Four months freelancing. I send about ten proposals a month, get two replies, and land one job. No feedback on the other eight, not even a no. It is impossible to tell whether my rate is wrong, my proposals are bad, or this is just the shape of it. What is a realistic close rate for someone who is not established yet?
Silence is usually not about you. Budgets get pulled, somebody's nephew turns out to do web design, the person who posted it leaves. I stopped assigning meaning to no-replies once I had seen the inside of a few of these decisions.
One measurable change: shorten the proposal. Mine went from two pages to about 200 words plus three relevant links and the reply rate roughly doubled. Nobody is reading your methodology section.
And answer their actual question in the first line. Most proposals open with a paragraph about the freelancer while the client is scanning for whether you understood the brief.
Follow up once, seven days later, one paragraph. I get something like a fifth of my replies from that single message and it costs nothing.
@adjunct_life · 11mo ago · 3 replies
Twenty percent reply and ten percent close is roughly normal for cold outbound, and cold outbound is a terrible way to get work long term. The rate to watch is not proposal to close, it is where the lead came from. My close rate on referrals is somewhere around 70 percent and on cold applications it is under 10, with the same proposal text. The fix is not better proposals, it is different leads: tell every past client you have capacity, be visible in one specific niche, and stop competing in places where 40 people apply to each posting.
Reply
Report
@dax_darian · 11mo ago
Four months in I do not have many past clients to tell.
Reply
Report
@adjunct_life · 11mo ago
Then tell everyone who has ever seen your work — old colleagues, people who did not hire you six months ago, the person who ghosted you in March. That list is longer than you think and every name on it is warmer than a job board.
Reply
Report