Six Steps to Writing the Perfect Upwork Cover Letter

To succeed as an Upwork freelancer, a great cover letter isn’t optional. It’s crucial.

The moment a job is posted on Upwork, it becomes visible to thousands of people who do exactly what you do. And unlike your middle school gym class, you aren’t competing against 20 neighbors with similar abilities.

You’re applying to the same projects as skilled  $3/hr Filipino writers, $300/hr startup experts from Silicon Valley, and award winning Forbes contributors.

The only way you can land any of these projects is to set yourself apart. And one of the most effective ways to stand out from the competition is to create a killer Upwork cover letter.

Related content: Maximize your income with this free freelance rate calculator.

How to create an attention-grabbing Upwork cover letter

As an employer sorts through candidates to find the right fit, the first thing she sees is your cover letter. If it impresses her, you have a good chance of winning the contract. However, if the cover letter is poorly constructed or generically copied-and-pasted into the application, she will move on – and your profile won’t get a second glance.

I’ve won over 50 contracts on Upwork during the last couple of years – with many worth thousands of dollars. After a plethora of “trial and errors”, I’ve discovered how to win more clients than I can manage – for both myself and several other writers.

Here’s how I won over 50 Upwork contracts.

If you do quality work, but are still unable to find new clients, the issue probably has to do with your cover letter.

Add these six elements to your Upwork cover letter and watch the interviews roll in.

1. Start by sharing your qualifications

Why are you more qualified for this project than the other twenty applicants?

If the client doesn’t see a reason to keep you around right at the beginning, they will rapidly move on to the next candidate.

So establish yourself as a professional. Do you have a degree? State it here? Have you worked in the industry? Now’s the perfect time to state this.

But keep it short! If this goes on for more than two or three sentences, you’re going to lose it. You can refer to a writing service, where you can not only get help in writing your essay but also get appropriate writing tips for your cover letter. The point isn’t to toot your own horn, but to show why you are the right fit for this position.

Here’s how I state my qualifications for a business blogging project:

Hi, my name is Rob and I have an MBA, experience in financial analytics, and have written content for over 50 highly satisfied clients here on Upwork – as you can see from the “Top Rated” freelancer badge on my profile. 

Although it’s a long and slightly wordy single sentence, it sums up who I am concisely.

Notice how I focus much of the attention on how I can benefit the client. I have business knowledge (MBA and work experience), keep my customers satisfied (beneficial for them), and am one of the Top Rated freelancers on Upwork (which means they will be getting the best).

I also leave a lot out. What you leave out of your cover letter is just as important as what you include. For a business client I don’t mention that I’ve traveled to five continents, am involved in my church, and love sailing the San Francisco Bay. Although I may mention those items for another project.

Ultimately, you want to tell the client why you are qualified for their project, but concisely enough to move on to the rest of your proposal.

2. Make it personal by asking a question

When possible, try to connect with the client – very briefly.

If they include a link to their website, this makes it easy. Otherwise, see if you can pull something from the job description itself.

I’ve noticed that asking a question works best.

Asking a question is essential – whether at this point or at the end of the application. Why? Because it encourages the client to contact you to respond to your question.

If someone contacts me on Upwork, I have a 50% chance of getting the job.

I seem to get about 50% of the jobs that I am contacted for. Once the client reaches out to me, I can learn more about what they need and present myself as the perfect candidate.

Therefore, encouraging that initial contact is essential. And because we all love talking about ourselves and what we do, asking a question to make it personal is a great way to start a conversation.

Following suit with the same application, I would make the cover letter personal by saying something like:

Your job description mentions your company is in New York. Are your customers exclusively from NY or do you work with clients nationally/internationally?

Although nothing profound, this simple question treats them like a person I am interested in getting to know – rather than just a client I am trying to land. It’s also a question that helps me learn more about their needs and how I might be of assistance. Finally, it encourages a response on their part.

And that’s the most important piece – so I’ll say it again:

Once you get a client to respond to your Upwork cover letter, your odds of winning the project increase exponentially.

3. Explain why you’re interested in this project

Most projects on Upwork come from clients who are passionate about what they do. Whether they’re entrepreneurs or project managers, they have a vested interest in the success of their project.

This means that they are in love with their project. Whether it’s a website idea, a new app concept, or simply a poster to promote their band – the client is excited about this project.

And you should be too.

By sharing with the client why you want to work on their project, you’ll set yourself apart from the plethora of freelancers on Upwork who are simply trying to land their next job.

As with the other elements, keep it short – but a well-worded sentence can make a world of difference.

As you can see from my own blog, MoneyNomad.com, I love writing about entrepreneurship and would thoroughly enjoy researching and developing blog posts for your website.

This simple sentence reveals that I am already an expert on this subject and will be just as excited about this venture as the client is.

4. Share examples of similar projects

This is HUGE! Although more and more freelancers on Upwork are showing links to their past work – there are still too many that don’t.

If you have previously published work – share links to it in your job posting. Even if the projects are on your own blog or developed under someone else’s name, it still shows a level of credibility and gives the user a feel for what they can expect from you.

If you don’t have any samples, then you probably shouldn’t be trying to sell yourself to someone else. Instead, focus on building up a portfolio of 1-3 items that you can share. Do this by offering your service inexpensively on Fiverr, starting your own blog, or writing a few articles on HubPages.

I have a wide enough collection of articles that I’ve written, that I can usually find some worthwhile samples. But if I can’t, then I’ll share related content with voice I think the client wants. And I’ll share ghost written content as well.

Here are some samples of articles I’ve written in the past:

http://www.happyfox.com/blog/gamification-employee-engagement/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/57e4746fe4b00267764fbcbe

https://moneynomad.com/6-ways-to-live-on-under-10000-a-year/

Because Upwork doesn’t allow you to add hyperlinks to your job proposals, you’ll need to add in the entire url. Also, include a space between each url so that it’s easy for the client to copy and paste into their browser if necessary.

5. Vaguely explain your rate

Sometimes I state my rate right upfront, but other times I provide a ballpark figure or don’t share it at all in the cover letter.

Ultimately, when it comes to stating your rate you want to keep two things in mind:

1. Encourage the client to make contact (remember, I get 50% of contracts once a client interviews me).
2. Prevent yourself from wasting time with clients looking for cheap work.

From a freelance writer’s prospective, there are ample projects that want a writer willing to develop articles for $10-25 a post. This is far too low for me – and I really don’t want to waste my time interacting with someone not willing to meet my rates.

However, if I state my rate at $0.30/word when someone else offers to do the same project for $0.15/word – they may not make contact with me, allowing me to negotiate a rate and level of quality that meets their needs.

Depending on the client, I will say something like this in the proposal:

I generally charge my B2B clients $0.30/word. However, because I enjoy writing about entrepreneurship and think your project would be a lot of fun, I may be able to reduce my rate slightly.

By stating the higher end for my blogging rates, and then mentioning that “I may be able to reduce my rate slightly”, the client will understand that I don’t write $10 articles, but he will recognize that he may not have to pay $150 for 500 words either.

If we ultimately agree upon $0.20-0.25/word, the client feels like he’s getting a steal. Win-win!

6. Offer something for free

If you’re confident in the service you offer, then offering an initial trial for free can help you make a lot of money.

Particularly when you are new to Upwork, and competing with freelancers with a large portfolio and high reviews, providing a free trail offer is a great way to get started.

If you’re a freelance writer, a 500 word article won’t take you more than 1-2 hours – so offering one for free is certainly worth the potential of ongoing work.

For one-off projects, like web-design, this could be a bit more difficult. But it’s not impossible. Rather than doing the entire site for free, offer to do an analysis of their current website, a review of their top competitors, or a 30 minute mock-up of what their website could look like.

Once you’re established, offering work 100% free isn’t necessary, but it can still help to offer a “freemium” version of your work. An example of how I do it:

Finally, I would like to offer you a trial article risk-free. If you like it, you can pay for it and use it. However, if it doesn’t meet your expectations, you are welcome to improve upon it and use it for free. What topic would you like me to write about for this first post?

Other times I simply offer to write the first article for free in exchange for recognition and a link back to my own website. Usually people would rather keep the content ghost written and focused on their website – so the end up paying anyway.

The book “Predictably Irrational” states that free is a powerful word. We all LOVE getting something for free. In fact, people are more likely to take a $0.10 Hershey’s kiss for free than they are to pay $0.01 for a $1 candy bar – even though the latter is actually a better deal!

Using this same psychology in your freelance work, and offering to do a free “mini-project”, is a great way to land your next client. On Upwork, or anywhere else for that matter.

The completed Upwork job proposal – Emulate this to land your next client

And here we have it! The completed Upwork cover letter – and one that has landed me tens of thousands of dollars worth of clients:

Hi, my name is Rob and I have an MBA, experience in financial analytics, and have written content for over 50 highly satisfied clients here on Upwork – as you can see from the “Top Rated” freelancer badge on my profile. 

Your job description mentions your company is in New York. Are your customers exclusively from NY or do you work with clients nationally/internationally?

As you can see from my own blog, MoneyNomad.com, I love writing about entrepreneurship and would thoroughly enjoy researching and developing blog posts for your website.

Here are some samples of articles I’ve written in the past:

http://www.happyfox.com/blog/gamification-employee-engagement/

http://bankvibe.com/how-saving-for-retirement-is-like-surfing/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/57e4746fe4b00267764fbcbe

https://moneynomad.com/6-ways-to-live-on-under-10000-a-year/

Since writing this article, I’ve done a lot of hiring myself on UpWork and I’ve come to realize that a cover letter is even more crucial now. With so much competition on UpWork, you as a writer needs to stand out from the pack. When hiring a freelance UpWork writer, I always read a cover letter looking for errors and misspellings. My thought is, if they can’t write a good cover letter how will they write a good piece of content. Let me know if you think this assumption is correct in the comments.

As you can see, it says a lot while still being relatively short. Additionally, it attempts to connect with the client and keep them engaged – from beginning to end.

Try this format the next time you write an Upwork proposal and let me know how it works! Finally, if you have additional suggestions for dominating Upwork, I would love to hear about them in the comments.