A typical Freelancer Routine:
- Bid on a project.
- Get the project.
- Deliver the project.
- Go back to #1.
If you are bidding on jobs day after day, week after week, and month after month, then you are doing it wrong. You will tire yourself out eventually by becoming part of the rat race.
What you should be looking for are a few long-term, regular clients who give you regular work, so you never have to bid again.
There are three ways to do this. I am explaining my favorite way first, which is what I did when I started freelancing:
- Find small projects which you can do in an hour or two.
- Look at the client profile. Make sure it’s the client with no previous projects on Upwork.
- Write a stunning proposal and offer some value to the client to prove to him that you are the right person for the job. Example below.
- Deliver the project with high-quality work.
Most people look at the client’s profile, and if the client has no feedback or payment history, they don’t bid on the project. I did the exact opposite because their job posts would have less competition or proposals, and there would be a high chance for me to land the job. And I knew that if I provided quality work, then they would not go to any other freelancer in the future if they had any new task.
That’s how I turned a $6 client into a $60k client, and it’s still going. I am posting that job post and the proposal below.
Job Description
Ajax has stopped working on <link>. Looking for someone to fix.
My Proposal
Hi,
I looked at the website, and it seems that some scripts are conflicting with each other. It should be fixed in an hour or two ($6-$12). I’ve been working on PHP and WordPress since last 5+ years. I am also a Zend Certified PHP Professional (the top php certification available in the market).
I am available via email/skype/phone. Let me know if you want to proceed further.
Best Regards,
Faraz
Thought Process behind the Proposal
I looked at the website and found multiple jQuery files loading.
Post Proposal
The client immediately awarded me the job after the proposal and asked me to fix another issue, then another issue, and then another issue. Forward to nine years, and it is still going.
The above wasn’t a fluke. I repeated the same for another project, and that turned out to be a $100k client. 75% of the clients are still working with me since the last nine years.
