Upwork Boosted Proposals

Update

Have you seen a new Upwork Boosted Proposals update ? There has been a lot of controversy over it in the community. To be honest, we share a common discontent. But first, let’s shortly describe what is the update about.

In March Upwork added boosted proposals feature. Besides the required connects you always pay for placing a bid, you can add any number of additional connects to get into the top 3. Whoever bids the most connects - gets the first place. If you bid enough to get to the top 3, but then someone bids higher and you are kicked out of the top - you will get your connects back.

What changed with Upwork boosted proposals?

From September 22 Upwork shows live data on Boosted Proposals. Half of freelancers see the information on how many connects others already bid to get to the top 3. They won’t be able to bid less than the top 1 (for example, if you want to be in the top 2).

At the same time, the other half of the freelancers who are not included in the test, don’t see any information and they can bid any amount. This means that if they bid 10 and there are already bids for 20, 15, and 12, they just lose 10 connects.

It’s important that no matter how many connects you spend to get to the top, the client won’t hire you just because your proposal is in the tops 3. The goal for freelancers is not to get into the top 3 recommended applications, but to start a dialog with the client.

In order to do this, you’ll need other things:

a good profile (then Upwork will recommend you anyway even without boost);
relevant and reasonable cover letter;
bid in the price range of the client.

If your proposal is not relevant or your profile and experience are poor, boosting the proposal will not fix it. So, unfortunately we think that boosted proposals have turned into an unfair auction with no guaranteed result.

We recommend spending time and effort building your profile, writing relevant proposals that really speak to the client’s pains, and don’t rely on an auction to just get to the top.

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