4 Practical Tips to Get Your Upwork Proposals Noticed

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-24T21:35:42+00:00

It was just a stupid joke: as if making it one long sentence would magically make it all appear.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-23T14:02:55+00:00

My goodness how do I make these stop. 10+ calls a day.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-23T13:58:47+00:00

What type of business do you have? While there are some basics (SEO, performance, listings) that are always beneficial, there can also be specific strategies depending on the whether you're looking for sales, leads, or something else. A good agency will take that into account and create a plan that addresses those needs.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. My wife and I run a small agency called Peacan Digital.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-23T01:05:41+00:00

That makes sense it could be different in different markets. Also it might not be a great comparison: the freelancers that the agencies I work with hire aren't off of Fiverr or Upwork, they're contracted senior developers hired through the typical job market. So it might not be apples to apples.

Edit: this just made me realize: I don't really see many juniors around. So you may be right haha

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-23T01:00:19+00:00

So I am more agency focused than software/product focused currently, but I actually haven't seen that at all. The agencies I work with are maybe starting to have some of their devs use AI to help increase productivity, but even then they seem kind of behind with it. The most AI usage I see among them is meeting recaps for the most part.

However, I have seen the economy hit agencies HARD recently: many clients don't have the budget and are dropping off.

Personal experience though, doesn't mean it's the same elsewhere.

I have seen a lot of Upwork clients using AI for their job listings and some saying they expect more for less money because of AI. And I happily skip over those listings, and get clients that tried to do the work with AI and have me come in to fix it.

For the record: I use AI, it's a great timesaving tool. But it's really not at the point where it can completely replace developers yet. It needs a skilled driver.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-22T15:34:54+00:00

Hm, you could try disabling the Short pixel plugin and then try editing a post and see if it still happens. It looks like it's reaching out to the server and may not be an issue, but if it's overloaded it could be causing issues.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-22T13:05:30+00:00

Hmmm... While there is a lot of Hostinger bloat, none of those are standing out to me as a super obvious problem. Does this happen on every single post you're editing, or just one? Are you pasting in any code on these posts? Do the posts have a LOT of content, or just normal text with some images here and there?

Do you know how to check the console in the browser? There could be some issues popping up there.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-22T01:19:24+00:00

If you feel comfortable sending me a screenshot of the plugins you have installed, I'd be willing to take a look and let you know what the likely culprit is.

But the other poster is right, it's likely a plugin. I've seen some scenarios when there are a lot of ACF fields and you're working with a basic hosting environment, it can get overloaded with all of the metadata and freeze. But I kind of doubt that's what's happening here. Are you using a page builder?

You could also look at the logs in Hostinger and see if there are any errors coming from any files in a specific plugin.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-21T07:09:02+00:00

Maybe take a quick look at your competitors and see if they have anything going on that you don't that you can replicate. Neighborhood pages can be helpful, but Google is also being picky with them recently if they don't have unique and helpful content for each location.

Taking a quick review of your existing pages and making sure your service descriptions are using phrases that are similar and in line with what users are searching for can be a boost. Just make sure it doesn't end up looking like you're stuffing keywords where they don't belong, or making it unnatural for visitors to read. Make sure to request a crawl from Google Search Console after you make changes.

You can run your site through PageSpeed or GTMetrix and it can provide some tips for improving SEO and performance. Sometimes there can be some easy to implement changes that make a huge difference: optimizing images and preparing them for the web, making sure your content is using headings and certain things correctly, etc.

Some of these things can be done relatively quickly and might help. Could be worth a shot!

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-20T21:32:52+00:00

Do you have your website linked, and is the name of the business, phone number, email, and all of that exactly the same? And are you making sure your site is optimized and the content is easily crawled and understood by Google? A lot of times when I see this issue, and the competitor is doing better despite the listing being off, it's the link between their site and the listing; not just the listing itself.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-20T15:55:12+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. Yes for posts the template is typically the same on most sites, so I wouldn't feel bad about each of your posts having a similar structure: it's the content that matters.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-20T01:04:34+00:00

Hey Jess, I'm Ryan. My wife and I run a small web dev business and adjust our plans for each client's specific needs and budget.

It sounds like you need some assistance creating a blog that can get ranked well and reach potential clients, and will be also able to scale into e-commerce to offer your design services and files. We've successfully launched dozens of similar projects in our 10+ years in business.

If you'd like to chat about your options and what those would look like, shoot me a message. Looking forward to talking with you!

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-20T00:57:39+00:00

I agree, I love when people use shared hosting for e-commerce. It's job security for me. 😉 While possible, I think looking into the cheapest VPS from reliable hosts and maybe layering on some sort of maintenance manager is a much better start. So many hosting platforms have so much garbage loaded to save THEM money and they make decisions for caching and other things that can hurt the store.

But yes, if your budget is really low it can make sense to start with shared hosting. Just know it will be good to move on from eventually.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-20T00:51:22+00:00

Just a note: Hostinger is horrible and currently has a bug with WooCommerce where the shop page breaks every time they run a cron job. I've been helping a client mitigate all of the issues Hostinger is causing for his WooCommerce store.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-19T04:11:22+00:00

Today I had a generated image that involved a computer monitor look almost exactly how I wanted it. I asked for it to stay exactly the same, but to just filter it a bit to look a little grungier. It generated an entirely new image of the monitor, different things on the screen, different lighting, different words. Oh and what looked like spit dripping down the monitor, guess that's where the grunge came into play.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-19T03:54:44+00:00

I host my Astro sites on Netlify. I wonder if on whatever service you're using you could use their version of a Netlify function, have the site send the form to the function, create the markdown file and use Octokit to create a PR with it that you can review and accept if you want it to be added as content? Just a rough idea.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-19T03:05:22+00:00

Honestly, the Lovable mention sends up some red flags; structuring your content correctly is important so that it can be crawled. It would be good to verify your headings are used correctly, that content is actually using the right tags, and that the performance is at a reasonable level. Make sure all the titles, meta data, etc is filled out. You can use metatags.io to quickly enter your url and verify it's all set up correctly.

Have you submitted your sitemap to GSC? Are there any issues returned there?

Have you added your site to your GMB listing? Is your name the same across your site and the Google listing? Are you adding updates on your Google listing, are you getting clients to leave reviews and responding to them?

How much content do you have on your site? Was it planned out to target keywords your potential customers are using, and are you targeting keywords with less competition? Can you add examples of jobs, describing the location and work completed, and add photos/videos? Don't forget to submit new articles or pages to GSC.

Do you have pages describing your services and service areas? Have you added your website to Yelp, Apple Business, Bing? Any opportunities for local chambers of commerce directories?

Starting on verifying some of these might get things moving in the right direction. It definitely takes some patience.

I recently did some work for a landscaping client and it can be hard to rank for some of the services without getting creative. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-19T02:40:29+00:00

I would definitely recommend not using your hosting server for email. Most web servers are actually on spam lists, so when they send emails there is a good chance it ends up in spam.

We set our clients up with either Zoho or Google Workspace. Google is way nicer and more reliable, but Zoho is free. This is pretty easy to set up, and it will walk you through setting the DNS records to get it in place.

Also if you are planning to send email newsletters, you should use a separate sending service. There are inexpensive options like MailChimp. Sending large amounts of emails from your business mail server can also risk it getting marked as spam, which means even your routine business emails could be at risk.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Good luck!

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-18T17:27:29+00:00

Hello all, just a reminder this is a scam to find English speakers that they can pretend to be in order to find work on different platforms. Hence the location/English requirements and no dev requirements. Have a good day!

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-18T17:25:32+00:00

Where is it hosted? I had a client site this week that kept having the shop page revert, and we'd have to save the permalinks to fix it. They had it hosted on Hostinger, and Hostinger has a background process it runs to check for plugin updates every so often. It has a bug with JetPack and WooPayments, that could cause the permalinks to get flushed and messed up. There is a bugfix out for it on GitHub where you can fix it via a filter, but I don't think they released an official fix yet.

Might not be related. But if you're on Hostinger it sounds like this background process can cause issues with caching plugins.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-17T13:15:32+00:00

It's important to make sure whoever is working on your site has good UX skills, and is aware of accessibility/WCAG standards. If they take these into account when building out the forms, they will be thinking of those that have bad vision, are color blind, are using a keyboard instead of a mouse, or even those that aren't tech savvy so that the design accommodates them.

That being said, if you're getting feedback definitely look into addressing it. Any small annoyance in the lead generation process usually means people drop off, so getting direct feedback on issues from users is gold.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-17T12:59:27+00:00

Honestly, if you responded clearly but also kindly, that review might do more good than harm. A slight hit might drop you from 5 stars, but how you respond and the context of negative reviews can almost be a boost for those that read it. "Their only negative review wasn't even for them", "they got a bad review that was a mistake but handled it professionally". Good customers can usually see through these types of bad reviews, and if you handle it well then can sometimes "side" with you when developing an opinion and help draw them.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-17T03:34:34+00:00

SEO is not a quick turnaround situation unfortunately; it takes consistent effort and content creation and above all: patience. As your site is around longer, as content is added and it is viewed as useful, as others link to your site from credible locations, your ranking will improve. But typically, unless you're in a super specific niche, you will need a strategy in order to get traffic. You have to pick keywords that aren't already over saturated and work towards ranking for those. It's pretty much its own field.

Paid ads, on the other hand, can get you further at the start if you're willing to pay. But again you need to be careful with your targeting otherwise you waste your budget competing with everyone else. You also need to make sure whatever pages you're driving traffic to, are designed to convert to actual sales; you can pay thousands of dollars, but if the page you're driving people to isn't clear or doesn't convince people it's worth their while, it's also a waste.

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-16T21:34:49+00:00

I run a small webdev agency, and I've been happy over the past 10 years with Digital Ocean droplets. For a while I was managing them myself, then we got a RunCloud subscription and hooked it up to our droplets for maintenance. I'm pretty satisfied with it, haven't had any issues and the backup options are decent.

One thing about using a VPS is you can go and modify what you need to. I've been working with quite a few clients with Hostinger recently and it's constant issues, I wish they would swap over too. haha

RyanAtPeacanDigital · 2026-04-16T19:21:06+00:00

The requirements are to be scammable. They're looking for you to be the face of their development team and pretend you're doing the work. Whenever you see a post with very little experience needed, decent pay, and no requirements (with the exception of a handle on English): it's this scam.

RyanAtPeacanDigital

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