8 Rules How To Write

Cover Letter on Upwork

Are you sending out proposal after proposal with very low response rate? Check if you are following these easy tips in your cover letter on Upwork.

1. Hook

It’s first 230 characters which the client sees without clicking on your cover letter. The hook determines if they will open it or skip to the next freelancer.

Tips for a good hook:

include information from the job post
show that you understand client’s problem
prove you have the expertise with numbers and data.
make them want to click to finish reading the sentence

Here are a few examples, but make sure to adopt them for each job post and to your niche:

“Hey client name! Have you been struggling with integrating AI into your business and need task from the job description? As a software developer with 5+ years of experience, I can help augment your productivity with the these steps …”
“Hi client name! Are your rankings on Google dropping and you need _task from the job description? With 7+ years of experience in SEO, we can boost your online visibility in just a few months. Here’s the strategy that I suggest…”
“Hello client name! Are your graphics not yielding the desired customer engagement? My recent works increased customer engagement by 45% and I believe I can help you with task from the job description by doing the following…”

2. Personalization

You may have noticed we included the client’s name in our hook, but personalization doesn’t stop here. Check out client profile to see if you can include more personalization for them or their business. The name of the business is often mentioned in the job post and you can easily Google the company before you write the CL.

3. Customer needs

Make sure you focus your CL on the client’s needs. Describe how you and you experience can be useful for that particular client based on the information from the job post, instead of just boasting about yourself.

4. Positioning

Unless you are trying to get your first job and don’t have any commercial experience, you need to position yourself as a Pro in this area of expertise because the client is looking for someone who knows how to do the job. Examples:

“As a Python Dev with 5+ years of experience”
“Award-winning or certified professional” (don’t lie here of course about your awards and certificates!)
“I have experience 5 similar projects in your niche”

5. Similar Experience

Similar to the example in the previous sentence, by indicating similar experience at the beginning of your CL, you draw client’s attention to it and make them believe you understand their niche, project and problems. It makes you a better fit than another freelancer with similar expertise without experience in similar projects. Examples:

“Recently, I have done similar project https://example.com…”
“In my past project in the same niche, we were able to achieve this results…”

6. Confirmation

Give the clients examples from your previous work to confirm the expertise. Include links to portfolio, names of the biggest companies that you worked with or credible certifications that you have.

7. Questions

Ask relevant questions based on the job description. They should be clear and show that you understand the subject.

8. Call to action

Many people forget about this, which is the reason their CL doesn’t perform as well as it could have. CTA should tell the client what are the next steps after the finish reading your CL. Some examples:

“Looking forward to the opportunity to discuss how I can contribute to your team. When is a convenient time for you to have a call this week?”
“I’d be happy to provide any additional information needed. Let’s set up a time to chat?”
“I’m available to further discuss my qualifications and how I can be a good fit for your team. The next steps would be….”
“Please feel free to contact me if you believe my skills align with your needs. Looking forward to your response.” – this last one is the softest option of a CTA, but even this is better than nothing.

As you see, some of these 8 rules are intertwined with each other. For example, you can tell about your similar experience with links from portfolio that confirm your words. Or, you will probably include both positioning and personalization rules in the hook. But what is important is that knowing these rules, you can now improve your CL.

A few other general rules of cover letter on Upwork

add air and white space to your cover letter. Separate paragraphs, use bullet points and numbered lists;
more facts and less text. CL should NOT be too long;
test different theories to figure out what works best for you. Here is a post where we gave a link to free template on how to track your results when testing different hyposethis – https://etcetera.kiev.ua/blog/calculating-results-of-lead-generation-on-upwork-free-template/

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