Tested two proposal templates side by side, the simple one won by a mile

I spent last month running an experiment on Upwork. Sent out 10 proposals using my old fancy template with a portfolio link and all that, then 10 proposals using just a straight 4 sentence intro that got right to the point. The simple ones got replies from 6 out of 10 people, the fancy ones only got 2 bites. Made me wonder if clients just skim past all the extra stuff anyway.

3 comments

3 Comments

milalewis9d ago

A buddy of mine tried the same thing on Fiverr. He went from these long essays about his process to just saying "Hey, I can do that, here's a sample" and his response rate doubled in a week.

the_john9d agoTop Commenter

Ha, I gotta push back on this a bit. I tried the short and sweet approach for like three months on Upwork and got crickets. Went back to writing decent proposals with a few lines about their actual project and stats from past work, and my reply rate shot up. Maybe it depends on the field or the client, but I swear some people just want to see you actually read their job post.

brooke_murray9d ago

I started doing the same thing on Upwork about six months ago. Used to write these huge proposals with all my portfolio links and a full breakdown of how I'd handle the project. Got maybe one reply out of every twenty. Then I switched to a three sentence pitch like "I can do this, here's a screenshot of something similar, let me know if you want to chat." My reply rate went from 5% to almost 30% in a month. @milalewis your buddy is totally right, less is way more with freelancing pitches.