I just wanted to talk to you about a hot topic in the world of freelancing. We all know already that there is nothing more important to get projects as a freelancer than the proposal that you write on the projects on wish you bid on.

Many freelancers don’t know the great importance of the first comment (cover letters as they call them on oDesk.com) you ever write to a buyer or business owner but in fact, the proposal you write on projects has a lot to do if you end up getting that project or not.

I just wanted to write this blog posting to show some examples of proposals which you have probably seen that freelancers have written on real projects. It is important to highlight that the following are examples of INEFFECTIVE proposals because of many reasons:

1. “Dear sir, I can do this job”

2. “Dear sir, after reviewing your requirements, I am confident that I can help you on this project. We are a team of 7 programmers with vast experience in PHP, VB .Net, and Java and we have created lots of projects for other clients around the world. Trust us, we are the right candidates for this project.”

3. “Greetings, after reviewing your requirements, I am confident that I can help you out. Is it possible we can have a phone conversation to discuss your project?”

4. “Sir, interesting project, I believe I can help you out with this. However, I don’t think I can dedicate that much to this project, I can probably dedicate some hours to it though.”

5. “Dear Sir, you have provided a very detailed description of your project. I believe that this project should be developed in PHP and MySQL. I have created tons of websites for other clients in php and mysql, have a look at the following samples:

http://www.exampleone.com
http://www.exampletwo.com
http://www.examplethree.com

Doing this project for you will not be a problem for us. Have confidence that we can help you out.

Kind regards,

XXXX name”

As you can see on the above examples, these are really inefective proposals, don’t ask us why. We have been there, we know what works and what doesn’t.

These are proposals that tend to be considered bad or simply average proposals which are not effective as to the point as to put yourself on buyer’s mind as the first person that they would select for their project.