Upwork Proposal Strategy - Crafting a Winning Proposal

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are back again and we are continuing our up work journey basically for those are living in the YouTube world. You get to see some of this stuff for the rest of you. We're going to walk our way through it. This episode we're actually get into some of the specifics of putting a proposal together. Now we've been struggling a little bit between the between episodes trying to find like a good fit. So we're just going to sort of going to pick one right now. But something that I figure is at least close enough. And so I can talk through a lot of these pieces. This is something that you're going to see fairly often is the post says full time software developer for a SAS software. Cool. All right. That's a nice start. You give them they've got a link for their website and they say we are a VC backed AI SAS software. Our software Amoro produces marketing content for the pharmaceutical industry by using generative AI. We're looking for a talented software engineer experience in SAS. This person must be really skillful and passionate and delivering excellent work. A lot of that is just yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's the kind of stuff that we're you're going to see that over and over again it's going to be stuff like we want go getters and we want self starters and we want it's just the same kind of stuff. It's like buying the technology stuff and find the details in a case like this. They're practically zero. It's just like hey, so let's go look at the site for those of us. And so we're going to go check that and it goes through up work. And I think it says something like you sure you want to do this. And here we go. So it's a real site. Create free and create instantly generate pharma emailers instantly with a few clicks. So they've got a pretty cool little thing. It sounds like here you know just basically again we're in the AI space and we're going to generate an email out of the blue for people. So okay. This is you know fun stuff. It's in AI. It's something that's automation which is something we like to do. So looking into this they've got their rates are anywhere from 30 to 100 dollars an hour which is like great expert level and willing to pay high rates for the most experienced freelancers which is good because that usually says hey I can go for like the you know the higher end of those hourly rates. This is more than 30 hours a week and it's more than six months. So that's like a win win win for me. The interesting thing here is these things that are sort of like a red flag. So it's going to be you know depending on whether you want to dig into it or not 30 to 100 dollars is their hourly rate. But over here it talks about the client and out of let's see the five jobs posted 63 percent higher rate which is pretty good. Yeah. So it's key eight dollars and seven cents an hour is the average rate. So they're almost four times their normal rate for the minimum. And of course when you're talking you know 15 times your rate basically for the top end. So this may be something they're going to end up really they may be looking for somebody that's really low end but that's OK. We're going to go ahead and do this anyways because we want to do this. So we we've looked at this before preferred qualification there's nothing to this activity. They last looked at this 11 hours ago so they've looked at it today. Basically there's 50 plus proposals which means there's a ton of people interested in They sent some invites out. They're interviewing seven people out of the 50 plus. The high was 100 the low was 10 bucks for the bid. Most of them around 40 bucks. So there's not a lot of detail they give here which allows us to really just sell them. Now we will see here they do have and this sometimes happens that they've got specific questions that are going to be part of the proposal. Do you have experience in SAS or you front end back end or full stack and then when or when can you begin. So you get to see those beforehand. I'll be able to I'll answer those things out. And so we're going to go ahead we're going to apply to this. It's 22 connects. So it's not a small amount but it's one of those is like hey. So now we're bringing we come into the if it's going to come up the submitted proposal. And what it does is you can see sort of a summary again. The expertise they're looking for. You can give your hourly rate and this is going to be at your profile. You can set whatever your standard is but then I could go in and I can set it to whatever I wanted. They are going to show things like hey they've got a 10 percent fee that they're going to. So this is what you're going to receive per hour afterwards. So you need to factor that into your rate. They have some that's new the last three months or so. You can schedule automatic rate increases as part of the proposal. And it's just to say hey if this is long term then I'm going to have like every let's say every six months. I want to do an increase of five percent and then something like that. I always do never. You probably don't want to do that. Depends on how long the project is. But basically for me I'm going to just going to go I mean I figure I'm going to get the project and then if six months from now I want a higher rate then I'm going to have a better position to argue that higher rate anyways. Now the actual proposal piece. Now there's a couple ways you can go around it about it. You're always going to have your cover letter and then you're going to have the questions they require. Now in this case what I'm going to do is I'm going to go flip over because I have done this a bunch. So I have text that I've built over the years. It's sort of like a it's a template that is basically to get started. So I'm going to go take this text and that probably works. Let's see. And I've got several iterations of it. Sometimes I'll like I have different flavors different technologies and things that I'll refer to. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to paste that in. And I'm going to if I can do this because Graham really wants to get my way. And so this is I'll walk through this is sort of my boilerplate and then you can make your own. But basically I start with like hello and thank you for posting this project. Something like a just you know hey hi I'm Rob something like that. Just a nice little introduction your basic cover letter. And then I start with hey I'm like in this case and I'm going to build off of this. I've built several systems and integration similar to yours where multiple existing system solutions are evaluated and then a proposal is created integrate streamlining existing processes. So again a lot of little marketing terms. But what I want to do is I want to look at here. So they are building using generative AI for pharmaceutical energy industry. So I am going to say is OK I've built several systems and solutions. Solutions similar to yours. And let's say where we use a say cutting let's say cutting edge technology to automate. You want to do that yet to automate processes. So or we can actually say cutting edge technology let's say and let's keep it that way. We use cutting edge technology for automation and process improvement. Let's see so here blah blah blah. Let's see we often find we're able to reduce time and cost related to the initial system while also improving quality of reducing area. So there are so let's say related to the initial approach or let's say we'll say initial. We'll keep it that initial approach while we also improve also improving quality and reducing errors. What I am going to do is I've got one here. That is here we go. This is specifically for this one although they are VC. They don't have a lot of information. So what I'm probably going to do is have something that says hey you don't have a lot of information. Now I do have some text I use very often that is basically says hey we found postings like this often end up in like false starts wasted money things of that nature. So I'm probably. And a lot of times I do is I'm going to have text on the lines of saying hey you haven't provided me very much so I'm going to propose to put together some requirements first. In this case they do have software or they do have some pieces they're trying to bring somebody in with SAS. So I want to I want to address that. So I am going to say just in the initial one that I'm going to say that experience includes building multiple SAS solutions including ones in the health care industry. And HIPAA compliance which is the Health Information Portability Personalization and Portability Act I believe. Actually I think it's I always forget is it AAPP. Remember off the top of the hand. Head Mike that's right. I always forget. It's HIPAA. Wait. Make sure I've got the right one because I always forget exactly what it is. Where is it? Where's the top. There it is. So it's HIPAA. Yeah here we go. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. That's why. So you do want in say situations like that to make sure that you have it right because that helps. And so you do want to play around with your wording. This is where like you can use some AI tools like Grammarly and stuff like that that I use to make sure that they are it's grammatically correct. Spelling is correct. And to sort of tweak some of your wording because you want something that's going to be like patchy. You want to look at something that is going to say what are they looking for up here and then what is it that you're going to provide. And so they really didn't give me a whole lot. So what I am going to do is I'm going to sell them on hey I see the process or let's say I'm going to say here I'm going to say I typically approach systems let's say system design and requirements in this fashion. And this is where I've got some stuff that I've sort of worked over in the years where Hey we're going to talk about your business plans and needs. We're going to get some requirements that we're going to craft some requirements. Then we're going to put together a project plan some blueprints some milestones. We're going to put some estimates around that. And then typically I'm going to go into I talk about hey typically I'm going to do status every week and do two weeks sprints. We're going to try to do demos on a regular basis. And then I talk about hey we often build out a clickable demo and then build out the function as we go. So that covers the basics. You want to say you want to address their their their request essentially. And then and with some stuff that's you know patting yourself on the back and things like that but then usually push that to the end. So it's like hey one of the things I do is I've got over 30 years of experience. We now use this blended model. So we have I'm part of it but also have these these mentees and you know more junior level developers which I have played around with a couple of times. Oh I may see I may pick one of those to do that. But basically what I'm going to do is I say yeah and so I have stuff like hey this approach my approach keeps the cost low quality high. And so it's things like that to try to hit some stuff to say hey this is advanced expert level but we're also going to like not blow stuff up. We're not going to have super high rates necessarily or top those even though we might be towards the top end. Now they're going to say do you have experience in SAS. You'll see do you have experience in X. Add some pieces so it'll be like case yes I have designed. Bill maintained. I will say several SAS solutions over the years. You can you're probably better off to get more detailed and some of these. So you want to do something you know other than just like a one liner because they're like although some of these. When can you begin. It's like that's not what you can do. Let's see available. Start. Front end. This will be full stack. So that's again that's a very short question. So here. Let's see these. Mostly been AWS based. With minimal. Solutions with let's say with a few Azure as well. Let's say. That'll be a start so let's go with that for now. So we've we've put together a proposal. I'm not spending a ton of times on these. You can add a GitHub. Let's see. So I can have a GitHub project link if I want to for related project. I don't have a. That I really want to put to them because the stuff I've got which unfortunately we run into regularly is under NDA and stuff like that. But I'm going to upload a project file and what I'm going to do is upload. Somewhere in here I'm going to go to my docs. I've got my marketing stuff. I've got some common stuff. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull one. If I can double click fast enough. There you go. I've got a bunch of different things I use. And this one I'm going to use like just a generic flyer one that I've got which is just a hey this is who we are some of the apps we've done things like that. And so this was just a sort of a laundry list kind of one. If I've got something that's more specific like if I want to do like if this is a Python project a Java project PHP project then I would put those in there. I don't have like a SAS specific one that I've put together. Those are the things that over time it's going to be helpful for you to build those out is what are the things you are most often applying to. And then let's see what are the things you most often and then build some flyers or some things to specifically address that. There are some things you can do that you can highlight out of your profile so you can put like a job that you've done which is very helpful if you've got an upwork job you've already done that's very like that. If you've done something that is and I don't think I have anything that's like a full SAS. Yeah I don't have anything that I really want to put there that's like let's see close and discard highlights or I can add a certificate if I've got some sort of certification. Now we come into the bids. This is where we put everything together. And then we have those connects that we talked about in the last episode is we can put a certain number of connects in to give one of our if we can be one of the top four. So when the customer jumps in they're going to be able to these top four proposals and it's based on who's ever put the most connects in. Now I can for 22 I can just be one of that list. If I want to bump up. Then I'm going to have to have at least one hundred and one to beat out the fourth place. Now if somebody comes in and out bids me that all of those extra connects that I had those will get kicked back to me. So it'll kick it back down to 22 because now you're not in the top four anymore. Now this is where it's actually really beneficial for you to get in early and then you could have like if I was in the top four and I'm not in the top four anymore. I could set it up as I could have 23 connects. So for one extra connect I could maybe be first place or at least in the top four and that's at least going to be there until somebody out bids me. Now that's something where you may be able to get in quick be up at the top. They get to see you and then hey you get to take advantage of it. Otherwise in case like this you're going to see stuff where it's now it's going to cost you quite a bit and you may not get those back. So it's it's like it's one of those how much do you want to spend on your marketing efforts. Now for me I've only got about 120 or 130 connects right now anyways and I don't want to burn them all on this. So I'm going to go ahead and send it for 22 connects. It's going to say hey are you sure. Basically right now I'm going to send it to you. I'm going to say hey are you sure. Basically right now it's going to go ahead and say hey your proposal was submitted. And so now I could go look at it see how it goes and stuff like that. But that is your proposal in a nutshell. Go find your job. Make sure it matches your your criteria. As far as what level are you what is your what is your whether it's a fixed bid or hourly. Are you comfortable with that or you come with the rate you come from with the amount. How much work are they expecting out of you. What are some of the skills and expertise that they're looking for. Those are the things that you're going to want to put together to find out to pick your job. And then when you go into it make sure that you're reading the details. Take a look at any links any attached documents any attached sites that they have. So you've got a feel for what they are looking for as much as possible. Ask some intelligent questions as part of your proposal or propose some things that would answer some of those questions. And then if you've got some some pre-made material that will help you because then you can put together something that looks that is much more professional looking. That looks like you've put some thought into it because you have. It's just you don't have to now do it for every single proposal you do. And instead of spending two hours on a proposal you can spend 15 minutes on a proposal. That's it in a nutshell. And so I've been talking the whole time. Thoughts Michael. So as you're going through this process one of the things that I've run into and I'm curious how you handle this especially when you added the attachment. So some companies I've noticed do not like getting materials for proposals from people that are essentially like self-employed consultants or from a business. They prefer just outright individuals applying for the position. So in your flyer it had your RB consulting. Whereas you know like I would have envisioned QA on some of my material. But I've had to actually remove that when submitting some of these because it gets kicked back because I like oh we don't want a company. When you're really not necessarily a company you're a consulting you basically have licensed yourself as a business. But you're still yourself. You're still consulting. Yeah in that case that's sometimes what I'll do is I'll read between the lines a little bit. Usually what I'm going to want to do is say hey I would rather do it as a company and be a consultant and have other people that work with me and you just know that. But if it is something that's like we just want a person then I'll skip the flyer and instead I'll be like hey I'll include a resume or something like that. And it is something that you may want to do. If you're trying to straddle both sides then maybe what you do is you have flyers that are focused on your company side but then a flyer that's different that basically just flips some of the wording and some of the skills. And just like instead of it's this my company did this it's I did this or something like that and you adjust accordingly. And of course that's going to be something that it's also if you've got what your experience is that's going to limit what you're going to put on each of those obviously. Because you're not going to put the stuff that's that was done by your company or by a group you're not necessarily going to put that in as you individually doing it because you don't want somebody to go back and say well you didn't do that by yourself. You did that with 10 other people or something like that. And then you want to make sure you're as clear as possible what you're doing with those. And also honestly as a as you are putting pros proposals together and as I am I'm going to think of those things if it's something that is individual that they want an individual they want just one person. Sometimes I'm going to walk away from it because I don't want to get into that and sometimes I'm going to say okay I can get into that. I want to I want to start with that and my thought is that I will go in and if they hire me then I'll come back and say hey by the way I have a company behind me and some people that can help and things like that. So it's it's where like every every proposal is unique to some extent. And so you do want to pay attention to it and get a feel for what they want how good a fit you are and then sell them on why you are a good fit. Excellent. One additional topic I would like to kind of touch on within the time frame we have left is so once you have submitted the proposal proposal you get the work and you start working. When can you expect to get payment from working these jobs. That's one thing we haven't really touched on. That's true. And typically it it does vary. There are again with Upwork itself I think they usually if not well if it's fixed bid then what you end up doing is you have milestones you will submit a milestone they will they will okay it they will release the funds for it and it's typically about I think it's about a week to two weeks later. Now if you get far enough along and are high enough level you have the right tags and stuff like that they do pay you a little sooner they will release funds quicker. But typically what you can expect is you will put your hours in at the end of the week and so you Sunday they depending on where your time zone is sometime late Sunday they wrap up the week Monday is for review. Everything goes through that week and then it essentially gets invoiced like at the end of the week like that Friday or Saturday and then it actually those funds are released to you essentially a week later or at least they're released into your account. And then you can transfer those into your Upwork account and then you can transfer those into a bank account so probably the from start to finish. The longest it's probably about I don't maybe two and a half weeks something like that that you can't now there's you can work different pay schedules and stuff like that but typically they're going to they're going to work every week you're going to put your hours in every week they're going to bill it out and you're going to go from there. And so that's that is something you're probably going to want to pay attention to a little bit about the proposal but that's sort of where your your cash flow goes and they and that's what's going to happen is that they will pull the you know if you bill $100 they've got the flat line and they're going to go from there. So if you bill $100 they've got the flat 10% rate so they will you'll see that $100 but when they push it out to you. They put into your account and you'll see that you know 90 went into your account or you know and 10 was pulled out as part of your you know your fees so you can you can trap it track it fairly easily as far as hey here's what you build here's what your fees are and that's I get an email every week I go through that it's like here's all my customers so I can just with one email. And then you know enter into QuickBooks all the information I need to from us. That's your question. Yes, that was really good. So final thoughts for our listeners on the podcast as to tell your pros and cons of working with upward that change has changed all the years. And by that I mean like month in and month out it will change sometimes I'm happier with them than others. It has become probably one of the better. It has become one of the better places to go if you're looking for jobs if you're as far as a side hustle if you're doing consulting work and things like that. They've got a lot of people they've got a lot of jobs out there. The rates are going to be pretty good. They're not as cheap as some of the places they're like you know like fiber can get better but you can have some higher end stuff. But there's you don't want to be in something where everybody's looking for you know minimum wage kind of work because that's not what you're doing. And they're pretty good about some big companies out there. The 10% rate that they now have they just bumped that up this year. It used to be that it was like it started at 20 and then after the first I think thousand dollars you build it went to 10 and then after $10,000 went to 5% or something. Now it's just 10% across the board. That's a pretty nice chunk of money that they're getting especially since you're also paying for the connects and you've got a monthly. There's like there's a lot of money that into them. So there are you know if you can find other ways like word of mouth and stuff like that that's going to be better. But starting out it actually is really nice. It's a it's a pretty nice system. The payment stuff is pretty reliable. They're good about if you've got a customer that's dodgy or sketchy or something's wrong with them. They will pause them and be and they'll let you know I don't do any more work for these people because you may not get paid. So it's a all in all. I think it's a great way to get started. It's a great supplemental kind of thing as well. Like I said I still use it. We've got customers that are completely outside of Upwork. But then there's more than a few that are some that I've had very long relationships with people that I met throughout work and have continued to go and that's that's sort of the good and the bad. I mean that's part of it too is the further you go into it the more that you're the more likely you are to be able to win proposals. You know you've got your ratings and your track record that makes you more attractive to other companies. So your thoughts anything extra there. I have some additional thoughts for the bonus content but I think this is a pretty good point to wrap up the podcast. All right. Well not to tease but to tease everybody that if you want more you're going to have to go check out the you have to go check out the YouTube channel and see our beautiful bugs as well as all that bonus content. That being said we will let you get back to your car ride or whatever it is you happen to be doing while you're listening to this podcast. As always check us out at developer.com you can send us email info at developer.com we're out on the Twitter. Well it's not Twitter anymore. We're out there but you're going to find us quicker if you go to X. We have our Facebook page got a website school.developer.com where we've got a couple of our couple of our different tutorials and classes and stuff like that and develop a new channel on YouTube where we've got this plus a lot of other information. So let's back today go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there and remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.