Glossary
Done-for-you lead generation
Done-for-you lead generation is a service in which an outside team runs an agency's Upwork bidding, finding jobs and writing and sending proposals on its behalf, a practice Upwork does not define but whose access rules it sets.
Updated
Also written: Upwork lead generation service, Outsourced Upwork bidding, Managed Upwork bidding.
Upwork has no page about the service. What it does have are rules on who may act for an agency and how. Agency members are told that "sign-in details must not be shared" with the agency owner or anyone else, and that agency management tools handle permissions without account access. Proposals for members are sent by a business manager, and every proposal draws on the agency's shared Connects.
That makes the first question about any provider a mechanical one: how will they send? The answer falls into a few patterns.
- A role on your agency. The provider's people are added to the roster with the permissions they need and send as business managers. Access can be removed at any time.
- Your login. The provider signs in as you or a member. This is the sharing Upwork tells members not to do.
- Their software on your account. The provider runs a tool against your login. Upwork's automation rules apply to your account, not theirs, whoever wrote the tool.
What to agree before starting. Which members may be proposed and at what rate floor, a Connects budget per week, whether you see every letter before or after it is sent, who answers the client's first reply, and who keeps the proposal history and data when the contract ends.
How to judge it. Providers price in different ways, and Upwork publishes no benchmark for any of them. The comparable figure is your own: Connects and fees spent per client reply, and per hire, set against what the agency would pay to send the same proposals itself. See cost per reply and upwork bidder for the in-house version of the role.
Source
Upwork's definition: How agencies work for freelancers, read on .