ULTIMATE Upwork Cover Letter Guide (7 Steps from $1.8M Freelancer)

I can't even believe that I'm giving you this right now. This has earned me over a million dollars on Upwork, and you are going to want to listen to every single second of this video. If you can consistently write hard-hitting proposals, you will make a hundred thousand dollars on Upwork.

It's just a matter of time, but sending great Upwork proposals that get clients, isn't just about a bag of tips and tricks that you need to gain all at once. It also isn't about combining 10,000 different tips and tricks so that you magically win jobs, writing great Upwork proposals is a system. And today I'm gonna break it down for you, and we're gonna write a proposal from scratch together.

Word for word. This video is different and longer, very much on purpose, and it will be best if you give me your attention for the entire video, because not only are we gonna write an entire proposal from scratch and go into why some things work and some things don't, but I've also been hinting at something for a while now on this channel, and it's big, and it's really important to anyone looking to win more clients on Upwork. And it is finally here.

I'll be offering it to you near the end of this video. So I will appreciate it if you stick around until then, so you can understand why I'm so excited about it. Let's talk about what I would do if I wanted to write successful proposals from scratch right now, and this is gonna apply whether you're an experienced freelancer or a total beginner.

So I don't care if you've made a hundred thousand dollars or you're still looking for your first client. This is going to apply to you. Sending proposals on Upwork can be extremely challenging.

I know this from experience, clients might not respond to you. It might take you forever to get an actual client. And that's a big problem for a lot of people.

And if you've ever been through that process, you know that it's extremely difficult. If you wanna be successful on Upwork, then you gotta have the skillset to be able to deliver dynamite proposals consistently over and over again. If you don't know anything about me, then here's a little bit of my Upwork track record.

Show them what, what some of the stuff that I've done. I earned 1. 5 million in my first four years on Upwork.

Upwork put me on a billboard in Times Square. And I'm the highest-earning individual Upwork freelancer in the world. I also have the highest status on Upwork being Expert Vetted.

Now let's dive right in. Proposals are your lifeblood as a successful freelancer. An awesome proposal means that you never need to look for clients.

Clients will just like find you. Writing a bad proposal consistently means that you might never get a single client, and you're just gonna be spinning your wheels endlessly wondering, "why is this not working? " The number one thing that you have to do, you have to break the barrier.

You have to mentally get over your inability to just send something out. I struggled with this so much. When I first got started, I was like, "oh my gosh, how are the clients going to think about me when I send them something that maybe isn't that good or that other freelancers have sent them something that is just fantastic, and mine is just, you know, kind of in the middle, not that great.

" You have to get out of that mental rabbit hole where you're just spending all of your time thinking, "oh my gosh, how is this not going to work? " And actually flip the script around. If you're a beginner on Upwork, then the first thing that you have to do is you just have to send 10 proposals as a starter.

That is your baseline, especially if they're bad, you have to do this because you have to get comfortable with the fact that not everything is going to work out. Even today with as many proposals as I have sent, at least 90%, do not even get a response. So be comfortable with the Nos, understand that that is a fact of life.

But if you are looking for as many nos as you can possibly get, then you have just totally unlocked your ability to just keep sending and sending and sending and play that numbers game that is upward and build yourself up for the win. 73% of people report that they are overthinking things and it stops them from doing what they should actually be doing, which in this case, your job: start sending proposals. If you've never sent a proposal before, then you've gotta send 10, whether they're good, bad, or in between just to get yourself comfortable with "yeah, I'm going to get the no," because the more nos that you get, the more yeses you will have people who are enrolled in the Freelance MVP Profile and Proposals Academy have been extremely successful using an earlier version of this framework.

And the reason why it is so important for me to just get out there and start sending proposals is because for so many people, this stops them. And it's not just because they've never sent a proposal before. It's because they get caught in analysis paralysis.

And I mean, this sincerely: if you were to come to me and say, "Hey, Evan, I'm just starting on Upwork," or even if you've been on Upwork for a little while, "how should I do this? What should I do first? " Whatever you know about it, make some proposal, send 10 of them.

Because at that point, the conversation that we could have would be on a whole other level, just once you've gotten a couple of upward proposals under your belt. Because at that point we can really start talking about what will work for your proposals and what directions you can go with them that will work once we've got that done, then we're gonna go back to the whiteboard for step two. Now that we've broken the barrier and just gotten started.

Now, the first thing that we're going to do is start writing things. And the one thing that you have to understand, that's really important. That just applies all across all things in life in sales and in marketing and, and especially in Upwork proposals is personalization.

72% of clients have said that they will only engage with personalized marketing. So that means number one, do not copy-paste. You're not allowed to do that.

If you wanna be successful, then yes, you do have to personalize things. But guess what? It's going to be massively to your benefit because you're just going to win more and more jobs and realize, "Hey, this works, I'm gonna do more of it.

" I'm gonna do it as much as I possibly can. Step two is personalize your hook and twist. Now they're two different pieces, but they operate together in the first line of your proposal.

You need to hook them in. You need to get them interested in potentially engaging with you. I found that one of the easiest ways to hook in an Upwork client is just by personalizing your approach toward them showing that you understand their issues, and really not just at the surface level of, "I need this done.

" It's you understand why they need it done and what they're trying to achieve. So it's not just enough to show that you can get them interested, show that you understand their frustrations. That's where the twist comes in.

And it's incredibly important because we're going beyond just that, "Hey, I saw that you needed a graphic designer" and turning it into something more like, "I know that you need this because X, Y, Z. " If we're talking about an example of a graphic designer, then what we need to show is not just, Hey, I saw you that you needed a graphic designer and that's something that I can do. That's not interesting.

An effective hook is gonna get them interested. A twist is going to keep them there because if you introduce with an effective hook and get them to open up your proposal, but then twist the knife a little bit and show that you not only understand their frustrations, but how serious they are and what they're trying to achieve, as in particular, a business owner, then you can really connect with what a person wants and show them that you, beyond others, understand why they're trying to do it and what they're trying to accomplish. And when you can do that effectively, you are going to put yourself head-and-shoulders above so many of the other people on Upwork that are just trying things.

Here's where we start writing our proposal. Let's say you're a graphic designer and you found a job that looks like a pretty good fit before I write anything. The first thing that I'm gonna do is check the client's feedback history and see if their first name is there.

I want to use it because it shows them that right off the bat, I've personalized this cover letter in this case, the client's name is John. So we're gonna start with, "Hey John. " And while I'm checking the feedback history, I'm also looking to see either there or in the description.

If the name of John's business is there. So I can Google it and find out what they do because industry experience - and this is so weird 0 industry experience can be super powerful in your cover letters, which we'll get into in a minute, but for creating a powerful hook and twisting the knife a little bit, it can be really great too, because here's what you've gotta do aggressively put yourself in your client's shoes. Imagine you are John.

What is frustrating you enough that you need to hire someone to get this job done? Why is it so important to you? And the more that you know about John's business, the more you can put yourself in his shoes.

So in this case, John's running an e-commerce business. So if I'm John, what do I care about? I care about making sales, which is called conversion in this case.

Getting some product images isn't my end goal. My end goal is to use them to make sales. Somebody visits our website, I want them to buy - as much as possible.

And you being you a pro graphic designer, you know, a few things about how design plays into what John wants, great product images are probably gonna convert more customers and help John's business make more money. That's incredibly important, and we'll come back to that in the next step for now to hook and twist, we wanna set the stakes. What happens if this goes wrong?

How bad can it get if they don't solve this problem? You don't want to go all death and despair in your proposal because let's face it. If John gets some OK product images, then it might not stop people from buying entirely.

But the difference between good and great could cost John a million dollars depending on the size of John's business. But now that we've set the hook and twisted the knife a little bit, just enough back to the whiteboard for step three. So once you've got the client interested and you've shown that you understand their frustrations and you understand exactly what it is that's driving this need this decision for them to go and engage somebody like you then now it's time to save the day.

And that's where you come in as kind of, you know, your own superhero in a way of "here I am, and I am a potential good fit for this job. I can do what it is that you need. I can get this job accomplished in a way that saves the day for you, especially when you've got so much at stake here.

" One of the things that's incredibly important about the Save the Day portion of this is you're not trying to oversell yourself. You want to keep this section very short and sweet and make sure you just get straight to the point of what it is that you can do and why you can do it a little bit better. If writing a proposal to a potential Upwork client is like online dating, then most people are putting way too much in there.

Remember, this is not about you. It's about the client and their problems 90%, and you are there as the 10% of "Here is me. Here's what I can do.

And here's how I can potentially help you accomplish what it is that you need done. " Step three is where you come in. You are a guide that can help John accomplish his goals.

And so we're gonna tailor how you talk about yourself to align as closely as we can with John achieving his goals. Before we write it out. Notice how step three, which is about you comes after step two, where we focused on John first.

That's important because one of the secrets to an effective proposal is not focusing on yourself first and putting the client first instead. When talking about yourself, always keep it short and sweet. Something like.

. . Now we have to show John why he should be working with us.

Let's go to the whiteboard. After you've established that you are somebody that can potentially help this person, then we kind of need to give them a reason why. And so that's where the authority portion of this comes in.

This is what is probably going to scare you the most because a lot of people feel awkward. I myself, especially in the beginning, but even still now feel awkward when talking about authority and what it is that I have done and connecting that to how I can potentially help you as a client. It's one of the things that you need to get yourself out of your own mind and put yourself in the client's shoes and start thinking about, "Hey, what am I looking for If I am the one hiring for this job?

It's weird, I know - it's super awkward. I've struggled with this so much myself, but this part is incredibly important because 88% of customers value reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation here, we're going to use bits and pieces of your reviews to demonstrate that, you know what you're doing, you've done this before. Other people have loved you for it.

And that it's been a really successful experience. 87% of customers check online reviews. And if you have any reviews, then you know that some are better and more relevant than others.

And the best ones might not show up on the first page of your profile. Now, if you don't have any reviews, don't worry. We've got you covered.

Stick around because later in the video, I'll tell you what to do here for now. You need to cherry-pick tiny snippets from reviews and cut them down to make it easier for that client to find the best pieces of them. For example, Mike, a former client might have written me a wonderful two paragraph review talking about how excellent it was to work together.

But guess what? People aren't gonna read Mike's whole review! So I'm going to cut out that one tiny snippet and call it out in my proposal so that this person doesn't have to study my entire backstory.

I'm just giving John exactly what it is that he needs. Choose a maximum of three. So for this, we're gonna put.

. . Relevance is incredibly important here.

If I wanna work with John, then I wanna show him the reviews from other eCommerce clients that I've worked with. Let's go to the whiteboard, And we're gonna talk more about that in step five. The best way that you can demonstrate authority is by showcasing some of the results that you've achieved for your clients.

The same thing applies for the work examples that you provide. When you can show the results of what it is that you can deliver to a client, then they're exponentially more likely to work for you with your work examples. You shouldn't just be sending off every single work example that you have available.

It's actually really bad practice to do that because if somebody is trying to hire you for a job that involves web design, but you send them something that is for social media design, then what's the connection between those two things. The client is probably standing there thinking like, Hey, why are you sending me this? This does not make sense.

It's something totally different from the thing that I actually need. Now you can include other examples that are not exactly what the client is looking for, but you have to kind of explain why it is that you have included that and contextualize things so that they can understand why it's relevant. The best thing that you can do in terms of showcasing the results that you deliver: Case studies.

Let's get into that. Here, the first thing that we're gonna do is choose your work examples that best represent the work that this client needs you to do and link them with maybe a little bit of explanation. If you have a work example, that's maybe a little bit outside of that area, let's say it's like not e-commerce, but it's really awesome, then you can include it, but make a note saying that it's like a little bit of a different style, but it's still relevant example.

This is more YouTube-focused, but it doubled conversion. So for this part, we're gonna put. .

. This part is so important. And I wanna talk about this a little bit more as you do more and more jobs on Upwork, the best thing you can do is check in on clients and see how the work that you did is helping them.

It's a simple step of following up in a couple months after working together, for example, message them saying. . .

The best thing you can do as you grow is have those tangible results. And in most niches, you'll only know what those results are by following up with clients. If you're earlier on in your journey, then you're not gonna have this results data.

But that doesn't mean that you get a pass on giving work examples, but we'll talk more about that in a bit. Not everyone wants to open up links and some people are weird about downloading attachments. So the easiest thing for you to do is make it easy for potential clients by linking AND attaching your work examples.

Do both. Then they can just choose what they want to do by the way, if you like this video and want me to make more, just like it, then comment. This is awesome down below.

Now, let's go back to the whiteboard because here's the thing about Upwork clients. Here's a stat that we get from Upwork itself. There are 770,000 total clients on Upwork versus about 162,000 core clients, which means clients aren't experts.

They are not on the platform every single day. Most clients have under $5,000 worth of total spend, which means you need to help them out a little bit in terms of telling them what to do next, a simple "let's work together" isn't going to do it. If I'm a professional Upwork client, then I don't know what the heck you're talking about, of what I'm supposed to do.

Which button am I supposed to click? So it is your job to help that client and tell them, okay, "Here's what's going to happen next. Here's what I need you to do.

Here's how we move forward. " I need to reiterate: Upwork clients are not experts. They want to pay you to make this easy for them.

Otherwise, why would they be paying you? You need to guide them along the way, show them what they need to do to take that next step with you. Bear in mind that personalized calls to action convert 202% better than non-personalized CTAs.

So if possible, try to find a way to use their name again in your CTA. So here we're gonna write. .

. But it's not over quite yet just because you gave them a great call to action and next steps you're not done yet. If you stopped here, then you'd be like everyone else who misses their biggest opportunity with what we're gonna talk about.

Next. Speaking of great calls to action. YouTube's been glitching out lately where it unsubscribed a bunch of people to this channel.

So check your subscribe button right now. If it's red, then you need to press subscribe again, then press the bell and notifications and change it to all. Let's get into step seven over the whiteboard.

This is the craziest stat that I ever learned. And I'm so happy to talk about it. 79% of people read the PS.

First, if you send them a message, 79% of people will read the PS first and they won't even read the core of the message. Like they'll go straight to the end and see what it says there. So that is so incredibly important for you to understand that the first thing that somebody's gonna check out when you send them a proposal is going to be the end of it, actually.

So in the end of your proposal, it is a huge opportunity for you to make sure that you hammer it home and reinforce that you have personalized this message for them. You are interested and you are engaged and you have so many different things that you can build in, in this PS. Things like creating urgency, creating a secondary call to action, reinforcing your motivation, giving a little something extra and adding some more personalized thought.

That is gonna mean that the client will pay more attention to this and realize, "wow, this is actually something that this person has really thought about," especially if that's the first thing that they are going to look at. It's great. It is the most wonderful opportunity.

It's the most underutilized opportunity and you have to use it to hammer it home that you want this job. Here's how to do that. You can use the PS to create urgency, provide a secondary call to action, reinforce your motivation, give a little something extra or add personalized thought.

I like to do multiple of these, but here's a couple of examples creating urgency. Providing a secondary call to action - something else to do, like send me a message, giving a little something extra could sound like. .

. Or adding extra personalized thought can be, be very valuable. For this one, though, we're gonna add.

. . Now you're gonna have questions.

Like what about this in step five or step seven? Here's the thing I made a system for you so that you can see what to do every step of the way. Let me show you what this is all about.

Every single video walkthrough has actionable steps of what you should do at each phase. So that means that we're not just giving you a ton of awesome proposal frameworks and saying, see you later, because that's just one piece of the puzzle. We go into tons of depth on how to find the best jobs, how to create a great profile that will bring clients to you, show you how to manage your clients, get those five-star ratings and ultimately get paid.

And when you come out, the other end, you have all of the skills and frameworks that you need to go and consistently get more work and raise your freelance rates. The results have been absolutely tremendous, but there's no guarantee because obviously I can't guarantee anything, just like building a system, just like starting freelancing. There's built-in risk and some people will fail, but I've gone through every single step and done my best to talk through every single pitfall so that you know where all the traps are and can avoid the things that will make most people fail and focus on the most valuable things that will help you succeed and make it only a matter of time before you hit the $10K, $20K, $50K, or even $100K dollars mark.

Like some of the people in our course have, because here's how I see it. As you know, I've spent over five years building my Lance career and I've helped thousands of freelancers go and achieve success and achieve their goals. And it's really a function of three things, time, strategy and skillsets.

So this is important to understand because you can be sending proposals just forever. You can use all the time in the world, but if you don't have the skillsets or the strategies that you need, then all the time in the world, isn't going to help you. If you have a bunch of skills, but you don't put any time into things, then all of that skill is not going to help you at all.

If you're never reaching out to people. Same thing with strategy, which is a really critical piece of this. You can have great skills, put a ton of time into things, but if you take the wrong strategies, then it's just not going to work.

That is what all of this is for it's so that you can have the strategies that will allow you to consistently be able to build so many of these different things on your own. When you have all three of these things, you are going to be a force to be reckoned with. And when we're talking about skill sets, we're not just talking about the hard skills.

Yes, you want to be outstanding at your job, but you need the skills to be able to write proposals and consistently win jobs and do those jobs all the way through in order to be consistently successful on Upwork. The strategy portion of this is the most overlooked. It is the most missed.

And this is tough for a lot of people because there's no structure on YouTube. It's mostly just a bag of tips and tricks. And there's a reason why I didn't want to call this video tips and tricks.

It's because there is a structure, there is a sequence that you need to follow if you want to be consistently successful. So I told you that if you don't have any reviews already, then we've got you covered. If you're a beginner and you just don't have any reviews, then that's fine.

For your first proposals, you just wouldn't include that part, but you do need to be working on it. And there are things that you can do, like for example, using Upwork's testimonials feature. But there's probably a lot more questions you have, like "what do I do if I don't like doing zoom meetings?

What about if I don't know what to do for my work examples? Or what's a good example for the niche that I'm in or which clients should I even be targeting? " These are all things that not only we cover in the system, but on top of that, we answer specific questions in the Q&A inside the program.

And the way I see it, there are two approaches and the first is piecing it together on your own. Here's what that looks like, watching all the YouTube videos on your own, trying to white-knuckle it alone and trying to pull together those 10,000 tips or tricks and hope that maybe they'll win you a client or two. Yes, maybe it'll work, but it might take you years.

And for most people they just don't have that kind of time to just sit around and wait for a client to respond and hope for the best. But for some people that can work. And if that's what you decide to do, then that's totally fine with me.

But my main issue with that is the fact that YouTube shows you things that are presented out of order, or that might not be relevant for you. And you might end up doing a bunch of things, right, but because of how YouTube works, you've ended up focusing on the wrong things and it ends up taking you much longer to actually be successful and reach your goals. And that takes me to the second approach, which I'm obviously biased towards because it's made me as of right now over $1.

8 million on Upwork. And I think it is far superior because I see freelancers that don't use it. And I see those that do, and they are a lot more successful than those that don't.

And that is: let me show you. I've taken not only my tens of thousands of hours, I've spent working on Upwork, but also collaborated with other high earning and $1 million+ freelancers. And if there's one thing that I think differently about Upwork it's that I believe that you can make Upwork work for you.

I believe that you are in control and that the only one responsible for your success is you. I believe that Upwork is predictable. And I believe that with the right strategies, skill sets, time and mindset, anyone can be successful in earning not just a full time income, but far above and beyond, no matter where you are in the world, even if you're in the middle of nowhere and you have no other options for work, you can do it.

After all, that was me when I started and I did it. If you're watching at this point, then you're probably saying perhaps there is something that Evan needs to address here. And that is oftentimes I'll have people come to me and say, "Hey, Evan, this looks awesome, but I just don't have money for it right now.

" And what often follows is something to the effect of, "As soon as I make enough money from freelancing, then I'll do it. " The biggest problem: In most cases, that is the hardest thing because you're working through the hardest stuff in the beginning and you're working through it alone. I don't want you to put yourself in a bad position, but in most cases, there are more resources than we realize that are available to us.

And if there's any way for you to scrape it together sooner, then it would save you time and pay itself off faster for you. In fact, if all this program did was get you to the success that you're looking for two months sooner, then it would've entirely paid for itself. And I'm also finding that people make it to the success that they're looking for much sooner than that.

In fact, if you want some stories of people who have been successful with it, it's on freelancemvp. com. Go look at it right now and we'll see you there.

So first off, congratulations for making it all the way to this part of the video. I'm actually gonna remove this part of the video because I wanted to do something special for the people who watched this in the first couple of weeks. I wanna say thank you from the bottom of my heart for keeping me going with all of your relentless positivity and motivation.

Every single time I see your supportive comments - and I do see them - it literally lights up my day. And I wanna say, thank you for that. Every time you share my videos on your socials, I get just so energized to do more.

And you might have seen it in the comments on the other videos, but all the time people are saying how much this has helped them. And it makes me so happy to help share what I've learned so that more people all over the world can do better and help their families. Now you might not know everything about my backstory, but when I started on Upwork, I was literally flat broke.

I had $10. 21 in my bank account and I had no other options. And I know that other people might be in similar situations, and it makes me so incredibly happy when I hear things like "I can finally support my family" and "I'm on the path to financial freedom.

" It's incredible. It is like actual magic and I want that impact to spread. So we're gonna put a discount code on screen for you right now.

It's my way of saying thanks to you and that I want you to succeed in the same way that you are helping me succeed. Bear in mind, like this is gonna go away pretty quickly, because we're gonna just edit this portion of the video out, but I want you to do two things: First I want you to just drop a like and leave a comment on the video with #Iwashere. So when we look back on this, I know who's an OG member of the Freelance Fam and I want send you all the love.

And the second thing is go and use that discount code. Get into the course because now is the time. I'll see you in there.

Peace.