Posting a job that gets good proposals

Posting is free and takes a few minutes. What you write determines the quality of everything that comes back, so the few minutes are worth spending properly.

Choosing the type first

Before writing anything, decide how the work will be paid for, because it changes what freelancers can propose:

• Fixed price for work with a definable scope, paid in milestones.
• Hourly for work where the scope will move, with a weekly hour cap.
• Dedicated Hire for an ongoing monthly engagement.

If the work is small and completely standard, you may not need a job post at all — a Drop-In is a fixed package you can simply buy. See The four ways to hire for how to choose.

The type is set when you post and shapes the proposals, so getting it right matters more than it looks.

Writing the post

The title is a filter, not a headline. Freelancers scan a list of titles and decide what to open. "React developer needed" tells them nothing that distinguishes it from forty others. "Rebuild a 12-page Next.js marketing site, existing design in Figma" tells them the stack, the size and that a design already exists. The second gets fewer opens and far better ones.

The description is where proposals are won or lost. Include:

• What you are building, and why. Context lets someone propose an approach rather than a price.
• What exists already. A codebase, a design, a brand, a half-finished attempt. This changes the work enormously and its absence is the most common cause of a mismatch later.
• What "done" looks like. The single most valuable sentence in the post, and the one most often missing.
• Constraints that are real. Stack, deadline, timezone overlap, compliance.
• What you are not asking for. Ruling things out is as useful as ruling them in.

Budget. Being realistic gets you better proposals, not more expensive ones. A budget far below the work attracts people who have not read it and repels everyone who has. If you genuinely do not know, say what outcome you want and ask for an approach and a price.

Attachments. You can attach files. A brief, a design, a spec or an example is worth several paragraphs.

Drafts and publishing

A job can be saved as a draft while you work on it. Drafts are not visible to anyone and receive nothing. They live in their own tab so an unfinished post is never confused with a live one.

Publishing makes it visible and it starts receiving proposals. Before publishing, the job needs to be categorised properly, because that determines which freelancers see it. Getting the category right is one of the higher-leverage things you do — a well-written post in the wrong category reaches the wrong people.

Visibility

Public jobs appear in search and can be found by any eligible freelancer.

Private jobs are not listed and reach only people you invite. Useful for confidential work, or when you already know who you want and are using the job as a container for the contract.

What happens after you post

Proposals arrive. How many depends enormously on category, budget and how well the post is written. The job page shows a competition indicator so you can see whether you are in a quiet corner or a crowded one.

Sending a proposal costs a freelancer something, so a considered proposal is a genuine signal of interest rather than a mass mailing. This is deliberate and it is why the volume here is lower and the quality higher than on platforms where applying is free.

You are not obliged to hire anyone. A job that receives nothing you like costs you nothing.

If you get no proposals, or bad ones

Work through this before reposting:

• Is the category right? Wrong category is the most common cause of silence.
• Is the title specific? Generic titles do not get opened.
• Is the budget plausible for the work described?
• Does your account look real? Freelancers check. A client profile with no company details and no verified payment method gets skipped, because spending a bid on an account that might not fund anything is a bad bet. Adding a payment method and completing your profile is the highest-return fix available to you.
• Is the description long enough to propose against? Two sentences cannot be proposed to sensibly, so you get two-sentence proposals.

You can edit a live job. If it was not landing, improving it is better than posting a second one.

Closing, expiring and reposting

Jobs are not deleted once published. This is deliberate: freelancers spent something to apply, and deleting the post would destroy the record of their proposals. Instead:

Close it when you have hired or no longer need it. Outstanding proposals are archived rather than left hanging, and their authors are told.

Expiry happens automatically after a period without activity, so the board does not fill with jobs nobody is watching. An expired job stops receiving proposals.

Repost takes a closed or expired job and creates a fresh one from it, keeping the link back to the original. Better than writing it again, and honest about the history.

A draft that was never published and has no proposals can be deleted outright, because nobody spent anything on it.

From proposal to contract

Once you have proposals, the path is: shortlist, talk in messages, then send an offer. The offer is the document that becomes the contract, setting out milestones and money. When the freelancer accepts and it is funded, work starts.

See Reviewing proposals and choosing someone and Sending an offer.

A structure that works

If you are unsure how to lay a description out, this order works for almost any job.

The context. One paragraph: who you are, what you are building, why this work exists.

The work. What you need done, specifically.

What exists already. Codebase, designs, brand, previous attempts. The most commonly omitted section and the one that changes the work most.

What done looks like. The single most valuable paragraph in the post.

Constraints. Stack, deadline, timezone, compliance, anything non-negotiable.

What you are not asking for.

How to apply. If you want something specific mentioned in the proposal, say so — it also filters out anyone who did not read to the end.

Categorising properly

Category determines who sees your post, and it is worth two minutes rather than picking the first plausible option.

If you are unsure between two, look at where similar jobs sit, or search for the kind of freelancer you want and see which category they are in. Posting design work under development, or vice versa, is the most common reason a well-written job gets no proposals.

Skills attached to the post work the same way. Be accurate rather than exhaustive; twenty skills matches you to everybody and therefore to nobody.

Reposting well

If a job did not work the first time, do not repost it unchanged.

Look at what actually happened. No proposals at all usually means a category or a budget problem. Plenty of proposals but none good usually means the description was too vague to propose against properly. Good proposals but nobody you wanted usually means the budget.

Change one thing deliberately and repost. Reposting an identical job produces an identical result.

What happens to proposals when you close

Worth knowing because it affects how you should behave.

Closing a job archives the outstanding proposals and notifies their authors. Nobody is left waiting indefinitely, but they are told only when you act.

So close jobs you are done with, promptly. Freelancers paid to apply, and a job left open for weeks after you hired somebody is the most common complaint about clients on any marketplace. It costs you nothing and it takes one click.

The same applies to individual proposals: archive the ones you are not taking as soon as you know, rather than leaving them in limbo until the job closes.

Editing a live job

You can edit a published job, and it is usually better than posting a second one.

If it is not attracting the right people, improve the description, fix the category, or adjust the budget. Existing proposals stay, and the job keeps its history.

What editing cannot do is change the job type, because proposals were made against that type. If you posted fixed-price and now want hourly, close it and post again.

Private jobs

If you already know who you want, a private job reaches only the people you invite and does not appear in search.

This is the right route for confidential work, for rehiring somebody, or for turning a conversation you have already had into a contract. The job exists as the container for the engagement; nothing is publicly listed.

Related

• The four ways to hire
• Reviewing proposals and choosing someone
• Finding and inviting talent directly