Any ways to increase the chances of winning projects on freelancer sites – such as Freelancer.com, elance.com, guru.com and odesk.com?

Hi,

We are a start up looking for some beta customers, to help us test and fine tune our service delivery solution, and to assist us in this quest we are about to start bidding on a few projects on several freelancer sites (namely, Freelancer, Elance, Odesk and Guru).

We thought it might be a good idea to ask if any forum members know of any ways to increase the chances of winning projects on freelance sites such as these?

Any tips or advice would be well received.

Kind Regards,

Gary

You really want to win projects on Freelancer? I mean if you want to work for $2 an hour, that's up to you, but it seems like a silly idea in the firstplace that this is your goal.

I know that when I have received bids from people on Elance, that I ignored the ones who sent me a generic response that just listed their qualifications/work. The people that I replied to were the ones who actually responded with detailed questions/ideas about what I had mentioned in my ad because it seemed as if they cared about what I wanted. The others seemed to imply that all apps to them were the same.

Work a few simple fixed-price projects for $1. Earn and ask for reviews to get several 5 stars. Raise your price to about half your desired rate. Do hourly work for half your schedule. Get more 5 stars. Set profile rate to full price. When people invite you, work those projects at full rate. Eventually the lower rate projects will roll off. When you apply for jobs, custom write the letter yourself and use specific examples of your prior work that relates to the job. Don't make it too long or boring. Less than 10 lines, or what will fit when client clicks "See more..." without having to open a new page.