This is the first in a 6-part series of posts on How to Write Winning Bids and Proposals.

While I will be giving specific examples of bid writing techniques from Elance, the information in these posts is relevant and applicable to all freelance proposals in any online medium.

I hope you’ll be able to use this information to bid smarter and significantly reduce your proposal writing time in the long term as well as attain a higher award ratio.

One of the first things you need to do as freelancers is to look for projects that match your skill set. The way I see it, if you don’t care much for the topic you’re writing on, you won’t write with enthusiasm, passion or dedication. Although good writers can research and write on just about anything, great writers write about what they’re genuinely interested in.

Your passion for your topic will come through in your bid. And that’s what clients are looking for: someone to treat their project with the same (or more) care and attention than they themselves would treat it.

If you’re an established freelancer who already knows his niche, then that’s great! But if you’re a beginner who’s unsure about what topics and what kind of projects to handle, then read on.

Why it’s Important to Have a Niche

A niche is a specialty area. The logic behind having a niche market is simple: it’s easier to excel in one dedicated area than be average in several different areas. In others words, be a specialist rather than a jack of all trades.

If you have a finance background, start off with financial writing; if you’re a mommy blogger, start off with parenting articles; if you’re into cooking, write about that.

Find what your passion is and channel it with your writing. Don’t yet know what niche market you’d like to claim? No problem. Read on.

Step 1: Identify your Skills

The first step in determining your niche is to make a list of all the things you either love to do (or talk about) or that you have experience in.

Fill out the table below as honestly as possible. There may be some overlap, but that’s okay. So long as you can clearly identify the stuff that gets your motor running, you’re on the right track to finding your passion.

Your past or current work experience: ____________________________________

Education: ­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________________________________

Hobbies: __________________________________________________________

Passions in life: _____________________________________________________

Things you’re interested in: ___________________________________________

Stuff you have unique insights on: ______________________________________

Awards won or recognition received: ____________________________________

When filling this out, think about what you like to do, think about what people say you do well, think about what past jobs you’ve enjoyed the most.

Here’s what a sample filled out table might look like:

Although this is just an example, you can see that a typical person has many varied interests in life. How then do you determine what your niche is to be?

My advice is to pick 2 or 3 topics from the above and experiment with them, carefully analyzing what you have the most success with. It could be that while your three passions in life are parenting, cooking and tennis, you’re only good at the first two as a business opportunity and prefer actually playing the third.

It’s OK to have more than one passion. You can experiment with different niches and see what you have the most success with. But know this: chances are that you will have the highest success rate doing what you’re most passionate about.

Step 2: Match your Skills with a Project’s Requirements

Next up, identify how well you fit in with the project’s requirements. Use the following checklist:

-      Do you have the experience needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the expertise needed for the project and can you prove it?

-      Do you have the passion needed for your proposal to stand out amongst many?

One of the most important things you can do to demonstrate your passion, ability and experience is to have relevant samples. It’s so important a point that I’m going to give it its own blog post when we come to section 4 of this series.

Step 3: Set up Alerts for New Projects in your Niche

Setting up alerts is a great way to receive info whenever a project is posted in the niche area that you’d like to work in. Alerts also help you be more productive by cutting down your freelance job search time and replacing it with qualified leads to follow up on.

• How to Receive RSS alerts

On Elance simply sign up to receive the RSS feed of the topic areas you’d want to receive new job posting info on. Just click on any Elance page, click the orange RSS icon on the top of that page and subscribe using your favorite RSS reader (mine’s Google Reader).

• How to Receive Twitter Alerts

Simply set up a twitter alert using your key terms and prefacing them with hashtags. So if you’re a graphic designer looking for logo design jobs, those could be your search terms. If you’re using TweetDeck, which I use, simple add a column for your search term (e.g. #logo #design #freelance #jobs) and the software will automatically update and notify you when those terms are used by anyone in twitterverse.

• How to Sign Up For Google Alerts

Perhaps the most widely-used alert service, Google alerts, is accurate, free and easy to use. Simply go to http://www.google.com/alerts and fill in the search criteria in the box. Remember to put your search query in “__” (double quotes) to get accurate results otherwise you might be inundated with trivia and irrelevant items. An example alert query could be “technical writing jobs” or “freelance technical writers”. Google will send you an email when it finds results that meet your criteria.

Well, that’s it. The easy way to identify your passion, carve out a niche from it and start bidding ferociously in it. Once you find projects that speak to you, you’ll be racing to write that proposal for them and your words will flow with enthusiasm at finding something that resonates with you. Your mind will be full of creative ideas on how best to tackle the project and your heart will be racing to see if you got the job or not. That is the best kind of work to do. And really, isn’t that why you became a freelancer in the first place?

If you liked this article and want to know more about writing effective bids and proposals, please read Part II: How to Investigate Buyers.