Choosing Your Specialized Profile

When sending proposals, the specialized profile used matters for ranking your proposal among competitors.
Use the profile that best matches the job niche for higher visibility.
This topic is beyond onboarding scope; reach out to customer support for details.

Knowledge Base & Cover Letter Templates

Link the Knowledge Base profile that filters jobs contextually for this campaign.
Select the cover letter template to use when sending proposals in this campaign.
You can experiment with these using Test Mode before finalizing.
External Mode campaigns skip this step — the Configuration tab won't show it. Bidding decisions, cover letters, and screening answers for those jobs come from your own integration instead, so your Knowledge Base profile and cover letter templates are never read. What an External campaign needs instead: at least one saved campaign filter and an active job.new webhook. See Test Mode, External Mode & Advanced.

Set the number of proposals per day to control spend and pacing.
Define work schedules to specify when Lancer can send proposals automatically.
- Outside of defined hours, jobs go into a "leads queue" for manual approval.
Most users leave this off for continuous automation; it's useful if you want more manual control.

Bidding delay is the wait time before sending a qualified job proposal.
Default is 5 minutes, aiming to be first without rushing.
Strategies:
- Send immediately to beat competition.
- Wait to boost and send proposals when clients are more active.
- Choose to wait for manual approval before proposals get sent.

If a location or vendor criteria warning appears:
- Choose Bid Anyway to maintain visibility (recommended if boosting).
- Choose Skip to avoid lower-ranking proposals if not boosting.

Automatically skip jobs where the client has already hired someone to save connects.
This feature helps avoid wasting resources by responding quickly to client updates.

Choose how Lancer prices hourly jobs from four strategies:
- Smart Hourly Rate — bids your profile's established hourly rate, adjusted only as needed to fit the job's posted hourly range. Optionally set a Minimum Hourly Rate (\$1–\$10,000): the bid never goes below it, even when that means bidding above the job's posted max. Leave it empty for no minimum.
- Match Job Hourly Rate — bid a fixed position within the job's range: its min, mid, or max.
- Match Profile Rate — always bid your profile's established hourly rate, regardless of the job's range.
- Static Hourly Rate — set one fixed $/hr and bid that amount on every hourly job.
Smart Hourly Rate examples:
- Job $20–40, profile $60 → bids $40 (the job's range wins over a higher profile rate).
- Job $70–90, profile $60 → bids $70 (the job's range wins over a lower profile rate).
- Job $15–90, profile $50 → bids $50 (profile rate already fits the range).
- No posted range → bids your profile rate (or the Minimum Hourly Rate, if set higher).
- Job $25–40, Minimum Hourly Rate $50 → bids $50 — the minimum wins even though it's above the job's posted max.

Decide how Lancer prices bids on fixed-price jobs. Choose a strategy from the dropdown:
- Dynamic Fixed Rate — multiplies the job's posted budget by a multiplier you set, from 0.5x to 4.0x. For example, a 1.5x multiplier bids $1,500 on a $1,000 job.
- Static Fixed Rate — always bids the same dollar amount ($1–$1,000,000) on every fixed-price job, regardless of that job's posted budget.

Boosting improves proposal visibility and ranking among competitors.
Recommended if your budget allows investing in connects to dominate top positions.
Setup:
- Set minimum boost connects (e.g., 20 or 30).
- If a competitor boosts higher, your boost automatically adjusts to be one step above, up to your max limit.
- If maximum boost is exceeded by others, Lancer skips boosting that job or bids without boost based on settings.
Boosting guardrails (optional): protect your connects budget by only boosting proposals sent to clients who meet minimum quality bars. Turn on Boosting guardrails inside the Boost Proposals settings, then set any of these checks — leave a field blank to skip it:
- Client rating is at least — minimum average client rating, 0–5.
- Hire rate is at least — minimum % of the client's job postings that resulted in a hire.
- Client has spent at least — minimum total amount ($) the client has spent on Upwork.
- Require verified payment method — the client must have a verified payment method on file. This is checked by default when you enable guardrails.
If a client doesn't clear a guardrail you've set, Lancer still sends the proposal as normal — it just leaves out the boost for that one.

Proper campaign configuration balances automation, budget, and competitive strategy.
Experimenting with delays, boosts, and work schedules can optimize your success.
Manual approvals provide control but typically reduce speed and efficiency.