Cost per reply

Upwork sells Connects and charges them per proposal and per boost, but it reports no cost per outcome. The Connects page lists transactions, the stats page counts proposals and responses, and the two never meet. Cost per reply is where they do.

The numerator is what the proposals actually cost, not what was bid. Each proposal's base fee, the boost charge if its auction ended in one, and any refund are netted from the Connects history, the same way as Connects per proposal. An outbid boost that came back costs nothing; a held boost costs its final charge. The denominator is proposals with a real client reply, counted as in reply rate.

Three rules keep it honest.

• Outreach only. Accepted invitations pay no fee and are answered readily, so they are left out or the figure looks cheaper than outreach is.
• One population. Spend and replies come from the same set of proposals, so the division is never a complete numerator over a partial denominator.
• Unsettled boosts are provisional. A boost is settled when its auction closes, up to seven days after the send, so the latest days are read before Upwork has decided what they cost.

It is a leading indicator. Replies arrive within days and contracts within weeks, so cost per reply is the number a campaign can be steered by, and it is the figure to set against any per-lead price from another channel.

How Upsight uses it. The P&L view prints cost per proposal, view, reply and meeting as steps, each the same spend over a smaller population, and the bidder's breakdown shows Connects per reply by campaign, member and template.