No matter how good you are at your work, if you get rejected because of mistakes in your proposal, no client will know about your skills.

I’ve hired over 50 freelancers on Upwork for a variety of tasks and read hundreds of proposals. I’ve seen great proposals and a lot of rough ones. Here are some things to avoid next time you propose on a job:

If you won’t write it yourself, how can you expect the client to be bothered to read what’s there? Unless the client has never seen proposals before, AI language isn’t fooling anybody. It isn’t impressive, it’s just more text on a page to wade through. It’s much better to have a short proposal that clearly shows you have read and understood the job post.

(Possible exception: If you use AI to help write your proposal, but you edit it to read like a human wrote it, that can be fine.)

If the client has never hired you before, it feels like a risk to commit to a pay increase, before you’ve started working together. Also, people are cheap and just don’t like this. As there are often a lot of workers to choose from, why not go with the person who is NOT asking for a raise before the job even starts? I recommend selecting “never” in the raise menu. You can always ask for a raise later after proving your abilities; it just won’t be automated.

Clients generally put down what they are willing to pay. Asking for more money will put you at the bottom of the list, if not get you rejected without even being looked at.

This might seem obvious, but people ask for more than the stated budget all the time.

If you think a job is underpaid, instead of asking for more money, it’s probably better to just bid on other jobs that pay what you think is right.

I’ve seen many people propose on voice acting jobs and not send a sample of their voice, and graphic artists not include pictures of their art.

Unless everything that you do can be explained in the cover letter, you must include at least one sample that’s relevant to the job post. Saying “see my portfolio” isn’t good enough either, because now you’re asking the client to search through your profile. Not only is this extra work for potential clients, but there’s no guarantee they’ll find the specific sample you want them to see.

The more specific and relevant to the job post your sample is, the better.

It’s also good to have your samples named in a clear way. For instance, if I was submitting a sample, I might call it “Rozek-Landscaping-Article.pdf” or “Rozek-Editing-Sample.docx.”

When things are named “writing.docx” or “292834892928.jpg” or “demo.mov,” it can easily become lost among samples from other proposals.