The five parts
1. Their problem, in their words. Open by restating what they need — specifically enough that it couldn't be copy-pasted to anyone else. If they wrote a brief, quote the awkward bit they clearly care about. This single paragraph is what separates a proposal that gets read from one that doesn't.
2. What you'd do about it. Three to five sentences of approach. Not a methodology, not your philosophy — the actual plan. "I'd rewrite the three highest-traffic pages first, then rebuild the pricing page around the objections in your support tickets."
3. Proof. One relevant sample with a sentence explaining why it's relevant. One, not five. Link straight to the piece, not to your homepage. If your samples are thin, fix that before you fix your proposal — building a portfolio with no client work has the format.
4. Price, scope and timeline. State a number. Proposals that avoid price to "get on a call first" get filtered out by busy buyers. Give the deliverable, the revision count, the start date and the total. If you're unsure of the number, decide your floor in advance using working out your floor rate and check it against rate benchmarks by skill.
5. One clear next step. "If this looks right, I can start Monday — shall I send the scope?" One action. Never two.
What gets proposals binned
Opening with your own biography. Any sentence beginning "I am passionate about." Templates where the personalisation is obviously a find-and-replace. Attaching a twelve-page PDF for a $600 project. Listing every service you offer instead of the one they asked for. Apologising for your rate in advance.
And length. Under 300 words for a marketplace bid, under 600 for a direct proposal. If you need more, the project is big enough to warrant a call first.
On marketplaces specifically
Bids on Upwork and similar sites live or die on the first two lines, because that's all that shows in the preview. Put the relevant proof there and move the pleasantries out entirely. Fewer, better-targeted bids consistently beat volume — the platform comparison in the five marketplaces explains where each one's competition sits.
Follow up once
One follow-up, four or five days later, two sentences long, adding something small — a thought about their problem, not "just checking in." It recovers a meaningful share of silent proposals. After that, leave it.
Track it
Log every proposal and its outcome. Once you have thirty, patterns appear fast: which service converts, which price point stalls, which channel from the nine places that hire is actually worth your mornings. When one lands, close it properly — scope, deposit, invoice, as covered in the first-client walkthrough.