Guru headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA will be closed Monday, May 27 in observance of Memorial Day.  We’ll reopen on Tuesday, May 29 at 9:00 a.m. (EST). U.S. banks will also be closed during this time, so all scheduled payments will be rescheduled for Tuesday, May 28. Please don’t make payments from your bank account to third parties until you confirm that you’ve received your payment.

What is Memorial Day?

Memorial Day honors American soldiers who died serving the United States in wars.  The federal holiday is celebrated on the last Monday in May each year, and it was first observed on May 30, 1868 to honor fallen Civil War soldiers. If you’d like to pay tribute to the U.S. men and women who died while serving in the military, you can join in the minute of silence at 3:00pm, local time.  You can learn more by visiting CNN’s Memorial Day fast facts.

Did You Know: In 1968, Memorial Day was moved from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May in order to ensure a three-day weekend. We wish those of you celebrating a safe and enjoyable long weekend!

Anna

A project proposal is a statement you write with one goal in mind: to convince an Employer that you are the right person for the job. When you bid on a project, you are thrust into a highly competitive process, competing against other freelancers with similar skills. Unless you make your strengths and experience shine in your proposal, you could miss out on a great opportunity.

Fortunately one of our very own Guru.com freelancers has provided us with some fantastic proposal writing tips. Jennifer Reinoehl is a freelance author who has completed 20 projects on Guru.com in the last three months. So it is fair to say that she knows a few things about writing winning proposals! Follow her tips below to ensure that your proposal gets noticed.

Where to Start?

Writing a winning project proposal begins with you successfully matching your talents, interests, and skills to a project. Step one is to read carefully through the project and make sure you fully understand it before you bid. If you use the proposal templates (which I recommend) make sure you personalize your proposal for each job.

Make a Strong Entrance

The top two lines of your project proposal are your “selling” lines. When the employer gets your proposal, these are the lines that will make him or her decide to keep reading your proposal or skip it. If the employer requires a specific response to show that you read the entire project, put it on top. Do not try to creatively embed your response in a sentence. Chances are good that, if the employer does not see it immediately, he or she will not even read the rest of your proposal.

Sell Your Specific Strengths

What is your most marketable trait? Include it underneath any required responses. This trait may vary depending on the project. For example, if you are applying for a job that is academic, your degree will be the first thing you highlight. On the other hand, if the job requires a specific skill set, you want to focus on your experience. On rare occasions, such as when the employer needs a job finished within 24-hours, you can put something such as a time estimate near the top.

What other qualities do you have that make you a good fit for the job? Outline them in one paragraph if possible.

Answer Employer Questions

Next, be sure you answer any questions the employer might have asked. Sometimes these questions can be answered throughout your text (even at the top); other times you can just set them in their own paragraph.

Provide Estimates

After you have explained why you would be the best person to complete the project, then it is time to provide time and cost estimates. Be accurate or explain why you are unable to give a specific quote. Most employers do not like placeholder bids, so ask questions before bidding.

Don’t Forget Your Manners!

Finally, thank the employer for reading your proposal Make an impression, so that even if you are not chosen for that particular project, the employer might think of you for future projects. If you are awarded the project, you will be starting off on the right foot!

More Tips on Writing a Winning Proposal:

• Only rarely should your proposal grow to be bigger than the box in which you type it. Try to keep it about that size, or in some cases less, without sacrificing quality.
• Use your templates. Yes, you need to make individualized proposals. However, templates save time, and they prevent editing mistakes that can cause you to be overlooked for the job. Regardless of whether you filled in a template or wrote from scratch, you should always write in complete sentences and reread a proposal for errors before you post it.
• Winning proposals are backed by winning profiles, and winning profiles alone can get you jobs.
• Winning proposals have work samples attached even if you have them posted on your profile. If you cannot attach a sample, point employers to your profile and put samples there.
• Finally, premium proposals are best used to draw attention to your bid on jobs that fit your profile perfectly or jobs where you are competing against many other freelancers. Of course you want every job to which you apply, but using premium proposals all the time can drain your bids.

About The Author

Jennifer Reinoehl is a jack-of-all-trades freelance author on Guru.com. Non-fiction and postmodern fiction are her favorite genres of freelance writing. When she is not writing, she can be found checking out stacks of books at the local libraries or contributing valuable advice and answers to the Guru Answers community. Jennifer holds both a degree in Biology and a degree in Theatre. In college, she performed biomedical research on a variety of topics, including the medicinal uses of insects. She has traveled across the United States, visited Canada, the Bahamas, and England, and lived in France. In her spare time, Jennifer volunteers with organizations that teach children and improve their self-confidence.

Anna

Effective April 26, Guru will no longer facilitate withdrawal of funds via paper checks.

• Guru will still accept payments by check
• Users can still transfer funds out of their Guru cash account by direct deposit (U.S. bank accounts only), PayPal, prepaid MasterCard and wire transfer (non-U.S. bank accounts only).

Why we will no longer facilitate withdrawals via paper check?

Two reasons. 1. Only a handful of users (less than 2%) withdraw funds out of their Guru cash account by check. Most users are using electronic methods to withdraw funds  2. Electronic withdrawals are much faster and more reliable.

If you haven’t already registered and confirmed an alternative method for fund withdrawal, please do so at your earliest convenience. To learn more about alternative methods for fund withdrawals, please select from the links listed below.

Freelancers

• Direct Deposit (U.S. bank accounts only)
• PayPal
• Prepaid MasterCard
• Wire Transfer (non-U.S. bank accounts only)

Employers

• E-check (U.S. bank accounts only)
• PayPal

Lauren

With the federal observance of Presidents’ Day in the U.S. on Monday, Feb 18, payments made by Prepaid MasterCard, direct deposit or wire transfer may be delayed in reaching you. Although Guru is open our regular hours and will be processing payments as usual, all U.S. banks are closed on this date.
Please be mindful of the potential for payment delays as you coordinate with your Employers on any upcoming transactions.

Lauren

Based on recommendations from Microsoft and Amazon, we made some changes to our systems at approximately 10:00 a.m this morning. For over 6 hours now, our systems have performed without an incident. There are still a couple of issues we are watching closely. As and when we learn more, appropriate action will be taken. Overall, I am happy to report that our systems are now stable. Your patience and words of encouragement through these stressful hours have been invaluable.

Thanks to your support, we now have the platform to take the Guru.com service to new highs.

Inder

We are continuing to work with engineers at Amazon and Microsoft. Various theories are being pursed to get to the root cause of the instability in the performance of our website. Your patience is much appreciated.

For those of you who have a technical curiosity,  there seems to be a communication problem between the load-balancer and our web servers. While trying to ascertain which web server has capacity to take on a new user, the load-balancer is marking the web server as inactive. Why this communication is breaking down remains the subject of investigation. Overall, the problem is a bit more complex and cannot be resolved by taking a couple of machines out of service, so the disruptions.

With your patience and support, we will certainly get through this challenge.

Lauren

The Guru.com website was moved to the Amazon cloud at 1:30 pm on February 10. Since the move we have been experiencing intermittent problems with our service.

Our engineers are working around the clock to restore our service to the standards you expect. We will keep you posted of our progress.

Your patience is appreciated.

Lauren

The Guru.com website will be unavailable on Sunday, February 10, between 7:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. EST.

To improve site performance, and more importantly to create capacity that will allow us to deliver some very exciting features in 2013, we are moving Guru.com to the Amazon Web Services cloud.  We expect this move to be accomplished in approximately 6 hours, during which time our services will be unavailable.  Your patience during this outage will be appreciated.

While our website may be moving to the clouds, our hearts and minds remain very much grounded.  As always, we are very excited to improve our service to match your growing needs.  Thank you for the opportunity!

Lauren

With the federal observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. on Monday, January 21, payments made by Prepaid MasterCard, direct deposit or wire transfer may be delayed in reaching you. Although Guru is open our regular hours and will be processing payments as usual, most U.S. banks are closed on this date.

Please be mindful of the potential for payment delays as you coordinate with your Employers on any upcoming transactions.

Lauren

All 1099-MISC Tax Forms have been posted to Guru.com for qualifying Freelancers.

Tax season will be here before you know it – but you can view your 1099-MISC Form today to get started on your tax filing.

It is your responsibility to report your 1099-MISC earnings to the IRS.

To view or print your 1099-MISC Form:

• Log into your Guru.com Account.
• On your Dashboard, find the “Payments & Feedback” section on the right side bar.
• Click the “1099 Tax Forms” link.

Which Freelancers Qualify for a 1099-MISC Form?

All of the following conditions must be met to receive a 1099-MISC Form:

• You received payment from an Employer who uses Guru.com’s free 1099 service
• You completed a W-9 form with a valid U.S. social security number (SSN)
• You reside within the U.S. and,
• You received payments through Guru.com totaling $600 or more in 2012.

Please contact an accountant or tax firm if you have any questions about your tax filing.

Lauren