Bids are not free. Your account has a limited number of them, and each one costs you the time to write it. The cheapest way to win more work is to stop bidding on projects that were never going to hire you. That is what client filters are for: a short list of rules that remove the weakest opportunities before you spend anything on them.
Why client quality matters more than project quality
A well-written project from a client who never pays is worse than a vague project from a client with a clean history. When you choose where to bid, look at the person first.
The signals worth checking are the same ones Freelancer.com shows on every client profile.
The signals worth filtering on
Payment verification
A client with a verified payment method has at least put a card or account behind their account. It does not guarantee a good client, but an unverified one has not done even this much. For most freelancers, requiring a verified payment method is the single most useful filter.
Reviews and rating
A rating tells you how past freelancers found the client. Be careful with small numbers: a 5.0 from one review says little, while a 4.6 from forty reviews says a lot. A reasonable starting rule is to skip clients with several reviews and a low average, and to give new clients with no reviews a fair chance if other signals look good.
Past projects and hire rate
Clients who have completed projects before know how the platform works. A client who has posted twenty projects and hired nobody may be collecting quotes rather than hiring.
Country
Country can matter for time zone, language, currency and the kind of work you do best. It is also a sensitive filter, because it can shut out good clients. Use it to match your working hours and the languages you write well in, not to guess who pays.
Budget range
Ignore projects far below the rate you can work at. But watch out for the opposite mistake: a client who writes a small budget may still be open to a larger scope if your proposal explains the value. Set the minimum at the lowest number that is still worth your time.
How strict should you be?
Start with a short list of firm rules and add more only when you see a pattern in the projects you regret bidding on.
- Firm: payment verified.
- Firm: a minimum budget that matches your lowest acceptable rate.
- Flexible: a minimum rating, applied only when the client has enough reviews to mean something.
- Flexible: countries, based on language and time zone.
Filters that are too strict leave you with nothing to bid on, which is its own failure. If your filters would skip almost every project, loosen the weakest one first. AutoBidPilot warns you when your client filters would skip most recent projects, and asks for confirmation before saving, so you notice before you starve your own pipeline. You can see how the filters fit into the rest of the setup in how AutoBidPilot works.
Review your filters every month
Open your last ten lost bids and your last ten won ones. Which clients did each group come from? If won projects keep coming from clients you filter out, relax that rule. If lost bids keep going to a pattern you could have spotted, tighten it.
Filters are not a substitute for judgment
A filter removes obvious misses, nothing more. Read the project before you bid, and listen to your instincts when a brief asks for free work, a sample "to test you" that is really the whole job, or payment outside the platform. Our article on writing a proposal that gets replies covers what to do once a project passes your filters.