When you are trying to attract freelancers to submit proposals for your job posting, you need to understand they have 2 limited resources:
- Time
- Connects
Time speaks for itself. Connects are a limited form of currency freelancers need to spend every time they submit a proposal. Upwork uses this system for two reasons. Firstly, to prevent freelancers from spamming every job posting, secondly to make money. Freelancers only get a limited amount of Connects for free every month. If they run out, they need to buy extra ones.
Respecting these limitations will get you more proposals. The higher-level your job posting is, the more important time becomes and the more trivial the Connects cost is for your target freelancer.
We will mainly be focusing on the Connects part here, which is the main concern for entry-level freelancers. There are some tips for higher-level jobs listed here as well, however.
Planning and Patience
Patience and planning will vastly increase the amount of proposals you get with the below tips. If you are posting a job offer for a rush job you still need finished today, you will get less proposals and they’ll be of lower quality. We’ll discuss why this is later on.
Now that we have the general advice out of the way, let’s start with the actual practical tips.
Keep Your Number of Open Proposals as Low as Possible
As you can see on the screenshot above, my Job Posting currently has between 6 and 10 proposals. But that doesn’t mean I only had less than 10 freelancers apply. In fact, I had well over 200 applications. This is for a general “anyone” can do it job, so getting that number will be tricky, but this trick still applies regardless. So what’s the secret?
Well, as you can see by pressing the question mark, it doesn’t count archived proposals. So, if you stay on top of your Job Posting and archive all unqualified candidates as they come in, you can keep this number very low. A lower number of applications will show potential new candidates that their application has a good shot and will make them more likely to apply, so this is crucial.
Ethical vs. Less Ethical Archiving
Candidates cannot see when you archive their proposal. In addition, you can always change your mind later and unarchive proposals. That means you can archive all proposals and keep a manual list of candidates you consider.
You could even archive all incoming proposals and unarchive them a few days later to go through them. I would consider that somewhat unethical, though, and prefer just archiving candidates I no longer consider for the job instead.
Don’t Oversell Your Job
Of course you want to come over as an attractive Client, but don’t go overboard on this. Don’t put a project duration of over 6 months with 30/hours unless you are 100% sure that will be what the job entails. Instead, be more inclined to undersell your job slightly.
The reason for this suggestion is that the more attractive your job looks in terms of these metrics, the more Connects it costs to submit a proposal.
There is no magic formula to determine how many Connects a freelancer will need to spend to apply. Each application is considered by an Upwork employee before launch (this is also why you will not get applications right away). They then determine the Connect costs for proposals.
This leaves the Connect cost a bit up to chance, but metrics such as amount of work and project duration are definitely metrics they take into account.
Place Your Job Posting When You Have Time To Review Proposals
This ties in to the previous tip of keeping the open Proposal count as low as possible. If you post your job offer right before you head off to bed, you will not be able to review incoming proposals in a timely matter.
The best time to place a Job Post is actually near the beginning of your day. As we discussed above, it will take a while before your Job Post is visible to freelancers. You still want to be available a good amount of hours after that, so posting at the start of your day is ideal. Don’t hesitate to draft your Job Post the evening before but to wait until the morning to actually post it. As with many of the tips here, patience is key.
If you are looking for Freelancers who are available at specific times, try to post a few hours before these times as well. That way, your Job Post will become visible around the time you want the work done. A lot of freelancers submit their proposals during the times of the day/week when they are the most available.
Make Sure Your Payment Method Is Verified
Freelancers have some protection for hourly projects, less so for fixed prices. Still, that level of protection is not a guarantee they will not get scammed. Freelancers can see on your profile if your payment method is verified or not.
If you’re a new Upwork Client, make sure to go through the steps to verify your payment method before you post a project. Yes, it will take a while longer before you can start working with your freelancer(s) but this does wonders for getting more proposals.
Give Relevant Information in Your Job Post
You know exactly what you’re looking for. Make sure any potential applicants do, too. Avoid “testing the waters”. Say exactly what you expect from freelancers so they know if their skills are a good match for yours or not. This not only attracts better proposals, it also lets a freelancer know this job is worth their Connects.
Other Information Freelancers See Before Submitting Proposals
Ranked (by my own subjective opinion) from most to least relevant:
- Feedback score from freelancers of completed projects (if available). If things are not working out with a freelancer, consider just letting them go with a “the project has run its course” instead of creating conflict. Freelancers do not like working with difficult clients. They fear experiencing payment issues and getting bad reviews themselves.
- If you are already interviewing candidates from current proposals. Resist messaging candidates until you are no longer expecting additional proposals.
How long ago you viewed the Job Posting. This shows freelancers that you are still considering additional candidates. If you keep archiving unqualified candidates, this should be a low amount of time. - Your hire rate. Try to avoid placing job postings you’re not serious about or “just to feel the water”.
- How many invites to send a proposal you sent out for this job. These in itself are not a huge deal to freelancers because most will not reply anyway and it shows you are actively searching. They easily turn into interviews, though, which does concern potential candidates. For this reason I suggest only sending out invitations after a few days, but the benefit is marginal at best.
- Your total spend and average hourly pay. You can’t change these variables easy, so don’t worry too much about them.
- Where you are located, how many employees you have and which industry you are active in. These are fairly irrelevant to most freelancers.
How You Can See This Information for Yourself
When you click through to your Job Posting, it will load open proposals or hires by default. There is, however, also a “View Job Post” tab hidden a bit out of view. Clicking that will show you what the freelancer sees, more or less. To get the exact view freelancers see, you would need to create a freelancer account yourself but it gets pretty close.
A Lot of Qualitative Proposals Show Up Late
If you can afford to leave your Job Posting open for a few days, you may be surprised by later proposals. Although after the first 48 hours, you’ll maybe only get 10% more proposals tops, those 10% often have 50% of the candidates I’ll ultimately consider.
The reason for this is that right after your Job Posting makes it online, you’ll attract freelancers applying to just about anything. After that your Job Posting will move past the first few pages, which means those freelancers will no longer see it. Freelancers sending proposals after this hand-selected your job to apply to, meaning they are often highly qualified for it.
Quality Over Quantity?
As I discussed, you can get well over 200 proposals for on Upwork when following this tips, assuming the job is rather general (doesn’t require specialized skills). Even when you’re looking for something more specific, like a translator, you will likely still get dozens of proposals following this article.
But how good are they, in general? Well, there are definitely some diamonds in the rough. If you do manage to get a large amount of proposals and have the time to weed them out, it’s very likely you’ll find a solid match. But there is also a lot of junk to plow through.
Upwork Alternative
If you are looking for a more vetted platform, you may want to consider Fiverr (affiliate link) instead. While you can search for freelancers on both platform, Fiverr’s search system is a lot more freelancer-focused than job-focused. On Upwork it is hard to find matching profiles and the freelancers behind them are often inactive or fully booked.
On Fiverr, thanks to the feedback left by other Clients, you have a much better idea of what you’re getting into with a certain freelancer than on Upwork. Bigger clients can also consider Fiverr Pro (affiliate link), where Fiverr vets freelancers itself.
This article isn’t a disguised sales pitch for Fiverr, though. Clients willing to put in the work will almost definitely find what they are looking for on Upwork. For longer Client-freelancer relationships, I prefer it over Fiverr. On Fiverr it is, however, easier to find freelancers with specific skills.