applications your best resource is this forum. The official documents have a good overall content but they are not enough and they don't share first hand experience. If you need clarification don't hesitate to ask but all the answers can be found in the forums.