How To Write A Winning Upwork Proposal (with examples)

Nick Nolan
8 min readFeb 18, 2024
Image via Canva | @gettysignature

I’ve been seeing a ton of negative posts on the r/upwork Reddit thread lately. Almost every post I see is full of people complaining about not getting hired.

One person shared this image, asking “Is Upwork dead?”

Image via Reddit

They sent 357 proposals and weren’t hired for any of them. A bigger problem is that they only got 15 interviews. That’s a 4% success rate. They claimed a Top-rated freelancer with 100% job success and 200k+ earnings. That should make it a bit easier to get noticed.

That sucks. And I know many people have had similar experiences. Another post today said, “I landed my first gig after 5 months!”

Upwork is competitive. There are 100s of freelancers fighting for each gig.

It’s become even more difficult in the past 12 months. Budgets shrunk and more people are trying to make more money on the side.

Despite the challenges, I’m a big fan of Upwork.

There are still great opportunities available, and it’s still one of the best places for new freelancers to find work. When I was writing this article, I found plenty of decent gigs…

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Nick Nolan
Nick Nolan

Written by Nick Nolan

Freelance marketing consultant | Writing about Copywriting, SEO, and Social Media

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