Proposal Checklist: Fill & Download for Free

This is a great question. Securing private invites on Upwork is a great for three things. Here are the three things that help you get invites.1)A clear benefits oriented profile:When starting Upwork people don’t write good profiles. They get caught up in using a shotgun approach. Don’t go wide with your profile, go niche. If you want to increase the chances of being invited you need a good profile that speaks to a client’s needs. The more niche your focus the greater your chance of a client who needs your service inviting you.2)A Good Job Success Score:I hate that this is. If you have a low job success score it is rare to appear to a client unless you submit a proposal. If you have a low score consider hiring on for a couple short, easy to complete jobs to raise your score.3)A Great Headline:My headline relates to my service. This is the first thing people see and are most likely to read. Use this space to communicate the value of your service in under ten words.Other Resources:-Danny Marguiles ‘Freelance to Win’ course (here). He has, last time I checked, about two hours of video that goes into major depth on how to score invites.-My ‘Proposal Checklist’ in my Success Academy Library (here) This is free if you join the library.-Copyblogger:This site is amazing for learning to write to a client’s needs.

This is a great question and there are two schools of thought on how to book your first gig.School 1:Take a quick low paying gig to get started.School 2:Go niche and find someone who needs your skills.Here’s a peek at what I did when I started and what I would do now.How I Got My First Gig On UpworkWhen I started on Upwork (at the time it was Odesk) I wanted to get booked fast. I believed that breaking that ‘first job’ barrier was important so I bid on every gig I came across that took less than an hour and paid under $20.I was an idiot. I believed it was more important to ‘get’ a job than to land a quality client. This led to me making a series of simple but profound mistakes.The mistakes I made in the first two weeks haunted me for the next four months. I got a job halfway through the second week but my choices slowed my progress for the next four months.Why School 1 Is A Bad ChoiceImagine you are running a marathon. That is 26.2 miles. You have the skills to run the race and then you go to start. The bell signals and you take off. Instead of keeping your pace like you are trained to you run as hard as you can. You overtake the front of the group. It feels amazing. Then after a mile you start cramping. Next thing you know you are behind the slowest runners and barely finish the race.Freelancing is a lot like running a marathon. School 1 places emphasis on just getting started instead of starting correctly. The first job I booked was a ghostwriting gig.I kept the gig for months. This made me just comfortable enough to not look for more work. I ended up making about $175/month. Eventually I broke free and realized I was making a huge mistake.I knew I had greater earning potential but because I had gotten comfortable I wasn’t making the effort. Booking that first gig threw off my growth because I took my eyes off the bigger goal.Here is what I would do now.What I Would Do To Book My First GigIf you aren’t booking gigs don’t automatically chalk it up to being new. I have mentored a lot of students to book ongoing contracts for their first gigs. How? Simple.I teach people to write great proposals.The truth is most proposals written by freelancers suck.Why Most Proposals SuckUnless you have a lot of experience with clients, what they want to hear, and explaining the results you can create in a clear way you probably don’t know how to write a good proposal.Here are three tips to help your proposals read better and get you booked.Tip 1:Don’t Use A TemplateWrite every proposal. Clients can sniff out a template a mile away. Templates are a red flag to clients that you didn’t value their project enough to send a unique proposal. You won’t get booked off a template so don’t send on.Tip 2:Proposals Aren’t Sales PagesRarely, if ever, will you get hired off a proposal. If you want to increase your responses stop treating proposals as transactional and more as a chance to start a conversation about their project. Clients aren’t ready to buy without talking so don’t make the mistake of selling them to.Tip 3:Explain Results And How To Get ThemClients don’t care that you finished a bunch of skills tests, where you went to college, etc. Clients want results. If you explain the results they want and how you would get them so they can understand your process the client will want to follow up with you.Final ThoughtProposals are key to starting your booking machine. If you want my free ‘Proposal Checklist’ that shares the key things you need to include in every proposal along with the reasoning behind each choice along with my free,‘Ultimate Guide To Doubling Your Revenue Freelancing Online’Then Get It Here

Before the pilot even arrives, the Flight Dispatcher has done a lot of the ‘heavy-lifting’ for that flight. He will determine the routing, will have checked the en route and destination weather, alternates, proposed load, Notices to Airmen, etc. The Dispatcher will then print up a Flight Release with all the necessary information for that flight. The captain will review the release, discuss it with the dispatcher, check the weather, and will sign the Flight Release along with the Dispatcher indicating the Captain is in agreement with the Flight Dispatcher and the Release. All this will usually happen well before departure time and any passenger boarding.Meanwhile as this is taking place below the terminal, the First Officer will likely have completed his or her walk-around inspection of the aircraft’s exterior. and will then have set up the cockpit and the flight management computer for the flight.As Captain when I arrive in the cockpit, much of all the flight preparation had usually already been completed. I only needed to verify everything had been done as expected. This was ensured by a quick scan called a “flow” to check each switch was in its correct position. Then we would run the printed “Before Start Checklist” via challenge and read-back to double check everything again. This might only take a minute or two because you have done it over a thousand times. And then we were all then ready to start engines and go.If I came to an aircraft that another crew had just left with the APU running, and all electrical power and air conditioning all operating, it would take far, far less than 25 minutes to depart, even with running all the necessary checklists.