How to Analyze Upwork Bids

Often, people don’t understand how to analyze bids. Of course, it’s not as easy as analyzing leads and replies. The biggest problem is that people don’t understand why they need to do it.

Let’s imagine that in August you made 100 bids and got 10 replies, and in September you made 100 bids and got 2 replies. I’d ask, what went wrong? Would you?

Do you still think sales is just luck? If not, here’s my guide.

This guy upworkanalysis@gmail.com could help you to do such a spreadsheet and analyze your data.

You don’t need to do this kind of analysis if you have a great conversion rate. It’s more of a situational analysis. However, most of the teams I consult do it biweekly.

Here’s a screenshot of what it should look like at the end of the day.

The analysis should be done at the end of the week, but for the PREVIOUS week, not the current one. Why? Because leads often take a few days to reply.

Step 1: Create a Spreadsheet

Add all the bids you made in the previous week to the first column.
Go through each one and check (yes, manually) how many interviews there were (meaning how many times this lead replied to anyone).

Check if there were any hires.

If yes, go to the "In Progress" section of the client's page. Find this bid (by title). Then check if the person was hired at a higher or lower rate than yours.

Step 2: Track the Following Stats

• Replies (you <3)
• No replies/no longer available
• More than 3 replies
• Less than 3 replies
• Hired at a higher rate
• Hired at a lower rate

Step 3: Now What, Tamara?

Time to interpret the data!

• If many bids have no replies, I call these jobs "empty"—meaning these leads are not real. If you have a lot of them, you need to figure out what they have in common to avoid wasting money on these “empty” leads in the future. They should have some patterns.
• If most jobs got more than 3 replies, something is wrong with your bids. Imagine: lots of people are responding to your competitors, but not to you. This means it’s time to thoroughly review your bids/cover letters.
• If many clients hired more expensive freelancers, something is wrong with your profile. Imagine: they look at you and decide they’d rather pay more to work with someone else, even though you’re cheaper.
• And if most clients are hiring cheaper freelancers, it probably means you’re bidding on jobs outside of your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Review your ICP and avoid bidding on these types of jobs again.

Analyze everything!

Hugs,

Tamara

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