Many people write in to me claiming that they’ve been pitching their freelance services for a month (or more) without a bite. Upon closer inspection, they have the perfect profile, a healthy portfolio of work, some testimonials from past employers or clients, and education and skills to back their qualifications, the whole nine yards really! So what’s missing? Why aren’t they landing the hot jobs?

I’ll tell you what’s missing. What’s missing is their buyer radar!

All projects are not the same and all buyers are definitely not the same. Each proposal of yours must not only be tailored to how well you fit the project, but also how well you can work with a particular buyer.

The success or failure of procuring a freelance project depends on 1. your ability to execute a project based on your skills, talent, and drive and 2. your rapport with the buyer. The second point is also the basis for ensuring (or at least setting up the stage) for repeat business, positive referrals, and long term clients.

So how do you fine tune your buyer radar on Elance?

Practice, practice, practice!

Choose a few projects each day and determine whether this is the kind of person you’d like to work with. You might not have to share a cubicle space with a buyer and you may be sitting in geographic polar opposites, but if your ideology and outlook doesn’t match, trust me, it will feel as suffocating as sitting in a trapped elevator.

Recently I cancelled a project before even starting it because the buyer never made it on time to scheduled Skype conversations, expected free phone consultations throughout the duration of the project (which was over a month), and established bad pre-project vibes with me. I would rather not start such a project at all (and take the initial hit of my time and effort investment) than take on the project only to realize that this attitude would continue and keep derailing my project management schedule.

So, here’s my quick list of bad buyers characteristics to watch out for. These things will often raise a red flag with me.

1. The All for Nothing Buyer

This kind will demand the perfect project (perfect English, SEO’d, 150 articles, formatted to a tee, blah blah blah) at a laughable rate, like a dollar an article. Stay away from him because he’s the lowest of the low and will never respect you or your work.

2. The Scope Creep

This buyer will say stuff like “Oh and can you submit the article to directories too?” “Oh can you format my blog and add pictures as well.” “Btw, since you’re already writing my web content, can you just put the same information in a brochure for me – it’s just copy paste right?” Argggg! These buyers are penny pinchers – they know that this is extra work requiring a whole new definition of the project’s boundaries, yet they want to sneak it in so they don’t have to pay more for it. By making it sound like trivial work, they expect to get away with peanuts. Don’t fall for it.

3. The Donkey and Carrot Trickster

He’ll suck you right in with classic bait and switch tactics such as “there’s long term work to be had if you do this right”. Or worse “if you do this test article, then I may hire you for another one”. Look man, either commit to it or not. You can’t hire me and then choose not to pay me after I’ve already done the work!

4. The Internet Marketing Speaker

I’m an internet marketer, so don’t get me wrong, I think internet marketing and its terminologies are pretty neat. But unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers in this field. This kind of buyer hangs with the spammer and uses cheap tactics learned from them in his project descriptions. Phrases such as “this is easy work for someone who knows what they’re doing” or “you should be able to do this in no time at all” or “I would do this myself considering it’s so easy, but I just don’t have the time”. These are all code words for I don’t respect you and therefore will be-little your work and its complexity. I will determine how much time you need to do it because I am the specialist, not you. Don’t even bother bidding for projects with these phrases; you’re above that.

5. Mister Vague

This guy thinks that “I need an e-book about my life” constitutes a complete project description. Not only has he not bothered to define his project, he scares me because he doesn’t seem to know what his project should be. Even if I know nothing about logo design, I would do some research and surfing to find out how to write a complete project description for a logo designer. How else can you expect to attract the professionals? People who don’t put effort into their project descriptions, and worse, refuse to add/edit/comment on their projects just don’t care about them. I don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t care about his own project. Do you?

This was really just a starter list. There are so many other buyer red flags to look out for. Perhaps we’ll cover them in another blog post and perhaps you will respond in the comments below to your favorite type of buyer that induces your eye roll! C’mon share with us, you know you want to!

Landing your first anything is always the toughest job and it’s no different on Elance or any other freelance job board. You’ve got no project history, no feedback, no earnings – in other words, no reputation or credibility. So how then do you get a buyer to eventually trust you enough to hire you for their project?

Before you start bidding for your first project, let’s assume you’ve already done the following:

• You’ve chosen the right category for your skill set
• You’ve written a crackerjack profile description of your business, its main players, the services you’re providing and the skills you offer. You’ve filled out all the profile details in an interesting, unique and factual representation of you.
• You’ve chosen the type of project you want to bid on and understand its requirements.

Okay then, all set? Let’s get started. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get to Know the Buyer – Intimately
2. Make a Personal Proposal – but Not on your Knees!
3. Offer Custom Samples – with a Twist
4. Slash your Rates but not in the Usual Way!

And now the meat

1. Get to Know the Buyer – Intimately

To get my first-ever project on Elance, I went to the buyer’s website and read her e-book. I then read her blog and started following her on twitter. By the time I got around to writing the actual proposal, I felt like I already knew her, I knew what she cared about, I understood some of her passions and I found some common ground to relate to her with. (Btw, I’m not a stalker in case you were wondering

So know your buyer. It helps to humanize the person behind the project description because then you can find an area that you’re both passionate about. It helps you choose the right words and the right things to say. So please spend that extra time getting to know the person you want to do business with.

2. Make a Personal Proposal – but Not on your Knees!

Whatever you do, please don’t start off writing the bid with descriptions about you or your company – remember that’s what the crackerjack profile section was for! Instead, in the bid, write about the buyer. Be friendly, be warm, be personable. You want to remind them, hey you’re a person too, and not just a username without feelings.

Write as you would to a friend – not your best friend, but a friend you’d like to be closer to, a friend you’d like to help. Be helpful, show them you care about their project and have read all its details, write about how you plan to tackle it, how it’ll help them, how excited you are to get started on it and how much you share the same passions – wordpress, gardening, iphone apps, whatever!

3. Offer Custom Samples – with a Twist

Here’s the thing. There’s this big mantra on elance and other sites that you should never offer custom samples. Never? Really. Well how else are you supposed to get samples? You’re a first-timer remember? You’re new to the field and you don’t have samples to hand out. You can MUST make custom samples!

Now agreed, custom samples may be easier in some professions than others. But you CAN do it if you really try. If you’re a web designer, you’re gonna have to make a sample website for the buyer. Or if you’re an editor, samples of before and after editing of his project. Or if a videographer, a short video of his production. Or if a writer, a sample of the buyer’s writing project.

Now, here’s the twist. You give incomplete samples. Yeah you heard me right. There’s a reason it’s called a “sample” and not an “actual”. You don’t give it all away for free, but you give just enough to (a) prove your ability and showcase your talent and (b) pique the buyer’s interest. This last point is very important. The buyer’s curiosity must be aroused so that if he/she likes the custom sample, he will immediately want more of it. And from you!

You can make custom samples in any field really. If the buyer wants a 10 min video, show him a 30 second one without color correction, professional voice over or editing (or all those other time-consuming tasks). This is what I did with a custom sample video for a company that requested help videos.

If the buyer wants a writing project of 1000 words, write a 100 – 150 words (and make it snazzy!). If a buyer wants a logo, design a vector one and watermark it. And so on.

Now here’s where the real benefit comes along. Once you’ve made a few custom samples to attract your first few buyers, these then become your portfolio. Voila!

4. Slash your Rates but not in the Usual Way!

Most people think going as low as possible in the money department is a sure-fire way to win a project. It’s also a sure-fire way to ensure you get stuck in that low rate rut and forever brand yourself as a low-class provider, no matter how much excellent work you do.

Instead, here’s what you should say to the buyer:

Tell ‘em you’re new to Elance. Tel ‘em your rates are actually X because you have [insert offline experience, education, qualifications, passion here] but since you’re new here you’re willing to offer them a deep discount of say, 50% off your rack rates! Make it sound like you’re doing them a favor and that they’re getting a really good deal (which they should be getting because you should actually be worth what you charge). Please note I am not advocating over-charging!!

This does two things: it makes buyers feel like you’re making an offer too tempting to pass up and it sets you up nicely to raise your rates with the same client later on if they send repeat work your way. Nifty, hunh?

Everyone starts at zero, so don’t make the mistake of assuming that it’s just tough for you. Yes the competition is global. Yes its killer. Yes only the fittest survive. Question is, are you willing to put in the initial extra effort?

Let me know how long it took you to get your first project in the comments below!

This is the second post in a 6-part series on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals.

While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium.

I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

The thing about online work is that typically there’s so much distance between you and the buyer that there’s plenty of opportunity for miscommunication and mismatch. It’s important not to just be a good fit for the project you’re working on as discussed in Part 1 How to Find your Niche and Bid Exclusively in It, but also to evaluate whether you and the buyer would be a good fit to work together. And then there’s that pesky matter of ensuring that a buyer is legit and serious about the work.

In researching a buyer, I would go so far as to say that you need to be a little bit of a detective and ask all the right questions and look in all the right (and sometimes improbable, yet obvious) places. You may not be able to do this for every single project and in every single instance, but it’s important to know what you’re looking for so that even when you’re not consciously looking for clues, your subconscious radar will pick up on them – that’s how finely tuned you need to be and can be with the help of this handy guide.

Step 1: Find Out the Buyer’s Name

No, seriously. Do you have any idea what a huge difference it makes to address a buyer directly in your proposal by his or her name? Hello David vs Hello hwueyb67. Get the picture? So how do you go about finding out a buyer’s name if they haven’t given it in their buyer profile?

• Do a Google search on their company name (if they’ve given that) and read the About Us section to find out who’s who in the company
• Look through past buyer feedback and see if any providers have left feedback addressing the buyer by name
• See if the buyer uses that same username on any other site, like Twitter, and then look up their profile to see their real name

This is not sneaky, nor underhanded. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how well buyers respond to being addressed as a person rather than a random alphanumeric word, even though they have deliberately not divulged this information in the project description or in their buyer profile.

Addressing a buyer by name also shows them that you’ve got pretty dandy research skills, and that you gave their project enough importance to look them up and read up on who they are and what their needs might be – an important point that we’ll follow up on in Part 3 of this series.

Step 2: Look Up and Read the Buyer’s Website

For my very first project on Elance I looked up the buyer’s website and studied her style of writing, learned what she was most passionate about, found out where she was based geographically, and was also able to download her e-book for more information on her and her business.

As a result I was able to write a personal and friendly bid addressing her passions and needs directly and also showing her that I was passionate about the same things. She saw in my bid that not only was I resourceful enough to know all this about her, but that I shared her vision and would therefore be the perfect writer to help draft her next e-book.

There’s so much info you can glean from a buyer’s website, I don’t know why anyone would miss out on this crucial chance to really connect with the buyer.

Step 3: Analyze the Buyer’s Past Feedback

There are many things you should look for when reading past feedback:

• What has the buyer paid in the past for a similar project?
• When giving feedback, positive or negative, what is the buyer’s tone?
• Is the buyer notorious for leaving unwarranted negative feedback?
• What do other providers say about the buyer – do they leave one line comments or more in-depth, descriptive comments?

From analyzing the above items, you should be able to effectively gauge:

• What the buyer will be most likely to pay you
• Whether the buyer is courteous and professional in his or her dealings
• Whether the buyer is grumpy, difficult to deal with and never satisfied with anything
• Whether the buyer understands the rules of doing business on Elance and is aware of the policies and procedures, whether he pays on time and whether he is clear and precise in his directions and expectations

Using all this information, you should be able to determine whether it’s worth your time (and money) to even place a bid on this project. If you feel uncomfortable about any aspect of a buyer’s portrayal of himself online, then trust your gut instinct and stay away from the project. If you feel a connection, then go ahead and place a bid – your bid will come off sounding that much more genuine because you really do feel a spark, having read up on the buyer and knowing him/her a tad better.

There are a few more generic things which you should look for in every buyer that you work with:

• Do they write out a detailed project description or work order covering all the relevant details you need to place an accurate bid?
• Are they responsive communicators and answer queries posted on the public message boards and in pre-bids?
• Are they aware of Elance’s policies and rules, and if not, are they willing to be educated about it?
• How long have they been a member of the site?
• How many projects have they posted since being members?
• What is their award ratio – how many projects awarded?

The richer the buyer’s history, communication and past performance, the more reason to take them seriously.

If you liked this post and want to know how to get to the next step in writing proposals, please read Part III: How to Write a Winning Bid or Proposal

Did you have any aha moments from reading this post? Or do you have your own buyer detective work tips to share? I’d be delighted if you leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!