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Freelance Cover Letter: What You Should Include + Examples

A well-detailed freelance cover letter has the potential to make your profile stand out – a prospect that most self-employed people want.

Not only does it give you the chance to express to your clients what makes you the right fit for the job , but it also shows clients how you’ve put in the work to better understand them and their needs .

Learn in this article why you should use a freelance cover letter, what information you should include in it and download our free cover letter for freelance work !

Benefits of a freelance cover letter

• Things to include in your cover letter

Freelance cover letter sample (Free download)

Before we get started on all the things you should include in your cover letter, let’s first talk about why a cover letter is so important to freelancers and how it can help you with your client proposals .

First things first, a cover letter tells your clients exactly who you are and what it is you can do for them. It allows you to highlight your strengths and tells your client that you are serious about having the opportunity to work for them .

Another reason why you should include a cover letter with every proposal is that it has the added benefit of bolstering your resume. If your resume is not persuasive enough to garner a call back, a cover letter attached to it can help.

Need a hand with your freelancer resume? 💡 How to List Freelance Work on Your CV

Things to include in your freelance cover letter

Now that we’ve established the importance of a cover lette r, let’s take a look at some of the most important things that your cover letter should include :

#1 Your name and information

Start your cover letter with your name and your contact information . You don’t want potential clients hunting for information on how to contact you should they wish to work with you. Your contact information should include your email and phone number .

#2 Date + client’s name and information

The next thing to include in your cover letter is the current date, name of your client, and any available contact information (email or office address).

Make sure to position this on the left side of your cover letter as it is generally what is expected.

#3 Salutation (greeting)

Always greet your client with a polite salutation (Dear Mr., Ms., or Mx.) before you start your opening paragraph. It’s always a good idea to r esearch your client and use their last name in your salutation – this shows that you’ve done your research.

Seeing their name on the cover letter may grab the hiring person’s interest and they will probably be more receptive to your application .

Join our IT freelancer community today! Create your freelance profile in just 2 minutes .  

#4 Introduction

The beginning first paragraph of your cover letter should contain an opening line that hooks your client in straight away . For example, you could give them feedback or a compliment.

Try mentioning how you learned about the project, what caught your attention from the project description and show your enthusiasm for the position by mentioning some facts about it.

Hello Mr. Maas, Thanks for adding the Profile Verification feature to freelancermap. I’m a long-time freelancermap user and since I verified my profile I’m getting in touch more often. I noticed you are currently also looking for a SEO expert and I’d be happy to help you rank for keywords such as “XY” or “YX” in the top 5. I belive my past experience could make a valuable asset for the team.

#5 Your achievements and reasons why you should be considered

Now it’s time to start writing the main body of your cover letter. You should start by listing your achievements – consider adding in factual data about how your work helped improve a particular product or company. 

An achievement example to include in your cover letter as a digital marketer or SEO :

For the past 6 months, I helped XY place 15 relevant keywords in the top search results, resulting in an increase of X% in traffic and therefore an increase of X% in the number of customers.

By doing X and Y, I increased (Client X) website conversion rates by 32%.

Including numbers and data rather than vague achievements increases your chances of landing the project because it shows your clients how your work can improve their performance.

Tip: Include relevant keywords that the clients used in the job description (e.g. responsibilities or needed qualifications). Match those keywords with your actual skills to demonstrate that you would be a good fit for the project.

#6 Conclusion and CTA

Conclude your cover letter with a brief (but strong) closing paragraph. Reiterate your value to your client and hint at how you can be of use to them by teasing an impressive achievement.

Here’s an example of a closing paragraph for a freelance cover letter :

I’d be super happy to show you how I was able to increase (previous company)’s revenue in a short period of time. Would you have time for a 15-min call? I propose August 5 @ 9am or August 9 @ 10am (EST). If that works, please send me a zoom or other video link for the call.

#7 Sign off and name

Sign off your cover letter by using simple one-liners such as ‘ Kind regards ’ or ‘ Sincerely ’ along with your full name at the end .  Also do not forget to thank them for their time and consideration.

I appreciate your time and consideration . Best regards, The freelancer

More information and tips for a cover letter for a freelance job:

• Proofread – Review your cover letter for typos or spelling mistakes (Especially in a cover letter for a freelance writer!).
• Build trust – Clients just want the work to be done efficiently and on time. Show them how you worked with other clients.
• Mention tools you use for work, communication or project management – This will help the client understand your working process.
• Availability – Will you be working with other members of their team?If the client is based in the US say: I am also available in US time zones.
• Technical excellence – No 2 freelance jobs are the same, read through the project description and identify what expertise is especially required by the client. Let them know that you have that important skill.

With the examples provided before, you can customise your own freelancer cover letter , but here’s a free template that you can use to get your own cover letter started !

You can download it (no e-mail address required) and use it for reference.

Don’t forget to customise it according to your preferences and the job in question .

Of course, depending on the work to do, the cover letter will be different. A freelance translator cover letter  would have fewer similarities with a cover letter for a freelance web developer in terms of skills.

However, the cover letter format and structure will apply to any industry.

Do you have a cover letter example that gets you instant responses from clients? Share your tips and experience with us!

You might also like :

• NDA for freelancers – Tips & template
• How to convince clients they should hire you
• Templates & Documents every Freelancer should Have

Natalia Campana

Natalia is part of the international team at freelancermap. She loves the digital world, social media and meeting different cultures. Before she moved to Germany and joined the freelancermap team she worked in the US, UK and her home country Spain. Now she focuses on helping freelancers and IT professionals to find jobs and clients worldwide at www.freelancermap.com

Grato Natália!

Como sempre nos dando apoio e dicas super importantes para o nosso sucesso!

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Freelance Resume and Cover Letter Examples and Tips

• List Everything You're Good At
• Decide What Type of Job You Want

Develop Your Elevator Speech

Pick a style, be ruthless.

• Skip Unnecessary Space Wasters

Show Your Work

Freelance resume sample.

• Focus on Being a Solution

Format It for the Bored and Busy

Give it a personal touch, let your work speak for you.

• Follow Up, But Don't Stalk

Freelance Cover Letter Example

Creating a resume and cover letter can be tricky, even if you work for an employer and your career is pretty straightforward. For freelancers, it's even more complicated.

Not only do you have to grab the client's attention, pitch your skills, and prove that you're the best person for the job, you also have to make sure that the breadth of your experience makes you look accomplished, not scattershot.

Remember, even if you never have an employee or choose to incorporate, you are a small business owner, not someone who's doing odd jobs.

Review these tips for writing resumes and cover letters that will help you get the gig. There are examples of both and templates you can download to get your own letter and resume started.

Make a List of Everything You're Good At

Before you even start looking at resume templates or thinking about what you want your resume to look like, you need to remind yourself of why you're such an amazing catch for a prospective client. The best way to do that is to start with a simple list, which at a minimum should include:  

• Skills. This includes both hard skills, like software packages and computer systems, and soft skills, like teamwork and management experience.
• Education and training . Go beyond your degrees and formal certificates. Professional training and classes that are relevant to your work count, too.
• Achievements . Win an award? Graduate with honors? Publish a paper or acquire a patent or trademark? Write it down.
• Accomplishments . Include projects you've managed or participated in, from website redesigns to business acquisitions to department restructuring. Don't exaggerate—and certainly don't lie—but if you contributed to the success of a discrete, tangible improvement at a company or as a freelancer, put it on your list.

Here's some good news: once you have your list, you also have your resume keywords . Used by recruiting management software , keywords help your resume make it through the filter and onto a recruiter's or client's desk.

Decide Which Types of Jobs You're Going After

And now here's some bad news: You're probably going to have to make more than one resume, especially as a freelancer. Unless you're only going after one very specific niche job in an industry, you'll need to create targeted resumes to apply to each type of gig.

To make this as easy as possible, think about what types of jobs and clients you plan to focus on, and then match those with your skills list. Pretty quickly, you'll start to see how many and what kind of resumes you'll need to develop. You can probably get by with no more than two or three basic resumes, which you'll then adapt further for specific clients.

If you opt to create personal templates like these, it's a good idea to enlist an eagle-eyed friend to proofread each resume and cover letter before you send them out to prospective clients. Nothing terminates a nascent client-freelancer relationship faster than a cover letter with the wrong company name on it or a resume with totally off-base skills and focus.

Now you know what you're good at, and what you want to do. Distill that into a description that takes a minute or less to deliver—in other words, about the length of time it would take to explain your goals to a stranger in an elevator .

Another way to think about this is as your LinkedIn-headline speech or your Twitter-bio speech—in short, it's the essence of who you are and what you want in a freelance career. Whatever you want to call it, this will be the organizing idea behind your resume. Depending on the format you choose, it might even go at the top of your resume or CV.

There are many ways to organize your resume, but for freelancers, the challenge is to present your skills quickly, so that busy clients can't miss your abilities, without creating a confusing job chronology that distracts from your talents.

There are essentially three main ways to order your resume :

• Chronological , by gig or project . Full-time freelancers who've been working for themselves for a while will want to dispense with the life-story format used by many job seekers who solely work for one employer. The organizing principle here is the order in which you worked on projects.
• Combination , including your full-time employment. Newer freelancers might wish to do a combination resume, which includes both work history and skills.
• By skill set . Also called a functional resume , this style highlights what you can do, not the order in which you acquired your skills or demonstrated them.

Your resume is not an autobiography; at most, it's a profile piece in a glossy magazine. Better yet, it's your most targeted social media profile—organized, precise, and directed unwaveringly at getting you the opportunities you want the most.

This means you need to cut out anything that isn't totally necessary, including unrelated job skills and accomplishments, no matter how impressive, and any projects that don't demonstrate your aptitude for the gig you're after.

Skip These Unnecessary Space Wasters

In fact, there are some traditional resume components that you can almost always skip completely, including:

• Objective. Usually taking up a line or two of space at the top of your resume or CV, this is redundant after your targeted cover letter and costs precious seconds that potential clients could be using to take in your skills and experience. 
• References available upon request. You should definitely have professional references , ready to go—but you don't need to tell people that. They'll assume that you'll be willing to furnish them with contact information for happy clients and previous employers.

In the olden days, graphic artists carried heavy portfolios and journalists toted binders full of yellowing clips, but now you can store your work samples online, via any number of free or paid services, and add your URL directly to your resume, cover letter, or application materials.

This is an example of a resume for a freelance position. Download the freelance resume template (compatible with Google Docs and Word Online) or see below for more examples.

Freelance Resume Sample (Text Version)

John C. Writer 423 Allen Street, Apt. 2  Pittsburgh, PA 99999 (123) 456-7890 jcwriter@email.com

FREELANCE WRITER AND EDITOR

Creating compelling articles, documents, and social media posts for a variety of clients

Award-winning Freelance Writer, Editor, and Social Media Manager with 10+ years’ experience creating online content that draws plenty of clicks, as well as elegant documents and articles for various clients.

Key skills include:

• Expert in Online Traffic Analysis and Targeted Content Creation
• Fluent in SEO Process
• Have Written About and Edited Content on Men’s Health, Sports, and Parenting.
• Can Create Internal & External Communications

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK, Pittsburgh, PA EDITOR AND WRITER (February 2015 – Present) Founding editor of this Bloggie-winning, highly trafficked website that has been cited in Yahoo! Sports, Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, and even The New York Times.

Notable accomplishments:

• Interview major sports figures in the NFL, NBA, and MLB for regular posts and articles.
• Oversee a staff of 10 freelance writers and editors who contribute weekly content.

MENSMAG.COM, New York, NY FREELANCE EDITOR AND WRITER (June 2010 – February 2015) Contributed to sports, health, and parenting sections as a freelance writer and editor.

Notable Accomplishments:

• Created targeted content based on traffic analysis, often producing most-read pieces on the site.
• Edited copy produced by nearly 100 freelance writers through the U.S.

EDUCATION & CREDENTIALS

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY , Washington, D.C.

Bachelor of Science in English Literature (3.75 GPA; Graduated Magma Cum Laude), May 2010

Certifications and Organizations

Certificate in Social Media Management (CSMM) • American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA)

Other Skills

Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel • Proficient in HTML

Once you have your resume created, you can address the problem writing a cover letter.

Focus Your Cover Letter on Being a Solution

Why do they need you? Because they have a problem they need to solve. Your goal is to show why you're the best person to provide that solution.

This focuses your cover letter right off the bat. No longer are you thinking of your entire work history or even the skills of which you're most proud. You now have a laser focus on the thing that really matters: fixing what's broken, turning the merely good into the truly excellent, and saving the company time and money as you do so.

At its most basic, the freelancer's cover letter looks a lot like everyone else's. You need at least three paragraphs in your letter : an introduction explaining how you found the job or lead, a middle paragraph outlining your skills and abilities, and a closing paragraph indicating how you'll be following up.

Beyond that, focus on making your letter easy to scan. Bullets are your friend, especially when you're listing your relevant skills or projects that demonstrate your talents . Assume that the person reading your cover letter will spend only a few seconds on it, and make sure that he or she can see the highlights in just a quick glance.

Don't forget to include keywords , especially if your materials will have to go through some sort of screening software in order to make it to a real, live person.

At least 60% of all jobs are acquired through networking , and freelancing is no exception. It's always better if you can have a mutual acquaintance pass along your materials, including your cover letter.

If you can't dig up a connection through colleagues, friends, family, or social media, take the time to find an actual name to include in your salutation. Avoid "to whom it may concern" if all possible. Generic addresses let the hiring manager off the hook. Think of how responsive you are to email solicitations from companies that can't even be bothered to figure out your name. (Not very.)

Don't forget to include URLs to online clips, sites, or projects, or references to an attached portfolio of your work, along with an explanation for why these particular work samples are relevant to the company's needs. Don't include everything you've ever done, or anything unrelated to the industry or the company.

Follow Up, But Don't Stalk

Close your cover letter by letting the hiring manager know when you're going to follow up, and then keep your commitment—but don't continue to pursue the contact if things don't pan out.

If you don't hear back after your initial communication, or at the designated time of follow-up, it might be appropriate to try one more time, after two weeks or so , to make sure that you haven't slipped the manager's mind.

After that, though, you have to assume that it's not going to happen with this particular potential client, at least at this time, and move on. If you exercise restraint, you won't close yourself off to future opportunities to work with the company.

This is a sample cover letter example for a freelancer. Download the cover letter template (compatible with Google Docs and Word Online) or see below for more examples.

Freelancer Cover Letter (Text Version)

John C. Writer 

423 Allen Street, Apt 2 Pittsburgh, PA 15106 412-555-1735 jc@johnwriter.com

March 25, 2021

Leroy Ramirez

Director, Human Resources

Happy Sports Website 

123 Business Rd.

Business City, NY 54321

Dear Mr. Ramirez,

My former editor [contact name] recently told me about the senior writer position at XYZ Website, and I was excited to hear about the opportunity. I've spent the past 10 years developing award-winning, high-traffic content for sites like Mensmag.com and The Monday Morning Quarterback, which I founded and built to a top 10 sports site.

[Contact name] has told me that you're interested in adding a team member who can take XYZ Website to the next level, including incorporating social media, optimizing the site for search, and achieving consistency of tone and coverage. My experience is particularly useful to achieving your goals. I can:

• Analyze traffic and target content creation to build page views.  My content on Mensmag.com is consistently among the top 10 most-read pieces on the site, and creating and building The Monday Morning Quarterback has taught me how use analytics tools to chase down trends worth pursuing and build an audience.
• Help you get that blue verified checkmark.  I expanded the Mensmag Sports Twitter feed from 500 to 50,000 followers, including big names in the industry like Joe Sportsguy and ESPN Commentator. In July of last year, I helped earn the feed verified status.
• Get attention from the people who matter.  Whether it's getting retweets from names in the industry, boosting market share among the 18-34 demographic, or earning Bloggie awards, I have experience making great websites into excellent ones and getting them the attention they deserve. 

I would love the opportunity to talk with you about the position and what I might bring to it. I've attached my resume and clips, and will email later this week to see if we can arrange a time to talk. Thank you for your time and consideration.

John C. Writer 423 Allen Street, Apt 2 Pittsburgh, PA 15106 E-mail: jc@johnwriter.com Phone: 412-555-1735

Press Enter to search

Cover Letter Examples

2 years ago   •   9 min read

Finding a good freelance job is more challenging than it seems.

Clients aren't always accepting freelance work, although when they are, it's possible to find lots of them on Upwork.com and other freelancing platforms .

The Challenge is for freelancers to write excellent cover letters that clients actually notice. We've compiled the following samples as starting points for cover letter writing.

Social Management Project Cover Letter Example

Hi [client name],

I am writing to you because I am interested in working with you on your Social Manage Project. I have over ten years of experience working with social media management, and I believe that my skillset is a perfect match for your needs.

I understand that you are looking for someone who can help you make sure your social media accounts are up-to-date and engaging, so that you can increase engagement and drive leads to your website. My goal is to provide you with the tools needed to accomplish this goal.

I have worked with companies like [company names] and [company names], who have hired me as their social media manager because they recognized my passion for what I do, as well as my ability to get results. Please feel free to check out some of my work samples at [link].

My fee is $XXX per month, paid monthly in advance via Upwork or PayPal. If this sounds like something you would be interested in discussing further, please let me know!

Mechanical Engineering Cover Letter Example

Dear [client name],

I'm writing to you today because I'm interested in the Mechanical Engineering job on Upwork . As an experienced Mechanical Engineering freelancer, I'd like to apply for this position.

I understand that your company is looking for someone with extensive experience working on a variety of projects and a proven record of success. I have over 10 years of experience working as a Mechanical Engineering freelancer, and I'm ready to show you how my skills can help you meet your goals.

I've worked with clients from all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, India, and Australia. My clients have included small businesses and major corporations alike. Some of my past clients include [list previous client names], who have been very happy with my work and would be happy to provide references if needed.

I specialize in engineering, design, development, and manufacturing. My skills include:

• Designing prototypes
• 3D modeling
• Building prototypes from scratch or using existing parts
• Making sure that all parts are compatible with one another during assembly
• Creating detailed schematics of the entire system
• Providing technical support throughout the project lifecycle

I look forward to hearing from you about this position!

Financial Analysis Project Cover Letter Example

Dear Mr./Ms. [client name],

I am a top-rated freelancer on Upwork with over 20 years of experience in the financial industry. I have worked with a range of companies, including [company name] and [company name].

I specialize in creating financial models, forecasting models, and analytics reports for clients both large and small. I can help you create a custom solution that will meet your needs and help you achieve your goals.

I believe that every job starts with a conversation. It is important for us to discuss what you are looking for before we begin so that our work together is successful from start to finish.

Please let me know if you would like to set up a time to talk about your project further.

Thank you for your consideration,

Copywriting Project Cover Letter Example

I am write to applying for the  freelance copywriter project .

I have been working as a freelancer for the past five years and have been able to produce high-quality content for various different industries. I am currently working on a web development project with a client in the finance industry. This will be my fifth project with this client, and we have just begun to work together on the next project. I have also worked on a project for [client name], where I wrote copy for an advertisement that was published in [publication name]. The client was very happy with the result and asked me to write more content for them.

In addition to writing copy, I also take care of all other aspects of the job including editing, formatting, and proofreading. My background includes working as an editor at [publication name] where I edited articles written by journalists and bloggers who were not native English speakers or writers.

I would love to be considered for this position so that we can get started with another wonderful project together! Please let me know if there is anything else you would like from me so that we can move forward.

Graphic Design Project Cover Letter Example

Dear [name],

I saw your posting for a graphic design project and I believe I am the perfect candidate for the job. I have been working as a freelance graphic designer for over four years and have experience with projects like yours.

My experience includes:

• Creating logos and branding elements
• Building websites from scratch
• Designing brochures, catalogs, and business cards
• Creating brand guides to help you maintain your brand consistency across all of your marketing materials

I am confident that I can provide you with the highest quality work possible. Please feel free to contact me at any time if you have any questions or concerns about my qualifications.

SEO Project Cover Letter Example

I am writing to apply for the Freelancer SEO project. I have been working as a freelance SEO expert for 5 years, and have worked on a variety of projects in that time.

My expertise lies in creating great content that will get your site noticed and give it the boost it needs to rank well in search engines. I also do keyword research and optimize your existing pages to make sure they're ranking as high as possible.

I am confident that I can provide you with high-quality results. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to see from me before making a decision!

Data Analysis Project Cover Letter Example

Dear [company name],

I am writing to apply for the Data Analysis Project. I would like to thank you for taking the time to consider my application.

As a freelancer, I have worked on several projects in data analysis and data entry. I have experience working with spreadsheets and databases, as well as SQL and Python. I am also familiar with VBA, Matlab, R, SAS, and SPSS.

I believe that my skills and experience make me a strong candidate for this position. If you have any questions about my qualifications, please do not hesitate to contact me. Please let me know when you are able to schedule an interview so that we can discuss the details of this project further.

Illustrator Project Cover Letter Example

Dear [Client Name],

I am writing to express my interest in the Illustrator project on Upwork .

I understand that you are looking for someone with experience in both illustration and design, and I believe that my skillset is a good match for your needs.

I have been using Adobe Illustrator for 8 years, and I have been an active member of the Adobe Creative Cloud community since 2011. My work has been featured in several books and magazines; I have also taught classes on how to use Adobe Illustrator.

In addition, I have a portfolio of five previous projects completed as part of this platform at [URL], which can be found here: [URL]. These projects were long-term collaborations with clients who were extremely satisfied with my work.

If you would like further information about me or my work history, please let me know!

Video Editing Project Cover Letter Example

Hi [client's name],

I am writing to apply for your video editing project on Upwork .

I saw your description and immediately knew that I wanted to work with you. I have been a freelance video editor for over 10 years, working in both commercial and personal settings. I've edited everything from corporate training videos to personal home movies, and I would love the opportunity to help make your project a reality!

The way I see it, there are two key elements when it comes to editing a video: understanding what the client needs and being able to get it done quickly. It's important for me to be able to understand what you want out of the finished product in order for me to create something that will meet your expectations. And it's also key that I can deliver quickly so you can use the video as soon as possible (and maybe even before time runs out).

I've included some samples of my work below so you can see what kind of results I can deliver when given a deadline. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns about my qualifications or experience!

Blockchain Development Project Cover Letter Example

I am writing to you because I would like to be considered for your Upwork project: Blockchain Theme Customization. I believe that I can meet your needs, and I look forward to discussing how I can help you with your project.

I understand the importance of meeting deadlines, which is why I always meet my own deadlines on time or early. This is one of the many reasons why my clients keep coming back to me over and over again—they know they can trust me to do what they need done when they need it done.

I am also a skilled designer who has worked with clients in many different industries, including finance, e-commerce, and healthcare. As you can see from my previous work samples [list of past projects], I have a lot of experience designing for different industries.

If you would like to learn more about my skillset before deciding whether or not to hire me for this project , please let me know!

Mobile App Development Project Cover Letter Example

I am writing to express my interest in working with you on the [project name]. I have been a Freelancer since 2016, and have experience in many different areas of web development.

My skills include:

• Mobile App Developing Theme Customization
• eCommerce Website Development and Maintenance
• WordPress Theme Development and Customization (including WooCommerce)
• HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Bootstrap, PHP

I believe that my experience working with Upwork will allow me to complete this job quickly and efficiently. My portfolio includes many examples of mobile application development work that I have completed for clients. I would be happy to provide you with more information about my past work if you would like to see more examples.

Shopify Development Project Cover Letter Example

I’m [your name], and I’m a Shopify expert. I can help you build your Shopify store, or customize an existing theme to fit your brand. I’ve been working on Shopify since 2016, and I have extensive experience in all aspects of the platform .

I understand that you need someone who can take your idea and bring it to life, so let me explain how my skills can help you:

• I have built many successful Shopify stores from scratch, including [store name].
• I also have extensive experience customizing existing themes for clients. For example, here are some of my current projects : [link to portfolio page].
• I can use CSS, HTML, and Javascript to make any necessary changes to your theme. I also have experience with image editing programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

I think this project would be an excellent fit for me because I have extensive experience. I'd love to chat more about how we can work together!

Python Development Project Cover Letter Example

I am applying for the Python Developer position on Upwork . I have been working as a Python developer since 2008, and I have been using Django since 2010. I have worked with many different types of clients and their needs, but I have always been able to deliver high-quality work in a timely manner. I am confident that my skills and experience would be a great match for your project.

My qualifications include:

• 5 years of experience in developing web applications using Python, Django, JavaScript and HTML5
• 3 years of experience in building web APIs
• 2 years of experience in designing and developing RESTful APIs
• 1 year of experience in building mobile apps for Android devices
• 1 year of experience in building mobile apps for iPhone devices
• 1 year of experience in integrating Google Maps into web applications

I would like to discuss further details about this position so that we can determine if I am the right candidate for your needs. Please let me know if you are interested in speaking further about this opportunity. Thank you very much!

WordPress Development Project Cover Letter Example

I am an experienced WordPress developer, with more than 5 years of experience in web development and design. I have worked on many projects of different sizes and types, from small blogs to complex eCommerce sites.

I understand that you are looking for a developer who can create a custom theme for your website, and I would love to be the one to help you out with this project!

My background includes working on websites for companies such as [company name], where I created a custom theme for their new website. I also worked on another site for a private client, which was a blog about fishing. This is just one example of some of my work samples that show my ability to create custom themes. In addition to these examples, I have also built multiple other sites using WordPress as well as other frameworks such as Joomla and Drupal.

If you'd like to see some examples of my work or speak more about this opportunity, please let me know!

JavaScript Development Project Cover Letter Example

I am interested in working on your  JavaScript Developing project . I have been working as a freelance developer for more than 5 years and have a great deal of experience in front-end development.

I believe that my skills and experience will be a good fit for this project, as well as my ability to work independently with limited supervision. I am also excited to learn more about your company's goals and how I can help you achieve them.

I hope that my portfolio and past work samples will show you that I am the right person for this job! If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me anytime.

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How To Write A Freelance Cover Letter (Tips And Examples)

Crafting an outstanding freelance cover letter can be a game-changer in your search for your next client.

A well-crafted cover letter showcases your skills and qualifications and helps you stand out.

With the freelance job market becoming increasingly competitive, it’s vital to differentiate yourself from other applicants.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the importance of a well-written cover letter, tips for creating a captivating cover letter, some of my own examples and how to write a freelance cover letter that avoids common mistakes.

Let’s get into it.

Key takeaways

• Craft an impactful freelance cover letter to stand out from other applicants.
• Use research, skillset, previous work and personality to highlight relevant skills and achievements.
• Format your cover letter with a clear structure, readability & visual appeal for a polished result.

The Importance Of A Freelance Cover Letter

A well-crafted cover letter can significantly impact your search for your next freelance gig.

It’s an opportunity to demonstrate your skills and qualifications and make you stand out from other applicants.

By tailoring your cover letter to the specific job requirements, you can show your enthusiasm for the role and the employer.

Reading the job description carefully and ensuring you address all queries in the job description will increase your chances of getting the freelance gig, and you don’t need to be a freelance writer to achieve this.

Researching the client or company, personalising your letter, and showcasing your work samples can lend credibility to your letter and pique the prospective clients’ interest. By putting in extra effort, you can make a lasting impression on the hiring manager and increase your chances of gaining freelance work.

Crafting Your Freelancer Cover Letter

A successful freelancer’s cover letter should include specific elements to make it stand out.

By researching the client or company, starting with a brief introduction, highlighting your relevant skills and achievements, showcasing your unique personality and passion, and including examples of your work relevant to the job, you can create a compelling cover letter that grabs the attention of potential employers.

In the following sections, we’ll explore each of these elements in detail, providing valuable tips and insights on how to craft a captivating freelance cover letter.

Let’s dive into these essential components to help you create a cover letter that can open doors to new opportunities!

Research The Client Or Company

Before crafting your cover letter, it’s essential to research the client or company to ensure you write a tailored and effective letter.

Start by exploring their website, social media pages, and news articles to comprehensively understand the company’s mission, vision, values, culture, goals, challenges, and achievements.

Familiarizing yourself with the client or company can demonstrate your enthusiasm and preparedness to become a valuable asset to their team.

By understanding their needs and priorities, you can tailor your cover letter to address those aspects, making your application more appealing to the client or company.

When you’re done researching your client, it’s time to research the job description. This will be the foundation for your cover letter.

Read it thoroughly, and note down sections you want to address in your cover letter to show your potential client that you’ve read and understood the job description.

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Start Your Cover Letter With A Brief Introduction

An engaging introduction is crucial for grabbing the hiring manager’s or potential client’s attention.

In your introduction, include who you are, your history, and why you’re the right person for the job. It’s a great way to show off your soft skills as well.

Keep the introduction brief; you want to hook in your potential client. Don’t go into organizational skills or a wide range of complicated explanations.

If possible, address the recipient by their actual name to show your dedication and enthusiasm. If you can’t find the name, I usually write “Hi”.

This approach demonstrates that you have taken the time to research the company and adds a personal touch to your cover letter.

Save this introduction with your other additions, and then create a cover letter template at the end. This will save you a significant amount of time but still remember to customise each cover letter for each freelance gig.

Highlight Your Relevant Skills And Achievements To The Job

Next up, you want to highlight your relevant skills for the job. Don’t just list everything you can do.

If you’re a graphic designer, the client asks for graphic designers who can use Photoshop. Then it’s not always relevant to tell the client you know how to use Word. That’s too generic, so keep it to the point and showcase your extensive skills within relevant skill sets.

You want to show the potential client your impressive achievements as well. This is your chance to show off your extensive experience in how you’ve come to where you are today.

Show off your beautiful graphic design skills if you’re a graphic designer or a freelance writer, then show off some pieces of content you’re proud of.

But again, it’s super important to keep to your cover letter format and keep everything concrete for the freelance job you’re applying for.

It shows your potential client that you’ve read and understood the job description.

Showcase Your Unique Personality and Passion

You don’t want to send a boring cover letter. Clients receive tons of cover letters, so you need to stand out from the pile of all those freelancers who writes a generic cover letter.

It’s time to let you shine through the cover letter, show your communication skills and let the potential client get a scent of who you are, how you work, and what you can do for him or her to take them and their business to the next level.

I usually include a small story if I have a relevant one, or I just let my personality shine through how I write the cover letter. My technical skills are a big part of who I am, so I emphasize that.

Include Examples Of Your Work Relevant To The Job

Including examples of work relevant to the job in your freelance cover letter is a fantastic way to demonstrate your expertise and show you have the relevant qualifications.

I usually attach links to specific examples of work I’ve done for a range of clients where it’s similar or remotely similar to the job description I’m applying for. This is super helpful for the potential client to see my capabilities and professional experience.

By only showing the relevant examples from your portfolio, you even further showcase you’ve read and understood the gig description.

Ask Questions To The Job Description

Another way to stand out from the many cover letters sent is by asking questions about the job description.

If something is unclear, or you know, based on your professional experience, something doesn’t add up. Then ask the questions. It shows the potential client you’ve taken the time to dive into their job description and found some things creating doubt.

If you’re a graphic designer, you might want to know what style they’re looking for. Or if you’re one of many professional writers, you want to know what type of writing style they’re pursuing.

Don’t hold back. Ask as many relevant questions as you can.

Formatting Your Freelancer Cover Letter

Proper formatting is crucial when crafting a freelance cover letter. Ensuring your cover letter has a clear and concise structure and focuses on readability and visual appeal can help it stand out to potential employers.

You don’t need to be an expert in graphic design. Keep it easy to read with lists, line breaks and highlighted words if possible.

In the following sections, we’ll delve into specific formatting tips to make your freelance cover letter as polished and professional as possible.

Use a Clear and Concise Structure

A clear and concise structure in a cover letter helps ensure that the reader can quickly and easily comprehend the core points of the letter. Using short and simple words, short paragraphs, and bullet points can increase readability and make your cover letter more engaging.

The reader of your core letter will most likely skim through it, so make sure the essential parts are highlighted subtly or easy to catch while skimming.

Crafting a concise cover letter involves removing irrelevant or unnecessary information, making it more impactful, eliminating grammar mistakes and making it easier to read.

Be sure to include your name, contact information, an engaging introduction, a list of relevant skills and qualifications, and a powerful closing paragraph to create a well-structured cover letter.

Focus on Readability and Visual Appeal

In addition to readability, visual appeal is key to making your cover letter stand out. Choose a professional and clean font between 10 and 12 points in size to create a visually appealing look.

Your cover letter should have consistent formatting, spacing, and margins to ensure a polished appearance.

Again you don’t need to be an expert in graphic design. If you want to add a graphic element, you can use a tool like Canva .

Proofreading your cover letter is essential for maintaining readability and visual appeal.

Double-check for spelling or grammar errors, and consider asking a friend or colleague to review your cover letter for additional feedback. This extra step can help you catch any mistakes and ensure your cover letter is polished and professional.

Examples Of Successful Freelance Cover Letters

I want to share some of the examples I’ve used in the past and still use today that have worked and helped me get clients. And then, after the examples, I’ll share my cover letter template.

Remember, the key to a successful freelance cover letter is to tailor it to the job and showcase your unique personality, passion, skills, and relevant achievements.

By taking the time to research the client or company and incorporating relevant keywords and work examples, you can create a cover letter that captures the attention of potential employers and sets you apart from other applicants.

My jobs are in Danish, as I’m from Denmark, but I’ve translated them to give you an idea.

Example 1: WordPress task

The job description is as follows:

We are looking for a strong, experienced front-end developer to help us build a responsive mega menu or get a plugin. We have struggled with various plugins without success. We have all the UX and design ready. Our design is awesome, and we have big ambitions as we are the biggest in our market. Only contact us if you are among the best and are confident that you have the competencies. Because it’s urgent and we want to find the right person from the start.

We expect the first project to require about 3 days of work.

We also have many more tasks in relation to We also have many more tasks related to the development of our digital media monitoring platform, so if the task is solved satisfactorily, there is a basis for a closer connection as a permanent freelancer.

Please describe the relevant experience in your bid.

My answer, which won the job, was as follows:

I can definitely do that! I’ve been working with front-end for 10+ years and really find myself at home in the field. I started as a curious young mind and worked in many different front-end frameworks. When it comes to CMS systems, WordPress is a clear favourite. I think it’s great that you don’t compromise on your design. There are more of them out there.

If you want to see some of the WordPress websites I’ve created, here’s a small excerpt: https://wastecontrol.dk https://iotsensors.dk https://phillipstemann.com https://www.factofly.com

I hope you find my profile interesting, and if so, I’m more than happy to do a Skype call at your convenience.

Otherwise, I wish you a very good day.

Kind regards Phillip Stemann

I won this because of my straightforward approach, but it was to the point, and I listed relevant resources.

Example 2: CTO Position In A Startup

The job description was as follows:

We have created solid traction in the online marketing market in just one year. We expect to break even by the end of 2018.

We seek a freelance CTO to join us on this journey and develop our scalable platform and future products.

Your role as CTO You will play a key role in operations as: – The lead full-stack developer and architect – Responsible for setting up the technical team

Your competences We expect you to: – Have a business and user-driven approach to the development of our platform – Experience with PHP development and MVC principles – Can work with both backend and frontend – Are passionate and entrepreneurial in your way of working – Have basic knowledge of online marketing – Experience developing, testing, deploying, bug fixing and hosting

Technical keywords – Nginx, PHP, MySql (LEMP STACK) – CSS3, SCSS & vanilla javascript – Neos Flow PHP Framework – MVC – Doctrine ORM – Domain-Driven Design – Stripe API integration – Google Ads API integration – Mailchimp & Mandrill

We prefer full-time on a project basis, but we are open if you have 3-4 days a week and understand that you have multiple clients at the same time 🙂

We look forward to hearing from you here at Worksome.

Super exciting post. It’s definitely something that catches my attention! I have been working with PHP since I was a young boy of 13 years old I have been driven by my passion, and it has brought me to the broad knowledge I possess today. I have worked in different countries to understand what different countries do well and poorly. Based on this, I have created the best setup for myself and my working techniques. I have knowledge in PHP, Golang and NodeJS on the back-end part. On the front-end, I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VueJS, ReactJS and AngularJS. I’ve set up countless sites over the years and integrated with a fleet of APIs, so it really sticks in my head. Most recently, I went to Lisbon a year ago to help build a company that reached 10 employees. It was a great learning experience in many ways.

I would love to come in for an interview should you find my profile interesting. I look forward to hearing from you.

With kind regards Phillip Stemann

So you can see this approach was entirely different. I had no relevant portfolio to show, so I didn’t waste the client’s potential time. I just went straight to the case, listing out my expertise.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your Freelancer Cover Letter

Avoiding common mistakes is essential to ensure your freelance cover letter stands out.

These mistakes include using generic language, not addressing the recipient, and not including a call to action . By being mindful of these common pitfalls, you can create a more effective and captivating cover letter.

Other common mistakes to avoid include re-using cover letters to multiple clients, including irrelevant information, and failing to proofread your cover letter for errors.

By addressing these mistakes and following the tips outlined in this blog post, you can craft a freelance cover letter that makes a great impression on potential employers and increases your chances of securing an interview.

In conclusion, crafting an outstanding freelance cover letter is essential to your job search.

And once you’re through to your client, you’ve sent a successful freelance cover letter, and you had your first meeting, it’s time to send your proposal and, next, your contract. Here is how you do it .

By understanding the importance of a well-written cover letter, researching the client and company, creating a captivating introduction, showcasing your skills and achievements, and avoiding common mistakes, you can set yourself apart from other applicants and increase your chances of securing freelance work.

Remember, the key to a successful freelance cover letter is to tailor it to the job and showcase your unique personality, passion, skills, and achievements.

Following the tips and insights in this blog post, you can create a compelling cover letter that opens doors to new opportunities and helps you excel in your freelance career.

How do I write a cover letter as a freelancer with no experience?

To write a cover letter without experience, open your letter by describing your enthusiasm for the position and why you’re a great fit. Explain that you don’t have related work experience but share transferable skills that make you an ideal candidate.

End your cover letter by thanking the reader and reiterating your interest in the job.

How to write a cover letter for an Upwork job?

Make sure to tailor your cover letter to the specific job you are applying for. Focus on the qualifications most important to the employer and include relevant examples or stories from your past experiences.

To write a cover letter for Upwork, start with a personalized introduction that quickly explains why you are the perfect fit for the position.

Describe your professional experience and skills, emphasizing how they can help the employer meet their needs. Finally, provide clear contact information and any other documents they may need to complete your application.

I've been working as a web freelancer for 11+ years. I've been through all the ups and downs, and I want to share my story and my tips and tricks to help you avoid the downs and make your freelance career the most successful possible.

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I’ve been freelancing for 11+ years and have made all the mistakes. Every week, I share my tips and tricks on how to improve as a freelancer.

Freelance Cover Letter Examples

A great freelance cover letter can help you stand out from the competition when applying for a job. Be sure to tailor your letter to the specific requirements listed in the job description, and highlight your most relevant or exceptional qualifications. The following freelance cover letter example can give you some ideas on how to write your own letter.

or download as PDF

Cover Letter Example (Text)

Percilla Aamodt

(968) 310-5527

[email protected]

Dear Daphna Paradowski,

I am writing to express my interest in the freelance opportunity at Upwork Inc. as advertised. With a solid five-year track record of delivering high-quality work in the gig economy, primarily through Fiverr International Ltd., I am excited about the prospect of bringing my diverse skill set and dedicated work ethic to your esteemed platform.

During my tenure at Fiverr, I honed my ability to manage a wide array of projects, consistently meeting and exceeding client expectations. My commitment to delivering exceptional results on time has been the cornerstone of my freelance career, earning me a reputation for reliability and excellence. I have cultivated strong communication and organizational skills, which have enabled me to thrive in a self-directed environment while fostering positive client relationships.

I am particularly drawn to Upwork Inc. because of its unparalleled reputation for connecting freelancers with meaningful, high-quality work opportunities. I am eager to leverage my experience in a more dynamic marketplace that Upwork offers, and I am confident that my background aligns well with the needs of your clients. My adaptability and eagerness to embrace new challenges will allow me to contribute effectively to projects across various industries.

Furthermore, I am committed to continuous learning and professional development. Staying abreast of the latest industry trends and tools has been instrumental in my ability to provide innovative solutions and add value for my clients. I am enthusiastic about the chance to collaborate with Upwork's diverse community of professionals and am confident that my passion for excellence will make a positive impact.

Thank you for considering my application. I am looking forward to the possibility of discussing how my experience and skills can contribute to the success of Upwork's clients. I am excited about the opportunity to join your network of talented freelancers and am ready to bring my dedication and expertise to your platform.

Warm regards,

Related Cover Letter Examples

• Freelance Art Director
• Freelance Graphic Designer
• Freelance Makeup Artist
• Freelance Video Editor
• Freelance Designer
• Freelance Copywriter

How to create a freelance writer cover letter that works (with examples)

A cover letter is like a handshake: it tells your clients everything they need to know about you as a person. It hints at work ethic, fairness, talent, and even enthusiasm. For freelance writers in particular, a good cover letter can make a huge difference when trying to secure a freelance writer job .

In this mini-guide, we’re covering everything freelance writers need to know about writing a great cover letter.

What does a cover letter do?

As a freelance writer, a cover letter brings a certain level of humanity into the freelance hiring process. Particularly when hiring from marketplaces like Upwork, freelance writing jobs can feel faceless. You submit a form and hope for the best. Meanwhile, a company hiring freelancers has nothing but a bunch of form submissions to judge people by. The cover letter breaks through that noise to (hopefully) build a human connection.

For a freelance writer particularly, a cover letter also does a few extra things and shares additional information:

Showcase your writing ability : A well-written cover letter is a work sample unto itself.

Build excitement : As a freelance writer, use your language and storytelling writing ability to entice the reader down the cover letter.

Encourage conversation : Share a lot of information, but leave just a bit unsaid in your cover letter so a hiring manager wants to reach out. Ideally, write your cover letter in a way that entices a recruiter to want to learn more about your writing, your experience, your resume, and see if you might be a good freelance writer for them.

4 elements of a strong cover letter

A cover letter as a freelance writer is meant to do one thing: get you to the next step, whether that’s an interview, resume review, or landing the freelance writer job. With that in mind, the strongest cover letters will have the following elements:

1. Awareness of who you’re talking to

As a freelance writer, ideally you’re addressing your cover letters to the person reviewing applications. In most companies that will be the head of the department (for freelance writers, that usually means marketing or editorial), though occasionally HR will step in to support.

Once you’ve figured out who the person is, check out their LinkedIn profile (and updates) to see how they speak and interact with people - then tailor your cover letter to that person. Who knows, you might even find they used to be a freelance writer too!

If you can’t find a specific person, check out the company’s existing content to get cues for tone, style, and topic. And if you’re applying for an anonymous freelance writer job where the company is only named if you get a call back, read the posting carefully then mimic its tone and style in your cover letter.

2. Succinctness

Get to the point in your cover letter. Avoid passive voice (especially when discussing your accomplishments), and don’t make the cover letter longer than it needs to be. Remember: a cover letter is meant to get you to the next step, not give them your life’s story.

You will need to self-edit your cover letter after it’s written, removing any areas you’ve been repetitive or offered too many examples (when one would clarify the point perfectly). This is especially true as a freelance writer, since you need to demonstrate your writing chops in your cover letter.

3. Relevant tone

Whenever possible, research the company’s media kit to understand its vision and the words it uses to describe itself. Use this information as an editorial cue in order to match their tone as best you can in your cover letter (or at least get close to the brand’s tone while staying true to your personal style). If you can’t find a media kit, read interviews with the company’s execs or read the company’s about page. Think about the cover letter writing process almost like an interview you'd do as a freelance writer. Instead of asking questions, you're reading the company's website.

This tip is especially critical for freelance writers, since your cover letter is the first piece of writing a potential client will see. If a brand prides itself on its casual tone and you write a highly-structured, ultra-professional cover letter, you’ll come off as out of touch.

4. Keyword optimization

Write your initial cover letter draft ignoring all keywords, but add them into your cover letter during your self-editing round. First, look for obvious switches where you can sub in your word (e.g. “hard-working”) for their word (e.g. “hard worker”). Then look for context switches where you can reorient an example to better showcase what they are looking for (for example: switching up a client story to highlight your time management skills versus your editorial ability). After that, look for any opportunities to naturally insert a keyword (if you see one that you have a story for, but you hadn’t included in your original cover letter writing).

What to include

When writing your cover letter, here are the key things to include:

An introduction and clear statement of intent : Unless instructed otherwise by the job posting, start your cover letter with a clear introduction and statement of intent (which position you’re applying for). You should also address the cover letter to the hiring manager, if you can identify that person's name.

Demonstrative examples : Use your cover letter to highlight client capabilities—time management, project management, etc.—that aren’t immediately apparent with a writing sample. Tailor these examples to what’s asked or highlighted in the job posting.

Your experience : Explain in your cover letter how your experience sets you up perfectly to be a freelance writer for this company. You can pull example language from the job application and job description, highlighting how you fit that description perfectly.

Link to a relevant portfolio : While your cover letter can be a work sample, you should also include a link to your freelance writing portfolio . Just make sure it’s only relevant samples, not a long web page with dozens of links. This is a great way to show off your writing experience, including both articles and other forms of writing you've done.

Achievements or awards, if relevant : Sometimes the job will require subject matter expertise or demonstrated knowledge in a certain style of writing. On top of work samples, you might want to include any achievements or awards that prove your knowledge in your cover letter. This can be particularly helpful if you have an achievement in a subject but don’t have a specific writing sample for it. This is also something you can bring up in the job interview, if that's a part of the application.

Any additional asks from the job posting : Different jobs will ask for different things, but make sure you include anything that’s asked. Some asks are job-relevant, such as credentials, while others are tasks to assess if you’re paying attention, for example something like “to prove you read this job posting, include the word ‘potato’ in your cover letter somewhere.”

Connection to your resume : Make sure you reference your resume, but don't give away all the details. Instead, use your cover letter to tease what a hiring manager might see in your resume, enticing them to check it out. Note: You should always tailor your resume to each job application process.

Contact information : You will likely include this elsewhere in the application as well, but for good measure you can also include your email address (or marketplace profile URL for direct messages) under your name at the end of the letter.

Pitfalls to avoid

If you want your cover letter to stand out in a good way, avoid these pitfalls:

More than one page : Never write a cover letter that's more than one page unless the job description explicitly requests it. Most of the time, people don't read cover letters if they are longer than one page, which means you risk a client missing out on an important example or quality copywriting skills.

Passive voice : If you naturally write in passive voice as a writer, stomp it out in your cover letter (and resume).

You can usually find passive voice with one of two tests: if there’s no person doing the action (“usually created…”) or when you use two verbs (“mistakes were made”). In all cases, revise. Either edit the sentence to put yourself in the action or, if you didn’t do the action, remove the sentence (see: filler content).

Filler content : Additional segues, “talkative language” (e.g. “as well as” versus simply “and), or explaining what everyone else did in a project are prime examples of cover letter filler content.

Paying another writer to write your cover letter for you : As a freelance writer, paying someone else to write your cover letter is dangerous. It’s either going to be low quality and you won’t get the job, or it will be high quality and your client will expect you to produce that style of writing throughout the project.

Since a lot of freelance writing involves employing your own style, displaying someone else’s style for your cover letter is a huge potential problem that hides your experience.

Examples to take inspiration from

Not sure what your cover letter should look like? Here are three cover letters we like from Great Sample Resume, LiveCareer, and The Balance SMB.

Check out this cover letter example on Great Sample Resume .

Check out this cover letter example on LiveCareer .

Check out this example on The Balance SMB .

Remember to be human in your cover letters

As a freelance writer, the term “cover letter” can spark fear, but you're really just writing an introductory letter to share your experience and work you've done with past clients. Treat it like a conversation with your prospective client about the position instead of a big deal. From there, send it off and hope for the best. In the meantime, work on any existing client work you have or sourcing more deals—then you won’t have time to worry about whether they liked your letter.

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5 Actionable Freelance cover letters Tips with examples (2024)

Your freelance cover letter is the first thing clients notice.

If you send a copy-pasted proposal, you tell your client, “I don’t have time to read your job description, understand your requirements, and offer a customized solution or help specific to you.” 

So, you must always take time to write customized cover letters.

But how would you customize your cover letters?

Today, I’ve got the 5 Actionable freelance cover letter tips that will customize your cover letters into client magnets. 

Please note that I’m sharing these tips after trying and testing them in my freelance proposals. And guess what? They worked for me.

Let’s get started!

1. Make your Cover letter Client-centric

Remember, freelancing is not about you; it’s all about YOUR CLIENTS

Instead of just boasting about:

• YOUR skills and expertise
• YOUR experience
• YOUR achievements
• YOUR success
• YOUR qualifications
• What can you do for your clients using your skills and expertise?
• How can your experience help clients achieve their goals?
• How do your achievements ensure your ability to deliver what you promise successfully?
• How interested are you in the client’s success?
• Are your qualifications relevant and helping your target client or a specific project?

Imagine freelance jobs as different questions on a question paper, which you’d typically solved as a student. Some questions require short answers, and some require detailed answers. And when you write the right answers depending on the question type, you’ll score more points!

When you attempt these questions daily, you’ll improve, learn from your mistakes, and get better opportunities. 

When you do this, you shift your focus on the job’s requirements and write a better cover letter.

But not all your freelance proposals will get you a freelance client, even if you absolutely nail down the cover letter writing. Some will be hit or miss. But that’s not your fault; you must keep trying!

2. Use the Instant SPEECH Formula

This is a proven tip that I follow while writing freelance cover letters :

The idea is to simply speak to your client’s needs.

Here is a short story to simplify this technique for you:

Back in school, my physics teacher often repeated things from the textbook while explaining. He was an excellent teacher, but you know, physics can be tricky. Sometimes, we couldn’t understand what he was actually explaining. After class, when he asked if we got it, everyone would nod, but no one could really answer his questions. However, when I precisely repeated the same definitions and explanations word for word, he would be impressed, exclaiming, “Wow! “You understood.” see, Atiya understood! She is the only one who is paying attention to my lecture with full concentration.

That’s how this trick worked. I did it multiple times, and it worked. And I actually understood his lectures, by the way! That’s how this trick worked for me whenever I applied it for writing freelance cover letters.

And here is the magic of this technique!

Here’s how you can implement this formula:

Identify Key Phrases or Keywords:

Start by reading the job description and any additional information provided by the client. Identify key phrases, pain points, or specific requirements mentioned in the description.

Repeat or Highlight the key phrases or points:

In your cover letter, directly mention and emphasize the identified key phrases or pain points. Repeat them in a way that shows you understand the client’s challenges or needs. This repetition helps in creating a connection with the client.

Format your response in the Client’s Format:

Structure your response using the same language and format that the client used in the job description. 

If you find subheadings or bullet points, then replicate that with your response to each point. Similarly, if you find a list of questions, that exact question with your answer each in the same order.

Show How You Meet the Requirements:

Clearly state how your skills, experience, or previous work directly address the client’s needs. Provide examples that showcase your capability to handle the tasks outlined in the job description.

And here is how it helps you:

Proving Yourself as the Ideal Candidate:

You’re using their language, showing that you understand their concerns.

You’re proving yourself as the ideal candidate by showcasing how you meet each highlighted requirement.

This shows that you not only read the job description but deeply understand and can fulfill the client’s needs.

Instant Understanding:

Clients receive a clear signal that they comprehend the project requirements instantly.

They recognize that you know exactly what needs to be done without any prolonged explanations.

Standing Out from Others:

This approach helps you stand out from other freelancers who may not have personalized their proposals as much.

Let’s understand with examples:

Example 1: Job Description for Web Development Project

“We are  looking for a skilled web developer  to redesign our outdated website. The ideal candidate should have  experience with modern design principles, responsive layouts, and e-commerce functionality . We need someone who can  deliver a visually appealing and user-friendly website within a tight deadline.”

Cover Letter using INSTANT SPEECH Formula:

I understand  you are looking for a web developer to revamp your website . Time is of the essence, and you need a  professional  who can promptly  deliver a visually appealing and user-friendly site . With my  expertise in modern design principles, responsive layouts, and e-commerce functionality , I am confident I can meet your project requirements seamlessly.  I recognize the urgency  of your needs and assure you that  I can deliver the results  you’re looking for within the specified deadline.

Example 2: Job Description for Graphic Design Job

We are looking for a  skilled graphic designer to create visually appealing marketing materials for our upcoming product launch.  The ideal candidate should have  experience in creating engaging designs that resonate with our target audience .  Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite and a strong portfolio  of previous work are essential.

I understand the importance of  captivating design in your upcoming product launch . Having worked on similar projects in the past, I recognize the need for  visually appealing materials that resonate with your target audience . My  proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, coupled with a portfolio  showcasing my previous successful projects, aligns perfectly with your requirements. I’m ready to bring my expertise to ensure your product gets the attention it deserves.

It really works ONLY if you do it well!

BUT OVERDO IT: It may irritate your clients if you repeat unnecessary stuff or simply duplicate the same information without thoughtfully modifying it.

Example Job Description:

We are looking for a creative graphic designer to join our team.  The ideal candidate should have experience in creating visually appealing marketing materials using Adobe Creative Suite.   Strong attention to detail and the ability to work under tight deadlines are essential .

Bad Example for Unnecessary Repetition:

I’m excited about this opportunity to join your team as a creative graphic designer. I’ve extensive experience in creating visually appealing marketing materials using Adobe Creative Suite , and I am confident in my ability to pay strong attention to detail and work under tight deadlines .  I understand the importance of a creative graphic designer who can create visually appealing marketing materials using Adobe Creative Suite and who possesses a strong attention to detail . I believe my  experience in creating visually appealing marketing materials using Adobe Creative Suite  and my  ability to pay strong attention  to detail make me the ideal candidate for your team.

3. Include QUESTIONS to ELICIT Responses from Clients

I learned this technique during my B.Ed teacher training, which includes asking relevant questions to elicit responses from students. 

And I actively apply this technique while writing cover letters.

This technique compels clients to reply to your freelance proposal. 

Once they reply, the ball will be in your court! 

A communication gateway will open for you to convert that client to your paid customer (convince them to hire). 

And please do not include irrelevant questions when the client is super specific in their job description.

Here are examples for better understanding:

Client Requirement: Proficient in SEO Optimization

Relevant Question: “Could you provide more details about the specific SEO techniques or tools you prefer for optimization?”

Client Requirement: Experience with Graphic Design

Relevant Question: “Are there any specific design elements or styles you have in mind for the graphics associated with this project?”

Client Requirement: Proven Track Record in Lead Generation

Relevant Question: “Could you share more insights into your target audience or any previous lead generation strategies that worked well for your business?”

Here is how to do it:

• Read and understand the client’s job description Carefully.
• Identify key details and requirements mentioned by the client. Ask yourself if there is any opportunity to include any questions in this proposal.
• Then, include questions that directly address the specific needs outlined in the job description.
• Ask questions that enhance your understanding of the project without sounding irrelevant.
• If you feel that a specific cover letter for a particular job description is perfect without any questions, skip including irrelevant questions unnecessarily.

Example Situations with Relevant Questions to Include in Your Freelance Cover Letter:

Example situations depending on client’s demands

1. Client Emphasizes Tight Deadlines:

For example:  “I noticed that timely delivery is crucial for this project. Could you please share more details about the project timeline and any specific milestones or deadlines I should know?”

2. Client Highlights Collaborative Work:

For example:  “I understand the importance of collaboration in this project. Could you provide insights into the preferred communication channels and frequency of updates or meetings to ensure seamless coordination?”

3. Client Stresses the Importance of Creativity:

For example:  “I’m excited about infusing creativity into this project. Could you share your vision or specific elements you envision to ensure that my creative contributions align with your expectations?”

4. Client Requires Research Skills:

For example:  “Research is mentioned in the job description. Could you elaborate on the key areas or topics you’d like me to focus on during the research phase, and are there any preferred sources or formats for presenting findings?”

5. Client Specifies Certain Software Proficiency:

For example:  “I see that proficiency in [specific software] is crucial. Can you provide more details about how extensively this software is utilized in the project and whether I’ll have access to the necessary tools or licenses?”

6. Client Emphasizes Confidentiality:

For example:  “I understand the importance of maintaining confidentiality in this project. Can you provide more details about the level of sensitivity of the information involved and any specific measures or protocols in place to ensure data security?”

7. Client Highlights Long-Term Collaboration:

For example:  “I’m interested in the potential for long-term collaboration. Could you provide insights into the roadmap for future projects and how success in this initial engagement might lead to additional opportunities?”

8. Client Expresses a Preference for Regular Updates:

For example:  “I see the need for regular updates. Could you specify the preferred frequency and format for progress reports to ensure that I’m providing the information you need in a manner that suits your preferences?”

Examples to seek clarifiactions in diffreent scenarios

9. Seeking Clarification on Specifics:

For Example , You mentioned the need for social media expertise. Could you clarify which platforms you primarily focus on, and are there any specific strategies or campaigns you have in mind for implementation?” Another example: “I see that video editing is a key component of the project. Could you share more details about the style or tone you’re aiming for in the final edited videos, and any specific elements you’d like me to focus on?”

10. Seeking Clarification on Project Scope:

For Example : In your job description, you mentioned [specific task/responsibility]. I’d like to ensure that I comprehensively understand the project scope. Could you please elaborate on the expected deliverables and any specific milestones you have in mind?

11. Proposing Solutions:

For example: “Based on your description, I’m considering [proposed solution]. Would this align with your expectations, or do you have a different approach in mind?”

12. Discussing Revision Process:

For example , If the job description doesn’t detail revisions, ask, “Could you provide insights into the revision process? How many rounds of revisions are typically expected, and what’s your preferred feedback format?”

13. Confirming Project Duration and Budget:

For example : Could you provide more details about the expected duration of the project and the budget range you have in mind?

14. Discussing Post-Project Support:

For example , If post-project support isn’t mentioned, ask, “Are there any expectations for post-project support, such as troubleshooting or additional modifications?

15. Asking for Samples and required information or material when job requirements are unclear or unique:

For example , If the client’s requirements are unclear in their description, you can ask, “Could you share some samples or examples to help me understand how you want the final project to look like? 

It could be any YouTube video, blog post, image, screenshots, or screen recordings. 

Remember , the key is to customize your questions to the specific details mentioned in the job description and use them to showcase your understanding while gathering essential information to deliver a precise proposal.

4. HIGHLIGHT the most important words and SENTENCES in CAPS. 

I personally do it a lot!

In fact, this is my SECRET TIP, which I use regularly in my freelance cover letters.

The idea is to highlight the most important words and sentences you want clients to notice in CAPS. 

It really worked for me many times. 

So do give it a try!

5. Break down your cover letter into SMALL SECTIONS with Questions, Subheadings, and Bullet points:

Break down long paragraphs into a maximum of three lines, include subheadings, and leave enough space between each section of the cover letter. 

It makes your cover letter conversational and easy to skim through. 

If you do it the right way, clients are more likely to read it till the end and RESPOND. 

Why am I the best fit/perfect match for this project?

I’ve gone through the details of your project requirements, and I noticed that you are seeking a candidate proficient in [mention specific skills, e.g., content writing, graphic design, SEO]. My background in [mention relevant experience, e.g., crafting engaging content, designing visuals, optimizing for SEO] positions me perfectly to contribute effectively to your project goals.

What you’ll receive with the final delivery?

Upon project completion, you can expect a comprehensive and polished deliverable. This includes [mention specific deliverables, e.g., well-researched articles, visually appealing graphics, optimized content for search engines].

Why should you hire me / trust me with your project?

This is a great opportunity to highlight your Unique value proposition .

Here is how I successfully handled similar projects in the past:

Give a short description (2-3 lines) of the most similar previous project with a link or project attachment.

Include Bullet Points while highlighting achievements, work samples, qualifications, or experiences:

Just make sure that the bullet points are concise and relevant.

Use hyperlinks to direct the client to your work samples, making it easy for them to review your previous successes.

Example Freelance Cover Letter Following All the Tips I Discussed in this post:

Now, it’s your turn:.

Which tip resonates with you the most, and how do you plan to apply it in your next cover letter? Share your thoughts, and let’s ignite a conversation that drives everyone toward winning freelance opportunities!”

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How to Write a Cover Letter for a Freelance Job

Here’s how to write a cover letter for a freelance job.

Melissa Mauro

As a freelancer, finding new clients and gigs might just be the most difficult and time-consuming task. Of course, your connections and networking skills matter a lot for this, but your resume does too.

Nevertheless, there is something that many freelancers either underestimate or forget about. Your cover letter could be the component that would ultimately determine whether you get a job or not. Hence, here’s how to write a cover letter for a freelance job.

#1 Understand Cover Letters

It goes without saying that you absolutely need a cover letter as a freelancer. But why exactly is this? Here are just some reasons to use a cover letter to get a freelance job:

It shows your professionalism. You understand that a resume and portfolio are not always enough to show who you are as a person and why someone would want to hire you which is why you are including a cover letter.

It shows your motivation and expertise. By explaining why you applied for a specific job, you show your potential employer that you truly do know the topic and want to complete the project because you are actually interested in it.

It is often a requirement in job listings. In many cases, attaching a cover letter is optional, but there are some gigs that will require you to attach a cover letter to be able to apply.

It can be a letter you use to reach out to potential clients on your own. A cover letter isn’t necessarily used to apply for job listings. You can also use it to contact people you think might be interested in your services (e.g. small business owners).

#2 Showcase Your Personality

As explained above, a cover letter can help you show your personality. Your resume lists hard facts about your education, experience, expertise, and skills. But what about who you are as a person? That’s something your cover letter can show if you write it with the intention of showcasing your personality.

For instance, if you are a writer who often inserts humor in their content, you can show that in your cover letter by using humor there. On the other hand, if you prefer to be very serious and professional in all your communication with the client, you can show that through your cover letter as well.

#3 Include Relevant Keywords

You’ve probably heard of the way resumes are often assessed. Instead of a person viewing the resume, the document is first analyzed by a program that detects relevant keywords. If there are no such keywords, then the HR manager won’t even bother to look at the resume. While this isn’t the case for cover letters, you should still try to include relevant keywords.

Even as humans, we detect these keywords on a subconscious level. When your potential employer will be reading your cover letter, they will notice these keywords. They will be sending a signal to the reader that you have the right traits, skills, experience, etc. that the employer is looking for.

#4 Show Off Your Skillset

Speaking of your skills, your cover letter can also be used to show off your skillset. Even though you have already listed your skills in your resume, the skills you show in your cover letter are primarily soft skills that can’t be verified in any other way. Hard skills are supported by your experience and education, but soft skills are intangible.

That’s why your cover letter is where you can show off your soft skills. Things like trust, organization, motivation, and flexibility are all important for being a successful freelancer – and employers know this. Your wording also matters because it can help you show that you know how to communicate effectively.

#5 Display Your Own Value

In your resume, you can list some of the achievements you are most proud of. Your portfolio can show your skills. But to truly support the fact that you are a valuable asset to your potential employer, you need to utilize your cover letter. This is where you can display your own value.

Highlight the achievement you are most proud of that you mentioned on your resume. Explain your long-term goals and ambitions for your career. Show that you are motivated and want to grow and improve over time. That’s when the letter’s reader will want to pay for writing , graphic design, or other services you have to offer.

#6 Establish a Personal Connection

Because your resume only lists hard facts, you don’t actually appear as a person to your potential employer. You are just one of the many options they have to choose from. On the other hand, if you are able to establish a personal connection with them, they will be more likely to choose you over other applicants.

This is why many HR managers recommend that you customize your cover letters based on who you are sending them to. Research a little about the person who will likely be reading your letter and use the information you find to establish a connection with them.

#7 Format Your Letter Correctly

Formatting might not be your number one priority, but it’s actually important for your cover letter to be treated seriously. If the reader sees that your letter looks awkward, they might not even bother to read it. Even if they do read it, they will still keep in mind that the letter was not formatted or formatted in a strange way which could signal that you aren’t professional.

To format your cover letter correctly, think about it as a standard email . Begin with a proper greeting and break up the body of the letter into paragraphs. End correctly and add your name, title (e.g. Freelance Writer), and contact information.

#8 Add a Call to Action at the End

Speaking of the way you end your letter, it’s worth adding a call to action at the very end of it. A call to action that urges the reader to get back to you will remind them that you are waiting for their reply. The most common way to end your letter is something along the lines of, “Thank you for your time. I am looking forward to your reply.”

You can also add, “Please, do write back.” If you want to have a more straightforward CTA. Don’t forget to add “Best regards” or “All the best” and your name at the very end. As noted above, you should also add your title and contact information under your name.

#9 Proofread and Edit Your Letter

Once your letter is ready, you will need to proofread it carefully and edit any parts that need to be corrected. It’s a good idea to proofread your letter multiple times with different goals in mind. First, check whether it is coherent and includes all the points you wanted to include. Second, check that there are no linguistic errors such as grammar or punctuation mistakes.

You can even let someone else read your cover letter to double-check that it. A freelancer you know, a friend, or a family member can all help you with this. They could notice mistakes that you didn’t see. Once you are certain that the letter is all right, you can send it with your resume and portfolio to potential employers. If you need to, alter the letter to fit job listings better or maybe even write other versions for different types of jobs you apply to.

To summarize, writing a cover letter is just as important as creating your resume, so don’t underestimate it. Use the tips in this article to help you write your own cover letter and get more clients and gigs with its help.

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Freelance Cover Letter: Sample & Guide [Entry Level + Senior Jobs]

Create a standout freelance cover letter with our online platform. browse professional templates for all levels and specialties. land your dream role today.

Securing a freelance job can be a daunting task. Crafting your cover letter to stand out among the competition is essential. Our Freelance Cover Letter Guide provides you with the resources and tips you need to create a strong cover letter and land the job you want.

We will cover:

• How to write a cover letter, no matter your industry or job title.
• What to put on a cover letter to stand out.
• The top skills employers from every industry want to see.
• How to build a cover letter fast with our professional Cover Letter Builder .
• What a cover letter template is, and why you should use it.

Related Cover Letter Examples

• Editor Cover Letter Sample
• Art Director Cover Letter Sample
• Dancer Cover Letter Sample
• Announcer Cover Letter Sample
• Actor Cover Letter Sample
• News Producer Cover Letter Sample
• DJ Cover Letter Sample
• Makeup Artist Cover Letter Sample
• 3D Designer Cover Letter Sample
• Reporter Cover Letter Sample
• Author Cover Letter Sample
• Musician Cover Letter Sample
• Producer Cover Letter Sample
• Publisher Cover Letter Sample
• Digital Content Manager Cover Letter Sample
• Media Planner Cover Letter Sample
• Illustrator Cover Letter Sample
• Blogger Cover Letter Sample
• Digital Designer Cover Letter Sample
• Research Assistant Cover Letter Sample

Freelance Cover Letter Sample

Dear [Recruiter],

I am writing to apply for the freelance position you posted. With over [x] years of experience in [field], I am confident that I have the skills and expertise to be a valuable asset to your team. I have a passion for [field] and a proven track record of success in working on freelance projects.

Throughout my career, I have completed a wide variety of projects related to [field]. I have worked with a variety of clients, from small businesses to large corporations. I have a strong understanding of the [field] industry, and I am up to date on the latest trends and developments. I am also an effective communicator, able to work with clients to ensure that their expectations are met.

I am confident that I have the skills and experience to be a successful freelancer for your company. I have excellent organizational and time management skills, and I am able to manage multiple projects and deadlines. I am also a creative thinker, able to come up with innovative solutions to challenging problems. I am a self-starter and I have the motivation and determination to reach any goal I set.

Please find attached my resume and portfolio for more information about my professional experience and skills. I look forward to discussing this position in more detail and how I can contribute to your team.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, [Your Name]

Why Do you Need a Freelance Cover Letter?

A Freelance Cover Letter is an important document for any freelancer to have in their arsenal. Here are some reasons why you need one:

• It's a great way to introduce yourself and your skills to potential clients.
• It allows you to explain why you think you would be the perfect fit for the job.
• It can help you stand out from other applicants and show your commitment to the project.
• It can help you highlight your best qualities and make a positive impression on the client.
• It can be used to show that you are knowledgeable about the company and their industry.
• It can help you explain why you believe the job is the right fit for you.

A Few Important Rules To Keep In Mind

• Start off with a strong introduction that outlines your experience and qualifications.
• Clearly state why you are the ideal candidate for the role and how your skills and experience will be beneficial.
• Briefly explain your experience in the industry and why you are passionate about it.
• Demonstrate your knowledge of the company and what you can bring to the role.
• Keep it concise and to the point – try to keep the letter to one page.
• Address the letter to the relevant person or department.
• Proofread the letter to ensure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes.
• Include a call to action at the end to encourage a response.

What's The Best Structure For Freelance Cover Letters?

After creating an impressive Freelance resume , the next step is crafting a compelling cover letter to accompany your job applications. It's essential to remember that your cover letter should maintain a formal tone and follow a recommended structure. But what exactly does this structure entail, and what key elements should be included in a Freelance cover letter? Let's explore the guidelines and components that will make your cover letter stand out.

Key Components For Freelance Cover Letters:

• Your contact information, including the date of writing
• The recipient's details, such as the company's name and the name of the addressee
• A professional greeting or salutation, like "Dear Mr. Levi,"
• An attention-grabbing opening statement to captivate the reader's interest
• A concise paragraph explaining why you are an excellent fit for the role
• Another paragraph highlighting why the position aligns with your career goals and aspirations
• A closing statement that reinforces your enthusiasm and suitability for the role
• A complimentary closing, such as "Regards" or "Sincerely," followed by your name
• An optional postscript (P.S.) to add a brief, impactful note or mention any additional relevant information.

Cover Letter Header

A header in a cover letter should typically include the following information:

• Your Full Name: Begin with your first and last name, written in a clear and legible format.
• Contact Information: Include your phone number, email address, and optionally, your mailing address. Providing multiple methods of contact ensures that the hiring manager can reach you easily.
• Date: Add the date on which you are writing the cover letter. This helps establish the timeline of your application.

It's important to place the header at the top of the cover letter, aligning it to the left or center of the page. This ensures that the reader can quickly identify your contact details and know when the cover letter was written.

Cover Letter Greeting / Salutation

A greeting in a cover letter should contain the following elements:

• Personalized Salutation: Address the hiring manager or the specific recipient of the cover letter by their name. If the name is not mentioned in the job posting or you are unsure about the recipient's name, it's acceptable to use a general salutation such as "Dear Hiring Manager" or "Dear [Company Name] Recruiting Team."
• Professional Tone: Maintain a formal and respectful tone throughout the greeting. Avoid using overly casual language or informal expressions.
• Correct Spelling and Title: Double-check the spelling of the recipient's name and ensure that you use the appropriate title (e.g., Mr., Ms., Dr., or Professor) if applicable. This shows attention to detail and professionalism.

For example, a suitable greeting could be "Dear Ms. Johnson," or "Dear Hiring Manager," depending on the information available. It's important to tailor the greeting to the specific recipient to create a personalized and professional tone for your cover letter.

Cover Letter Introduction

An introduction for a cover letter should capture the reader's attention and provide a brief overview of your background and interest in the position. Here's how an effective introduction should look:

• Opening Statement: Start with a strong opening sentence that immediately grabs the reader's attention. Consider mentioning your enthusiasm for the job opportunity or any specific aspect of the company or organization that sparked your interest.
• Brief Introduction: Provide a concise introduction of yourself and mention the specific position you are applying for. Include any relevant background information, such as your current role, educational background, or notable achievements that are directly related to the position.
• Connection to the Company: Demonstrate your knowledge of the company or organization and establish a connection between your skills and experiences with their mission, values, or industry. Showcasing your understanding and alignment with their goals helps to emphasize your fit for the role.
• Engaging Hook: Consider including a compelling sentence or two that highlights your unique selling points or key qualifications that make you stand out from other candidates. This can be a specific accomplishment, a relevant skill, or an experience that demonstrates your value as a potential employee.
• Transition to the Body: Conclude the introduction by smoothly transitioning to the main body of the cover letter, where you will provide more detailed information about your qualifications, experiences, and how they align with the requirements of the position.

By following these guidelines, your cover letter introduction will make a strong first impression and set the stage for the rest of your application.

Cover Letter Body

As a freelance professional, I have extensive experience in managing projects, developing strategies, and delivering results. I have worked with both small and large companies in various industries, ranging from technology to hospitality. With this experience, I am confident that I can be a great asset to your team.

I understand the importance of time and cost efficiency, and I have the skills and experience necessary to effectively manage projects and resources. I have a proven track record of success in developing effective strategies to meet deadlines, control costs, and improve customer service. My expertise in project management and my ability to develop innovative solutions have enabled me to consistently exceed expectations.

I am also knowledgeable in several areas of business, including marketing, finance, and accounting. I have a degree in Business Administration, and I am familiar with the latest software and technologies. I have excellent communication skills, and I am able to quickly comprehend and analyze complex topics.

I am confident that I can bring a unique perspective to your organization. I am eager to join a team where I can use my skills to help your organization reach its goals. I am sure that I can be a great asset to your team and I look forward to discussing my qualifications in more detail.

Complimentary Close

The conclusion and signature of a cover letter provide a final opportunity to leave a positive impression and invite further action. Here's how the conclusion and signature of a cover letter should look:

• Summary of Interest: In the conclusion paragraph, summarize your interest in the position and reiterate your enthusiasm for the opportunity to contribute to the organization or school. Emphasize the value you can bring to the role and briefly mention your key qualifications or unique selling points.
• Appreciation and Gratitude: Express appreciation for the reader's time and consideration in reviewing your application. Thank them for the opportunity to be considered for the position and acknowledge any additional materials or documents you have included, such as references or a portfolio.
• Call to Action: Conclude the cover letter with a clear call to action. Indicate your availability for an interview or express your interest in discussing the opportunity further. Encourage the reader to contact you to schedule a meeting or provide any additional information they may require.
• Complimentary Closing: Choose a professional and appropriate complimentary closing to end your cover letter, such as "Sincerely," "Best Regards," or "Thank you." Ensure the closing reflects the overall tone and formality of the letter.
• Signature: Below the complimentary closing, leave space for your handwritten signature. Sign your name in ink using a legible and professional style. If you are submitting a digital or typed cover letter, you can simply type your full name.
• Typed Name: Beneath your signature, type your full name in a clear and readable font. This allows for easy identification and ensures clarity in case the handwritten signature is not clear.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Freelance Cover Letter

When crafting a cover letter, it's essential to present yourself in the best possible light to potential employers. However, there are common mistakes that can hinder your chances of making a strong impression. By being aware of these pitfalls and avoiding them, you can ensure that your cover letter effectively highlights your qualifications and stands out from the competition. In this article, we will explore some of the most common mistakes to avoid when writing a cover letter, providing you with valuable insights and practical tips to help you create a compelling and impactful introduction that captures the attention of hiring managers. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career journey, understanding these mistakes will greatly enhance your chances of success in the job application process. So, let's dive in and discover how to steer clear of these common missteps and create a standout cover letter that gets you noticed by potential employers.

• Not researching the company you are applying to
• Using a generic cover letter for all jobs
• Not including relevant information about yourself
• Using overly casual language or slang
• Using industry jargon without explanation
• Including too much or too little information
• Making spelling and grammar mistakes
• Not including contact information
• Failing to customize the cover letter to the job
• Using a template without making necessary changes
• Not proofreading your letter

Key Takeaways For a Freelance Cover Letter

• Highlight specific skills and experience that make you a desirable candidate for the job.
• Research the company and demonstrate an understanding of their mission and values.
• Include a link to your portfolio or website, if available.
• Be concise: keep the cover letter to one page.
• Be sure to include your contact information.
• Proofread the letter for any errors and typos.
• End with an action statement, such as “I look forward to hearing from you.”

An Upwork Cover Letter Example For Freelancers

So, you’ve decided to join Upwork or a similar freelance marketplace. That’s a great idea! The gig economy is booming and the compensation reflects that. Freelancers providing skilled services tend to earn 70% more per hour than their cubicle-dwelling counterparts.

But, you have to be mindful of competition too. As many as 57 million workers in the US alone freelance part-time and full-time. And Upwork has some 12 million registered users. Thus, to get your piece of the pie, you really need to make Upwork ‘work’ for you.

That starts with having a well-optimized personal profile and learning to write great bidding letters for projects. This post offers some tips for that. Plus, we’ve included a quick Upwork cover letter sample you can use as a reference. Keep in mind that this post will mostly reference Upwork, but could really apply to any freelancing platform.

Start With Optimizing Your Profile

You can bet that anyone interested in your proposal is going to check out the information in your profile before they even consider you for the job. So be sure that your profile includes the following:

• A rockstar profile title that summarizes what you do.
• Crisp and professional profile picture
• Detailed profile overview that explains your professional background and highlights your skills.

You can also spice it up with testimonials/quotes from your past clients and portfolio pieces. Lastly, add extra credibility by completing several competency tests.

Be Specific in Your Proposals

In most cases, you will be applying to do a very short-term, very specific task. In your cover letter (project proposal) don’t go around the bush too much and succinctly state what makes you a good fit for that job. Include your resume only if the job posting specifically instructs you to do so.

Here’s a quick example to illustrate the point further: imagine you’re a freelance graphic designer . If you apply for a gig to design a set of landing pages, don’t waste time discussing any other skills or experience (e.g. your amazing illustration talents). Instead, write only about your experience with landing page design and perhaps conversion optimization.

Speak in Terms of The Clients Needs

Keep in mind that many of the jobs posted on Upwork are time-critical. The person who needs the work done likely has little time to train someone, or even provide a bunch of clarification. That’s why a person who can say something like: “Look, I understand what you want. Here is how I will do it. It will be done quickly. I’m ready to start immediately.’ is going to earn a second look.

To help build even more confidence in your abilities, consider including a testimonial or reference from another client. If you can show that you’ve completed similar work in the past, that will work in your favor too!

Focus on Skills, Not Personality

Normally, your cover letter is the perfect vehicle to show your enthusiasm for the company mission, and that you will fit in with the company culture. Here, none of that matters. So keep the focus on your skills and experience, not personality traits.

Answer Their Questions

Sometimes, a potential client will post a pretty detailed list of questions they want to be answered, and information that they want you to provide. On one hand, that makes it much easier for you to write the cover letter. You simply answer the questions they provide. On the other hand, if you miss anything, it could get your entire proposal eliminated from consideration. So pay attention!

Cover Letter Sample For Upwork in .docx Format

Here is a sample cover letter that you can submit in response to a short-term project on Upwork.

Download example (Word version)

Upwork Cover Letter Example – Text Format

Hi Michael,

Just checked your project details “Design a new onboarding process for a banking app” and I believe that I may be a great fit.

As a UX designer with 3 years of experience, I have previously designed account creation and account opening system flows for a lending app (received a 5-star review from the client). You can check the project details in my portfolio, along with several other designs for e-commerce, healthcare and media companies.

You mentioned that you also need someone experienced with interactive prototyping and InVision. I’m a long-term user of this app. Also familiar with Balsamiq and Adobe XD software. 

I have included information about my rates, and I am confident that I can deliver the first design mockups within 2 weeks as per your deadline. Please contact me so that we can get started.

Kevin Ninja

P.S. I took a moment to explore your website. It’s very well-designed. If you’re interested in making further changes, I believe I can make some small tweaks to your landing pages to boost conversion rates.

Final Tip: Sell a Bit Further

Treat your cover letter as a marketing document. Work mostly to sell your clients on the skills they need right now, but don’t forget to sell yourself a bit as well. Slip in a postscript or ‘aside’ to let them know other ways in which you can help!

Discover Even More Releveant Cover Letter Examples!

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How To Create A Freelance Writer Cover Letter (+Sample)

“First impressions last a lifetime.”

Nowhere is this truer than in the world of freelance writing, where your cover letter is often the first introduction a client has to your professional capabilities. A compelling cover letter can be the gateway to securing coveted projects . However, even seasoned writers sometimes falter when it comes to crafting an engaging cover letter that succinctly captures their skills and enthusiasm. Fear not! I’m here to guide you through the nuances of creating that perfect first impression. Stick around, and I’ll also provide a sample to get you started on the right foot.

How To Write A Freelance Writer Cover Letter

The best rule to follow while writing a cover letter is to keep it simple . You don’t have to get into fancy details and take things out of the way. Clients don’t want to waste their time reading irrelevant information. Let’s talk about the best things to include in your cover letter.

1. Greet the client

What do you do when you first meet someone? You greet them! Although professional greetings typically include addressing the other person “mam” or “sir”, that’s not the case with freelance writer cover letters. For cover letters, you can neither be too casual nor too formal while greeting the client. However, it’s still necessary to keep your tone professional as you’re talking to someone for the first time. You cannot go like, “Hey, what’s up?”. Such sentences will spoil the first impression, as it is extremely casual. So, the best idea is to greet the client with “Hey” or “Hi” and mention the client’s name as well. This will help build a personal connection.

2. Make the client feel the job is for you

When writing a cover letter , use a confident tone and make the client feel you’re the best candidate for the position. To do this, you can start the cover letter with a personable and conversational sentence. A casual tone might do the job here. This first line should tell the client that you’re the one they’re looking for. Also, make it your goal to establish a rapport with the client early on.

3. Introduce yourself

A short introduction is enough to tell the client about you. If they’re interested in knowing more, they’ll ask you in the interview process. Therefore, the introduction should comprise a line or two, specifically about your career as a freelance writer . Going out of the way and including your education, age, location, etc., will sound sloppy unless required. You can introduce yourself as a content writer and tell the client how you came to know about their job post if the situation calls for it. A line or two will do the job!

4. Share your experience

Letting the client know about your experience is one of the most important aspects of a freelance writer ’s cover letter. After all, they need to know about your expertise and professionalism to consider you for the position. Mentioning your track record in the cover letter helps you stand out among the pool of applicants.

Here’s what might count when touting your work experience:

• How long you’ve been in content writing
• The number of articles you’ve written
• The type of content you specialize in
• Your published content

Although technical skills aren’t that necessary in content writing, it’s still better to include your experience with keyword research tools and other implements that come in handy for freelance writing.

5. Stay in line with the job requirements

Even though you already have a great cover letter, it pays to customize it according to your client’s requirements. You might need to make a few edits to make the client feel as if you’ve written the cover letter specifically for them. You can leave a few spaces blank in your general cover letter and fill them in when applying for specific jobs. For example, if the client wants a writer in the pet niche, you can use the blank space in your general cover letter and add “pet niche” while applying for that job. Also, if the client wants a specialist, say in a medical niche , you’ll have an edge against the competition if you’re a doctor, or at least, have an educational background on the subject. All these tricks will help the client think you’re the right match with every line they read!

6. Don’t forget any extra skills!

While your experience is the first thing to make you stand out in the market, your specialized skills that apply to the job come next. If you have some extra skills like keyword research or creative abilities like basic graphic design and lay-outing, it’s best to mention them too. These skills will increase your chances of getting hired as the clients will trust you more.

7. Hook the client with your words

Well, being a professional writer , keeping the readers hooked by the right words won’t be a difficult task, right? With every line the client reads, they should get a value that’ll persuade them to hire you. If they see benefits in what you offer, they’ll take the step forward.

8. Keep it short and to the point

Many writers think cover letters should be verbose with several paragraphs. But they’re wrong. Cover letters are supposed to be concise and direct to the point. You should limit your cover letter to 3-4 paragraphs only. Just think of it this way: clients have probably hundreds of job proposals in line. With so much work already on their list, do they have time to read tediously long cover letters? So, it’s better to make things easy for your client as well. While many people might opt for long cover letters, you should not follow suit, unless it’s required by the client, which rarely does. For example, the client might want to know about the applicant’s detailed experience. In that case, you can make the cover letter longer by adding a few more things. But generally, keep it short and to the point.

9. Wrap it up

As you end up, you can establish a friendly relationship with the client. Start by thanking them and letting them know that applying for the job is a good experience for you and you’ll be happy to get this role. Then, express your willingness to answer whatever other questions they may have, and leave your contact details or how they can reach you.

10. Proofread it!

Proofreading your cover letter is essential. You might come across mistakes you previously overlooked. As a content writer, any grammatical or spelling errors will impede your chances of getting hired. So, make sure your cover letter is free of mistakes. As a practical application of what we discussed above, I prepared a freelance writer cover letter sample for you!

Freelance writer cover letter sample

Dear [client’s name], I was excited to come across your content writing opportunity, and I believe my 5+ years of experience in the field aligns perfectly with your requirements. Throughout my writing journey, I have consistently produced high-quality blog posts, website content, and affiliate reviews. My proficiency doesn’t just stop at creating compelling narratives; I am also well-versed in SEO and utilize state-of-the-art keyword research tools. My articles have consistently achieved top rankings on Google, resulting in a traffic increase of up to 25% for numerous clients. Understanding the ever-evolving digital landscape, I ensure that my writing remains conversational and engaging, keeping readers hooked and conveying the intended message effectively. I am enthusiastic about the prospect of leveraging my skills to drive results for your company. Thank you for considering my application. I am eager to discuss how I can be an asset to your team. Warm regards, [Your Name]

Final words

Creating a freelance writer cover letter may seem difficult because of the need to convey substantial information in just a few paragraphs. I trust that the comprehensive guide I presented here, along with a free sample at the end, will help you! Next up, you may want to explore a guide on how to create a freelance writer bio .

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Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

Professional Freelance Writer Cover Letter Example for 2024

Read for inspiration or use it as a base to improve your own Freelance Writer cover letter. Just replace personal information, company application data and achievements with your own.

Cover Letter Guide

Have a freelance writer cover letter that tells your story.

Writing a Freelance Writer cover letter might feel like skating on thin ice – choosing between buzzwords mentioned in the job description and original content, while worrying about making even the slightest mistake.

And what can make this experience a bit more fun and exciting? You guessed it. Relying on expert advice and examples.

Luckily, we have you covered. Check out our tips on writing a memorable cover letter below.

There are several things you need to do if you want to make your cover letter stand out.

First and foremost, make sure to stick to a tone of voice that is either formal and more on the traditional side or completely matches the company culture.

Second, make sure you’re not just re-writing your resume. Rather, build upon it.

And third, focus on achievements and motivations, rather than plainly listing your hard skills.

Now, if you want to stay on top of your cover letter game, we’ve got some additional tips for you.

How to choose the most suitable salutation and make a good impression

Choosing the right salutation for your cover letter is crucial – after all, it’s the first thing the hiring manager will read.

For this reason, we’ve gathered several classic salutations. Note that some of them could be used even if you don't know the hiring manager's name.

• Dear Mr. James,
• Dear Human Resources Manager,
• To the [team you're applying for] Department,
• Dear [company name] Recruiter

You wonder what the key to good introductions is? (Moderate) Creativity!

You’ve probably heard that many people out there have started using phrases like “I found your job advert on platform X and decided to apply”, right?

And what’s wrong with such phrases, you may ask. They’re outdated and they definitely won't make you stand out, to say the least.

So go for something different. Begin your cover letter by sharing your excitement about the company, the position, and even the field.

Don't skip on your Freelance Writer soft and hard skills

So you’ve listed all your hard skills on your resume, now what?

It’s time to think about the soft ones. But remember, it’s essential to not just list your soft skills but to link them to the actual ways they can help you do well in the future.

And what about hard skills, have we completely crossed them out? No, not at all. You still need to mention some of these if you want to pass applicant tracking systems that screen texts for certain keywords. Check the requirements section of the job advert for a complete list of phrases you need to include.

Show how passionate you are to join the company

Proving that you are familiar with the company, its problems, and its goals is without a doubt one of the best ways to stand out.

If you want to show your passion for the company, mention how your skills and previous achievements can help the team grow.

It’s also worth mentioning how your experience can help resolve some of the most common industry issues.

Go for a strong ending

Using the right words to end your Freelance Writer cover letter is essential for two reasons.

First, it supports the great first impression you’ve already made. Second, it’s a way to express your gratitude for the recruiter’s time and consideration.

The closing line you choose depends on your preferences and the company culture. If you want to be on the safe side, stick to more traditional phrases, such as “Looking forward to hearing from you” and “Thank you for your consideration”.

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How to Write a Cover Letter for an Internship

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Freelance Artist Cover Letter Example

Cover letter examples, cover letter guidelines, how to format an freelance artist cover letter, cover letter header, cover letter header examples for freelance artist, how to make your cover letter header stand out:, cover letter greeting, cover letter greeting examples for freelance artist, best cover letter greetings:, cover letter introduction, cover letter intro examples for freelance artist, how to make your cover letter intro stand out:, cover letter body, cover letter body examples for freelance artist, how to make your cover letter body stand out:, cover letter closing, cover letter closing paragraph examples for freelance artist, how to close your cover letter in a memorable way:, pair your cover letter with a foundational resume, key cover letter faqs for freelance artist.

Start your Freelance Artist cover letter with a compelling introduction that grabs the reader's attention. Begin by addressing the recipient by name, if possible, to make it more personal. Then, introduce yourself and your profession, and briefly mention your most significant achievements or unique skills. For instance, "As a seasoned Freelance Artist with a demonstrated history of working in the digital art industry, I have successfully completed projects for high-profile clients such as X and Y." This not only shows your experience but also your ability to deliver results. Remember, the opening of your cover letter sets the tone for the rest of the document, so make sure it's engaging and highlights your strengths as an artist.

Freelance Artists should end their cover letter by summarizing their interest in the project or job and their unique qualifications. They should also express enthusiasm for the opportunity to discuss their portfolio further. A call to action, such as "I look forward to the opportunity to discuss my portfolio and how my skills can benefit your project" can be effective. It's also important to thank the reader for their time and consideration. The closing should be professional and polite, using phrases like "Sincerely" or "Best regards," followed by their name and contact information. This ending reiterates their interest, showcases their professionalism, and opens the door for further communication.

Freelance Artists should include the following elements in their cover letter: 1. Personal Introduction: Start with a brief introduction about yourself, your art specialty, and your professional background. This should be a concise summary that gives the reader a clear idea of who you are as an artist. 2. Portfolio: Mention your portfolio and provide a link if it's online. Your portfolio is the most important part of your application as a freelance artist. It showcases your work, style, and skills. 3. Relevant Experience: Highlight your relevant experience and past projects. This could include exhibitions, commissions, collaborations, or any other professional experiences that demonstrate your skills and reliability as a freelance artist. 4. Skills and Techniques: Describe your artistic skills and techniques. This could include your proficiency in certain mediums, software, or styles. 5. Understanding of the Project: Show that you understand the project or role you're applying for. This could include how you would approach the project, why you're interested in it, or how it aligns with your artistic goals. 6. Personal Artistic Vision: Share your personal artistic vision or philosophy. This gives the reader insight into your creative process and what makes your work unique. 7. Professionalism: Express your professionalism and commitment to meeting deadlines, communicating effectively, and delivering high-quality work. 8. Contact Information: Include your contact information and invite the reader to reach out if they have any questions or want to discuss the project further. Remember, your cover letter should be tailored to each application and should reflect your passion and enthusiasm for the work. It's your chance to make a strong first impression and show why you're the right artist for the job.

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Fine Artist Resume Example

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Europass helps you to develop a structured, consistent and professional cover letter guiding you through each step. You can create new cover letters or edit existing ones using the Europass tool to create and edit cover letters.

How does Europass help?

Europass will guide you step by step through the process to help you create a good cover letter with all the essential information. You can create, store and share cover letters in 31 languages , choose from different templates to customise your application and share them easily from your Europass Library . 

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How to write a good cover letter

A cover letter should highlight your motivation to apply for a specific job or opportunity, and demonstrate why you consider yourself to be the best candidate. Your cover letter should refer to particular examples in your CV and describe why these are relevant for the job vacancy you are applying for.

Read carefully

Read the vacancy notice carefully and highlight the skills that relate to the requirements of the position in your cover letter.

Use keywords

Use the keywords when you list your soft skills as mentioned on the vacancy notice (punctual, organised, team-player and so on).

Have short and clear paragraphs that show different aspects clearly.

Get to know the employer

Take time to research the employer to gain valuable insights into the culture of their organisation and make references in your cover letter to one or two key points.

Keep it short

You cover letter should not be longer than one page.

• First paragraph - why you are motivated to apply for the position,
• Second paragraph - how you are the most suitable candidate for the position, and
• Third Paragraph - why the company is a good match for you.

Use formal tone

Use a formal, polite tone and make sure there are no spelling mistakes.

Use simple fonts

Use simple non-decorative font styles, normal font-sizes (11-12) and optimal spacing (1 or 1.5).

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I invest on behalf of my clients.

I consult or invest on behalf of a financial institution.

I want to learn more about BlackRock.

Larry Fink’s 2024 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors

Time to rethink retirement.

When my mom passed away in 2012, my dad started to decline quickly, and my brother and I had to go through my parents’ bills and finances.

Both my mom and dad worked great jobs for 50 years, but they were never in the top tax bracket. My mom taught English at the local state college (Cal Northridge), and my dad owned a shoe store.

I don’t know exactly how much they made every year, but in today’s dollars, it was probably not more than $150,000 as a couple. So, my brother and I were surprised when we saw the size of our parents' retirement savings. It was an order of magnitude bigger than you’d expect for a couple making their income. And when we finished going over their estate, we learned why: My parents' investments.

My dad had always been an enthusiastic investor. He encouraged me to buy my first stock (the DuPont chemical company) as a teenager. My dad invested because he knew that whatever money he put in the bond or stock markets would likely grow faster than in the bank. And he was right.

I went back and did the math. If my parents had $1,000 to invest in 1960, and they put that money in the S&P 500, then by the time they’d reached retirement age in 1990, the $1,000 would be worth nearly $20,000. 1 That’s more than double what they would have earned if they’d just put the money in a bank account. My dad passed away a few months after my mom, in his late 80s. But both my parents could have lived beyond 100 and comfortably afforded it.

Why am I writing about my parents? Because going over their finances showed me something about my own career in finance. I had been working at BlackRock for almost 25 years by the time I lost my mom and dad, but the experience reminded me — in a new and very personal way — why my business partners and I founded BlackRock in the first place.

Obviously, we were ambitious entrepreneurs, and we wanted to build a big, successful company. But we also wanted to help people retire like my parents did. That’s why we started an asset manager — a company that helps people invest in the capital markets — because we believed participating in those markets was going to be crucial for people who wanted to retire comfortably and financially secure.

We also believed the capital markets would become a bigger and bigger part of the global economy. If more people could invest in the capital markets, it would create a virtuous economic cycle, fueling growth for companies and countries, which would, in turn, generate wealth for millions more people.

My parents lived their final years with dignity and financial freedom. Most people don’t have that chance. But they can. The same kinds of markets that helped my parents in their time can help others in our time.  Indeed, I think the growth- and prosperity-generating power of the   capital markets will remain a dominant economic trend through the rest of the 21 st  Century.

This letter attempts to explain why.

I had been working at BlackRock for almost 25 years by the time I lost my mom and dad, but the experience reminded me — in a new and very personal way — why my business partners and I founded BlackRock in the first place.

A brief (and admittedly incomplete) history of U.S. capital markets

In finance, there are two basic ways to get or grow money.

One is the bank, which is what most people historically relied on. They deposited their savings to earn interest or took out loans to buy a home or expand their business. But over time a second avenue for financing arose, particularly in the U.S., with the growth of the capital markets: Publicly traded stocks, bonds, and other securities.

I saw this firsthand in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I played a role in the creation of the securitization market for mortgages.

Before the 1970s, most people secured financing for their homes the same way they did in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life — through the Building & Loan (B&L). Customers deposited their savings into the B&L, which was essentially a bank. Then that bank would turn around and lend out those savings in the form of mortgages.

In the movie — and in real life — everything works fine until people start lining up at the bank’s front door asking for their deposits back. As Jimmy Stewart explained in the film, the bank didn’t have their money. It was tied up in somebody else’s house.

After the Great Depression, B&Ls morphed into savings & loans (S&Ls), which had their own crisis in the 1980s. Approximately half of the outstanding home mortgages in the U.S. were held by S&Ls in 1980, and poor risk management and loose lending practices led to a raft of failures costing U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion dollars. 2

But the S&L crisis didn’t cause the American economy lasting damage. Why? Because at the same time the S&Ls were collapsing another method of financing was getting stronger. The capital markets were providing an avenue to channel capital back to challenged real estate markets.

This was mortgage securitization.

Securitization allowed banks not just to make mortgages but to sell them. By selling mortgages, banks could better manage risk on their balance sheets and have capital to lend to home buyers, which is why the S&L crisis didn’t severely impact American homeownership. 

Eventually, the excesses of mortgage securitization contributed to the crash in 2008, and unlike the S&L crisis, the Great Recession did harm home ownership in the U.S. The country still hasn’t fully recovered in that respect. But the broader underlying trend — the expansion of the capital markets — was still very helpful for the American economy.

In fact, it’s worth considering: Why did the U.S. rebound from 2008 faster than almost any other developed nation? 3

A big part of the answer is the country’s capital markets .

In Europe, where most assets were kept in banks, economies froze as banks were forced to shrink their balance sheets. Of course, U.S. banks had to tighten capital standards and pull back from lending as well. But because the U.S. had a more robust secondary pool of money – the capital markets — the nation was able to recover much more quickly.

Today public equities and bonds provide over 70% of financing for non-financial corporations in the U.S. – more than any other country in the world. In China, for example, the bank-to-capital market ratio is almost flipped. Chinese companies rely on bank loans for 65% of their financing. 4

In my opinion, this is the most important lesson in recent economic history:  Countries aiming for prosperity don’t just need strong banking systems — they also need strong capital markets.

That lesson is now spreading around the world.

Replicating the success of America’s capital markets

Last year, I spent a lot of days on the road, logging visits to 17 different countries. I met with clients and employees. I also met with many policymakers and heads of state, and during those meetings, the most frequent conversation I had was about the capital markets.

More and more countries recognize the power of American capital markets and want to build their own.

Of course, many countries do have capital markets already. There are something like 80 stock exchanges around the world, everywhere from Kuala Lumpur to Johannesburg. 5  But most of these are rather small, with little investment. They’re not as robust as the markets in the U.S., and that’s what other nations are increasingly looking for.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, the government is interested in building a market for mortgage securitization, while Japan and India want to give people new places to put their savings. Today, in Japan, it’s mostly the bank. In India, it’s often in gold.

When I visited India in November, I met policymakers who lamented their fellow citizens’ fondness for gold. The commodity has underperformed the Indian stock market, proving a subpar investment for individual investors. Nor has investing in gold helped the country’s economy.

Compare investing in gold with, let’s say, investing in a new house. When you buy a home, that creates an economic multiplier effect because you need to furnish and repair the house. Maybe you have a family and fill the house with children. All that generates economic activity. Even when someone puts their money in a bank, there’s a multiplier effect because the bank can use that money to fund a mortgage. But gold? It just sits in a safe. It can be a good store of value, but gold doesn’t generate economic growth.

This is a small illustration — but a good one — of what countries want to accomplish with robust capital markets. (Or rather, of what they  can’t accomplish without them.)

Despite the anti-capitalist strain in our modern politics, most world leaders still see the obvious: No other force can lift more people from poverty or improve quality of life quite like capitalism. No other economic model can help us achieve our highest hopes for financial freedom — whether we want it for ourselves or our country.

That’s why the capital markets will be key to addressing two of the mid-21 st Century’s biggest economic challenges.

• The first is providing people what my parents built over time — a secure, well-earned retirement. This is a much harder proposition than it was 30 years ago. And it’ll be a much harder proposition 30 years from now . People are living longer lives. They’ll need more money. The capital markets can provide it — so long as governments and companies help people invest.
• A second challenge is infrastructure. How are we going to build the massive amount the world needs? As countries decarbonize and digitize their economies, they’re supercharging demand for all sorts of infrastructure, from telecom networks to new ways to generate power. In fact, in my nearly 50 years in finance, I’ve never seen more demand for energy infrastructure. And that’s because many countries have twin aims: They want to transition to lower-carbon sources of power while also achieving energy security. The capital markets can help countries meet their energy goals, including decarbonization, in an affordable way.

[Retirement] is a much harder proposition than it was 30 years ago. And it’ll be a much harder proposition 30 years from now .

Asking the old age question: How do we afford longer lives?

Last year, Japan passed a demographic milestone. The country’s population has been aging since the early 1990s as the pool of working-age people has shrunk and the number of elderly has risen. But 2023 was the first time that 10% of their people exceeded 80 years old, 6 making Japan the “oldest country in the world” according to the United Nations. 7

This is part of the reason the Japanese government is making a push for retirement investment.

Most Japanese keep the bulk of their retirement savings in banks, earning a low interest rate. It wasn’t such a bad strategy when Japan was suffering from deflation, but now the country’s economy has turned around, with the NIKKEI surging past 40,000 for the first time this month (March 2024). 8

Most aspiring retirees are missing out on the upswing. The country didn’t have anything resembling a 401(k) program until 2001, but even then, the amount of income people could contribute was quite low. So a decade ago, the government launched the Nippon Individual Savings Accounts (NISA) to encourage people to invest even more in retirement. Now they’re trying to double NISA’s enrollment. The goal is 34 million Japanese investors before the end of the decade. 9 It will require the Japanese government to expand their capital markets, which historically had very little retail participation.

Japan isn’t alone in helping more of its citizens invest for retirement. BlackRock has a joint venture — Jio BlackRock — with Jio Financial Services, an affiliate of India’s Reliance Industries. Over the past 10 years, India has built a huge digital public infrastructure network that connects nearly one billion Indians to everything from healthcare to government payments via their smartphones. Jio BlackRock’s goal is to use the same infrastructure to deliver retirement investing (and more).

After all, India is aging, too. The whole world is, albeit at different speeds. Brazil will start seeing more people leave its workforce than enter it by 2035; Mexico will reach peak workforce by 2040; India sometime around 2050.

As populations age, building retirement savings has never been more urgent

Source: Working-age population (ages 15-64): UN “medium trend 10

By the mid-century mark, one-in-six people globally will be over the age of 65, up from one-in-11 in 2019. 11 To support them, governments are going to have to prioritize building out robust capital markets like the U.S. has.

But this isn’t to say the U.S. retirement system is perfect. I’m not sure anybody believes that. The retirement system in America needs modernizing, at the very least.

Rethinking retirement in the United States

This was particularly clear last year as the biotech industry pumped out a rush of new, life-extending drugs. Obesity, for example, can take more than 10 years off someone’s life expectancy, which is why some researchers think that new pharmaceuticals like Ozempic and Wegovy can be life-extending drugs, not just weight-loss drugs. 12 In fact, a recent study shows that semaglutide, the generic name for Ozempic, can give people with cardiovascular disease an extra two years of life where they don’t suffer a major condition like a heart attack. 13

We focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.

These drugs are breakthroughs. But they underscore a frustrating irony: As a society, we focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.

It wasn’t always this way. One reason my parents had a financially secure retirement was CalPERS, California’s state pension system. As a public university employee, my mom could enroll. But pension enrollment has been declining across the country since the 1980s. 14 Meanwhile the federal government has prioritized maintaining entitlement benefits for people my age (I’m 71) even though it might mean that Social Security will struggle to meet its full obligations when younger workers retire.

It’s no wonder younger generations, Millennials and Gen Z, are so economically anxious. They believe my generation — the Baby Boomers — have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.

Today in America, the retirement message that the government and companies tell their workers is effectively: “You’re on your own.” And before my generation fully disappears from positions of corporate and political leadership, we have an obligation to change that.

Maybe once a decade, the U.S. faces a problem so big and urgent that government and corporate leaders stop business as usual. They step out of their silos and sit around the same table to find a solution. I participated in something like this after 2008, when the government needed to find a way to unwind the toxic assets from the mortgage crisis. More recently, tech CEOs and the federal government came together to address the fragility of America’s semiconductor supply chain. We need to do something similar for the retirement crisis. America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity.

What should that national effort do? I don’t have all the answers. But what I do have is some data and the beginnings of a few ideas from BlackRock’s work. Because our core business is retirement.

More than half the assets BlackRock manages are for retirement. 15 We help about 35 million Americans invest for life after work, 16 which amounts to about a quarter of the country’s workers. 17 Many are educators like my mom was. BlackRock helps manage pension assets for roughly half of U.S. public school teachers. 18 And this work — and our similar work around the globe — has given us some insight into how a national initiative to modernize retirement might begin.

We think the conversation starts by looking at the challenge through three different lenses. 

• What’s the issue from the perspective of a current worker , someone who’s still trying to save for retirement?
• What about someone who has already retired? We have to look at the problem from the retiree’s point of view­­­­­­­­­­ — an individual who has already saved enough to stop working but is worried the money will run out.
• But first it’s important to look at retirement in America like you’d look at a map of America — a high-level picture of the problem, the kind a national policymaker might look at. What’s the issue for the population as a whole? (It’s demographics.)

[Young people] believe my generation — the Baby Boomers — have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.

The demographics don’t lie

There’s a popular saying in economics: “You just can’t fight demographics.” And yet, when it comes to retirement, the U.S. is trying anyway.

In wealthy countries, most retirement systems have three pillars. One is what people invest personally (my dad putting his money in the stock market). Another is the plans provided by employers (my mom’s CalPERS pension). A third component is what we hear politicians mostly talking about – the government safety net. In the U.S., this is Social Security.

You’re probably familiar with the economics behind Social Security. During your working years, the government takes a portion of your income, then after you retire, it sends you a check every month. The idea actually originates from pre-World War I Germany, and these “old-age insurance” programs gradually became popular over the 20 th Century largely because the demographics made sense.

Think about someone who was 65 years old in 1952, the year I was born. If he hadn’t retired already, that person was probably getting ready to stop working.

But now think about that person’s former colleagues, all the people around his age who he’d entered the workforce with back in the 1910s. The data shows that in 1952, most of those people were not preparing for retirement because they’d already passed away .

This is how the Social Security program functioned: More than half the people who worked and paid into the system never lived to retire and be paid from the system. 19

Today, these demographics have completely unraveled, and this unraveling is obviously a wonderful thing. We should want more people to live more years. But we can’t overlook the massive impact on the country’s retirement system.

It’s not just that more people are retiring in America; it’s also that their retirements are increasing in length. Today, if you’re married and both you and your spouse are over the age of 65, there’s a 50/50 chance at least one of you will be receiving a Social Security check until you’re 90. 20

All this is putting the U.S. retirement system under immense strain. The Social Security Administration itself says that by 2034, it won’t be able to pay people their full benefits. 21

What’s the solution here? No one should have to work longer than they want to. But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.

Humanity has changed over the past 120 years. So must our conception of retirement.

One nation that’s rethought retirement is the Netherlands. In order to keep their state pension affordable, the Dutch decided more than 10 years ago to gradually raise the retirement age. It will now automatically adjust as the country’s life expectancy changes. 22

Obviously, implementing this policy elsewhere would be a massive political undertaking. But my point is that we should start having the conversation . When people are regularly living past 90, what should the average retirement age be?

Or rather than pushing back when people receive retirement benefits, perhaps there’s a more politically palatable idea: How do we encourage more people who wish to work longer with carrots rather than sticks? What if the government and the private sector treated 60-plus year-olds as late-career workers with much to offer rather than people who should retire?

One way Japan has managed its aging economy is by doing exactly this. They’ve found new ways to boost the labor force participation rate, a metric that has been declining in the U.S. since the early 2000s. 23 It’s worth asking: How can America stop (or at least, slow) that trend?

Again, I’m not pretending to have the answers. Despite BlackRock’s success helping millions retire, these questions are going to have to be posed to a broader range of investors, retirees, policymakers, and others. Over the next few months, BlackRock will be announcing a series of partnerships and initiatives to do just that, and I invite you to join us.

For workers, make investing (almost) automatic

When the U.S. Census Bureau released its regular survey of consumer finances in 2022, nearly half of Americans aged 55 to 65 reported not having a single dollar saved in personal retirement accounts. 24 Nothing in a pension. Zero in an IRA or 401(k).

Why? Well, the first barrier to retirement investing is affordability.

Four-in-10 Americans don’t have $400 to spare to cover an emergency like a car repair or hospital visit. 25 Who is going to invest money for a retirement 30 years away if they don’t have cash for today? No one. That’s why BlackRock’s foundation has worked with a group of nonprofits to set up an Emergency Savings Initiative. The program has helped mostly low-income Americans put away a total of $2 billion in new liquid savings. 26

Studies show that when people have emergency savings, they’re 70% more likely to invest for retirement. 27 But this is where workers run into another barrier: Investing is complex even if you can afford it.

No one is born a natural investor. It’s important to say that because sometimes in the financial services industry we imply the opposite. We make it seem like saving for retirement can be a simple task, something anyone can do with a bit of practice, like driving your car to work. Just grab your keys and hop in the driver’s seat. But financing retirement isn’t so intuitive. The better analogy is if someone dropped a bunch of engine and auto parts in your driveway and said, “Figure it out.”

At BlackRock, we’ve tried to make the investing process more intuitive by inventing simpler products like target date funds. They only require people to make one decision: What year do they expect to retire? Once people choose their “target date,” the fund automatically adjusts their portfolio, shifting from higher-return equities to less risky bonds as retirement approaches. 28

In 2023, BlackRock expanded the types of target date ETFs we offer so people can more easily buy them even if they don’t work for employers offering a retirement plan. There are 57 million people like this in America — farmers, gig workers, restaurant employees, independent contractors — who don’t have access to a defined contribution plan. 29 And while better investment products can help, there are limits to what something like a target date fund can do. Indeed, for most people, the data shows that the hardest part of retirement investing is just getting started.

Other nations make things simpler for their part-time and contract workers. In Australia, employers must contribute a portion of income for every worker between the ages of 18 and 70 into a retirement account, which then belongs to the employee. The Superannuation Guarantee was introduced in 1992 when the country seemed like it was on the path to a retirement crisis. Thirty-two years later, Australians likely have more retirement savings per capita than any other country. The nation has the world’s 54 th largest population, 30 but the 4 th largest retirement system. 31

Of course, every country is different, so every retirement system should be different. But Australia’s experience with Supers could be a good model for American policymakers to study and build on. Some already are. There are about 20 U.S. states — like Colorado and Virginia — that have instituted retirement systems to cover all workers like Australia does, even if they’re gig or part-time. 32

It’s a good thing that legislators are proposing different bills and states are becoming “laboratories of retirement.” More should consider it. The benefits could be enormous for individual retirees. These new programs could also help the U.S. ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security. That’s what Australia found — their Superannuation Guarantee relieved the financial tension in their country’s public pension program. 33

But what about workers who do have access to an employer retirement plan? They need support too.

Even among employees who have access to employer plans, 17% don’t enroll in them, and the hypothesis among retirement experts is this is not a conscious choice. People are just busy.

It sounds trivial, but even the hour or so it takes someone to look through their work email inbox for the correct link to their company’s retirement system, and then select the percentage of their income they want to contribute can be the unclearable hurdle. That’s why companies should make a conscious effort to look at what their default option is. Are people automatically enrolled in a plan or not? And how much are they auto-enrolled to contribute? Is it a minimum percentage of their income? Or the maximum?

In 2017, the University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize, in part, for his pioneering work around “nudges” — small changes in policy that can have enormous impact in people’s financial lives. Auto-enrollment is one of them. Studies show that the simple step of making enrollment automatic increases retirement plan participation by nearly 50%. 34

As a nation, we should do everything we can to make retirement investing more automatic for workers. And there are already bright spots. Next year, a new federal law will kick in, requiring employers that set up new 401(k) plans to auto-enroll their new workers. Plus, there are hundreds of major companies (including BlackRock) that have already taken this step voluntarily.

But firms can do even more to improve their employee’s financial lives, such as providing some level of matching funds for retirement plans and offering more financial education on the tremendous long-term difference between contributing a small percentage of your income to retirement versus the maximum. I also think we should make it easier for workers to transfer their 401(k) savings when they switch jobs. There is a menu of options here, and we need to explore all of them.

For retirees, help them spend what they saved

In 2018, BlackRock commissioned a study of 1,150 American retirees. When we dug into the data, we found something unexpected — even paradoxical.

The survey showed that after nearly two decades of retirement, the average person still had 80% of their pre-retirement money saved. We’re talking about people who were probably between the ages of 75 and 95. If they had invested for retirement, they were likely sitting on more than enough money for the rest of their lives. And yet the data also showed that they were anxious about their finances. Only 32% reported feeling comfortable about spending what they saved. 35

This retirement paradox has a simple explanation: Even people who know how to save for retirement still don’t know how to spend for it.

In the U.S., this problem’s roots stretch back more than four decades when employers began switching from defined benefit plans — pensions — to defined contribution plans like 401(k)s.

In a lot of ways, pensions were much simpler than the 401(k). You had a job somewhere for 20 or 30 years. Then when you retired, your pension paid you a set amount — a defined benefit — every month.

When I entered the workforce in the 1970s, 38% of Americans had one of these defined benefit plans, but by 2008 the percentage had been cut almost in half. 36 Meanwhile, the fraction of Americans with defined contribution plans almost quadrupled. 37

This should have been a good thing. Beginning with the Baby Boomers, fewer and fewer workers spent their entire careers in one place, meaning they needed a retirement option that would follow them from job to job. In theory, 401(k)s did that. But in practice? Not really.

Anyone who’s switched jobs knows how unintuitive it is to transfer your retirement savings. In fact, studies show that about 40% of employees cash out their 401(k)s when they switch jobs, putting themselves back at the starting line for retirement savings. 38

The real drawback of defined contribution was that it removed most of the retirement responsibility from employers and put it squarely on the shoulders of the employees themselves. With pensions, companies had a very clear obligation to their workers. Their retirement money was a financial liability on the corporate balance sheet. Companies knew they’d have to write a check every month to each one of their retirees. But defined contribution plans ended that, forcing retirees to trade a steady stream of income for an impossible math problem.

Because most defined contribution accounts don’t come with instructions for how much you can take out every month, individual savers first must build up a nest-egg, then spend down at a rate that will last them the rest of their lives. But who really knows how long that will be?

Put simply, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution has been, for most people, a shift from financial certainty to financial un certainty .

That’s why around the same time we saw the data that retirees were nervous about spending their savings, we started wondering: Was there something we can do about it? Could we develop an investment strategy that provided the flexibility of a 401(k) investment but also the potential for a predictable, paycheck-like income stream, similar to a pension?

It turns out, we could. That strategy is called LifePath Paycheck™, which will go live in April. As I write this, 14 retirement plan sponsors are planning to make LifePath Paycheck™ available to 500,000 employees. I believe it will one day be the most used investment strategy in defined contribution plans.

We’re talking about a revolution in retirement. And while it may happen in the U.S. first, eventually other countries will benefit from the innovation as well. At least, that is my hope. Because while retirement is mainly a saving challenge, the data is clear: It’s a spending one too.

Fear vs. hope

Before I conclude this section on retirement, I want to share a few words about one of the largest barriers to investing for the future. In my view, it’s not just affordability or complexity or the fact that people are too busy to enroll in their employer’s plan.

Arguably the biggest barrier to investing for retirement — or for anything — is fear.

In finance, we sometimes think of “fear” as a fuzzy, emotional concept — not as a hard economic data point. But that’s what it is. Fear is as important and actionable a metric as GDP. After all, investment (or lack thereof) is just a measure of fear because no one lets their money sit in a stock or a bond for 30 or 40 years if they’re afraid the future is going to be worse than the present. That’s when they put their money in a bank. Or underneath the mattress.

This is what happens in many countries. In China, where new surveys show consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level in decades, household savings have reached their highest level on record — nearly $20 trillion — according to the central bank. 39 China has a savings rate of about 30%. Nearly a third of all money earned is socked away in cash in case it’s needed for harder times ahead. The U.S., by comparison, has a savings rate in the single digits. 40

America has rarely been a fearful country. Hope has been the nation’s greatest economic asset. People put their money in American markets for the same reason they invest in their homes and businesses — because they believe this country will be better tomorrow than it is today.

This big, hopeful America has been the one I’ve known my whole life, but over the past few years, especially as I’ve had more grandchildren, I’ve started to ask myself: Will they know this version of America, too?

As I was finishing this letter, The Wall Street Journal published an article that caught my attention. It was titled “The Rough Years that Turned Gen Z into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters,” and it included some eye-catching — and really disheartening — data.

The article showed that from the mid-1990s through most of the early 21 st Century, most young people — around 60% of high school seniors, to be specific — believed they’d earn a professional degree, would land a good job, and go on to be wealthier than their parents. They were optimistic. But since the pandemic, that optimism has fallen precipitously.

Compared with 20 years ago, the current cohort of young Americans is 50% more likely to question whether life has a purpose. Four-in-10 say it’s “hard to have hope for the world.” 41

I’ve been working in finance for almost 50 years. I’ve seen a lot of numbers. But no single data point has ever concerned me more than this one.

The lack of hope worries me as a CEO. It worries me as a grandfather. But most of all, it worries me as an American.

If future generations don’t feel hopeful about this country and their future in it, then the U.S. doesn’t only lose the force that makes people want to invest. America will lose what makes it America. Without hope, we risk becoming just another place where people look at the incentive structure before them and decide that the safe choice is the only choice. We risk becoming a country where people keep their money under the mattress and their dreams bottled up in their bedroom.

How do we get our hope back?

Whether we’re trying to solve retirement or any other problem, that is the first question we have to ask, although I readily admit that I do not have the solution. I look at the state of America — and the world — and I am as answerless as everyone else. There’s so much anger and division, and I often struggle to wrap my head around it.

What I do know is that any answer has to start by bringing young people into the fold. The same surveys that show their lack of hope also show their lack of confidence — far less than any previous generation — in every pillar of society: In politics, government, the media, and in corporations. Leaders of these institutions (I am one) should be empathetic to their concerns.

Young people have lost trust in older generations. The burden is on us to get it back. And maybe investing for their long-term goals, including retirement, isn’t such a bad place to begin.

Perhaps the best way to start building hope is by telling young people, “You may not feel very hopeful about your future. But we do. And we’re going to help you invest in it.”

Young people have lost trust in older generations. The burden is on us to get it back. And maybe investing for their long-term goals, including retirement, isn’t such a bad place to begin.

The new infrastructure blueprint: Steel, concrete, and public-private partnership

I started traveling to London in the 1980s, and back then, if you had a choice between the city’s two major international airports — Heathrow or Gatwick — you probably chose Heathrow. Gatwick was farther from the city. It was also in a comparative state of disrepair.

But things changed in 2009 when Gatwick was purchased by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). They increased runway capacity and instituted commonsense changes, like oversized luggage trays that cut security screening times by more than half.

“The thing about infrastructure businesses... is a lot of them tend not to focus on customer service,” GIP’s CEO Bayo Ogunlesi told the Financial Times . GIP wanted to make Gatwick different. In the process, they also turned the airport into a prime example of how infrastructure will be built and run in the 21 st Century — with private capital. 42

In the U.S., people tend to think of infrastructure as a government endeavor, something built with taxpayer funds. But because of one very big reason that I’ll dive into momentarily, that won’t be the primary way infrastructure is built in the mid-21 st Century. Rather than only tapping government treasuries to build bridges, power grids, and airports, the world will do what Gatwick did.

The future of infrastructure is public-private partnership.

Debt matters

The $1 trillion infrastructure sector is one of the fastest growing segments of the private markets, and there are some undeniable macroeconomic trends driving this growth. In developing countries, people are getting richer, boosting demand for everything from energy to transportation while in wealthy countries, governments need to both build new infrastructure and repair the old.

Even in the U.S., where the Biden Administration has signed generational infrastructure investments into law, there’s still $2 trillion worth of deferred maintenance. 43

How will we pay for all this infrastructure? The reason I believe it’ll have to be some combination of public and private dollars is that funding probably cannot come from the government alone. The debt is just too high.

From Italy to South Africa, many nations are suffering the highest debt burdens in their history. Public debt has tripled since the mid-1970s, reaching 92% of global GDP in 2022. 44 And in America, the situation is more urgent than I can ever remember. Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has issued roughly $11.1 trillion of new debt, and the amount is only part of the issue. 45 There’s also the interest rate the Treasury needs to pay on it.

Three years ago, the rate on a 10-year Treasury bill was under 1%. But as I write this, it’s over 4%, and that 3-percentage-point increase is very dangerous. Should the current rates hold, it amounts to an extra trillion dollars in interest payments over the next decade. 46

Why is this debt a problem now? Because historically, America has paid for old debt by issuing new debt in the form of Treasury securities. It’s a workable strategy so long as people want to buy those securities — but going forward, the U.S. cannot take for granted that investors will want to buy them in such volume or at the premium they currently do.

Today, around 30% of U.S. Treasury securities are held by foreign governments or investors. That percentage will likely go down as more countries build their own capital markets and invest domestically. 47

More leaders should pay attention to America’s snowballing debt. There’s a bad scenario where the American economy starts looking like Japan’s in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when debt exceeded GDP and led to periods of austerity and stagnation. A high-debt America would also be one where it’s much harder to fight inflation since monetary policymakers could not raise rates without dramatically adding to an already unsustainable debt-servicing bill.

But is a debt crisis inevitable? No.

While fiscal discipline can help tame debt on the margins, it will be very difficult (both politically and mathematically) to raise taxes or cut spending at the level America would need to dramatically reduce the debt. But there is another way out beyond taxing or cutting, and that’s growth. If U.S. GDP grows at an average of 3% (in real, not nominal terms) over the next five years, that would keep the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio at 120% – high, but reasonable.

I should be clear: 3% growth is a very tall order, especially given the country’s aging workforce. It will require policymakers to shift their focus. We can’t see debt as a problem that can be solved only through taxing and spending cuts anymore. Instead, America’s debt efforts have to center around pro-growth policies , which include tapping the capital markets to build one of the best catalysts for growth: Infrastructure. Especially energy infrastructure.

Energy pragmatism

Roads. Bridges. Ports. Airports. Cell towers. The infrastructure sector contains multitudes, but the multitude where BlackRock sees arguably the greatest demand for new investment is energy infrastructure.

Why energy? Two things are happening in the sector at the same time.

The first is the “energy transition.” It’s a mega force, a major economic trend being driven by nations representing 90% of the world’s GDP. 48 With wind and solar power now cheaper in many places than fossil-fuel-generated electricity, these countries are increasingly installing renewables. 49 It’s also a major way to address climate change. This shift – or energy transition – has created a ripple effect in the markets, creating both risks and opportunities for investors, including BlackRock’s clients.

I started writing about the transition in 2020. Since then, the issue has become more contentious in the U.S. But outside the debate, much is still the same. People are still investing heavily in decarbonization. In Europe, for example, net-zero remains a top investment priority for most of BlackRock’s clients. 50 But now the demand for clean energy is being amplified by something else: A focus on energy security.

Governments have been pursuing energy security since the oil crisis of the 1970s, (and probably as far back as the early Industrial Revolution), so this is not a new trend. In fact, when I wrote my original 2020 letter about sustainability, I also wrote to our clients that countries would still need to produce oil and gas to meet their energy needs. 

To be energy secure, I wrote, most parts of the globe would need “to rely on hydrocarbons for a number of years.” 51

I’m hearing more leaders talk about decarbonization and energy security together under the joint banner of what you might call “energy pragmatism.”

Then in 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine. The war lit a fresh spark under the idea of energy security. It disrupted the world’s supply of oil and gas causing massive energy inflation, particularly in Europe. The UK, Norway, and the 27 EU countries had to collectively spend 800 billion euros subsidizing energy bills. 52

This is part of the reason I’m hearing more leaders talk about decarbonization and energy security together under the joint banner of what you might call “energy pragmatism.”

Last year, as I mentioned, I visited 17 countries, and I spent a lot of time talking to the people who are responsible for powering homes and businesses, everybody from prime ministers to energy grid operators. The message I heard was completely opposite to what you often hear from activists on the far left and right who say that countries have to choose between renewables and oil and gas. These leaders believe that the world still needs both. They were far more pragmatic about energy than dogmatic. Even the most climate conscious among them saw that their long-term path to decarbonization will include hydrocarbons, albeit less of them, for some time to come.

Germany is a good example of how energy pragmatism is still a path to decarbonization. It’s one of the countries most committed to fighting climate change and has made enormous investments in wind and solar power. But sometimes the wind doesn’t blow in Berlin, and the sun doesn’t shine in Munich. And during those windless, sunless periods, the country still needs to rely on natural gas for “dispatchable power.” Germany used to get that gas from Russia, but now it needs to look elsewhere. So, they’re building additional gas facilities to import from other producers around the world. 53

Or look at Texas. They face a similar energy challenge – not because of Russia but because of the economy. The state is one of the fastest growing in the U.S., 54 and the additional demand for power is stretching ERCOT, Texas’ energy grid, to the limit. 55

Today, Texas runs on 28% renewable energy 56 – 6% more than the U.S. as a whole. 57 But without an additional 10 gigawatts of dispatchable power, which might need to come partially from natural gas, the state could continue to suffer devastating brownouts. In February, BlackRock helped convene a summit of investors and policymakers in Houston to help find a solution.

Texas and Germany are great illustrations of what the energy transition looks like. As I wrote in 2020, the transition will only succeed if it’s “fair.” Nobody will support decarbonization if it means giving up heating their home in the winter or cooling it in the summer. Or if the cost of doing so is prohibitive.

Since 2020, economists have popularized better language to describe what a fair transition actually means. One important concept is the “green premium.” It’s the surcharge people pay for “going green”: for example, switching from a car that runs on gas to an electric vehicle. The lower the green premium, the fairer decarbonization will be because it’ll be more affordable.

This is where the power of the capital markets can be unleashed to great effect. Private investment can help energy companies reduce the cost of their innovations and scale them around the world. Last year, BlackRock invested in over a dozen of these transition projects on behalf of our clients. We partnered with developers in Southeast Asia aiming to build over a gigawatt of solar capacity (enough to power a city) in both Thailand and the Philippines. 58 We also invested in Lake Turkana Wind Power, Africa’s largest windfarm. It’s located in Kenya and currently accounts for about 12% of the country’s power generation. 59

There are also earlier-stage technologies, like a giant “hot rock” battery being built by Antora Energy. The company heats up blocks of carbon with wind or solar power during parts of the day when renewable energy is cheap and abundant. These “thermal batteries” reach up to 2,400 degrees Celsius and glow brighter than the sun. 60 Then, that heat is used to power giant industrial facilities around-the-clock, even when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.

BlackRock invested in Antora through Decarbonization Partners, a partnership we have with the investment firm, Temasek. Our funding will help Antora scale up to deliver billions of dollars worth of zero-emission energy to industrial customers. 61 (One day, their thermal batteries might help solve the kind of dispatchable power problem that Texas and Germany are facing – but without carbon emissions.)

The final technology I’ll spotlight is carbon capture. Last year, one of BlackRock’s infrastructure funds invested $550 million in a project called STRATOS, which will be the world’s largest direct air capture facility when construction is completed in 2025. 62 Among the more interesting aspects of the project is who’s building the facility: Occidental Petroleum, the big Texas oil company.

The energy market isn’t divided the way some people think, with a hard split between oil & gas producers on one side and new clean power and climate tech firms on the other. Many companies, like Occidental, do both, which is a major reason BlackRock has never supported divesting from traditional energy firms. They’re pioneers of decarbonization, too.

Today, BlackRock has more than $300 billion invested in traditional energy firms on behalf of our clients. Of that $300 billion, more than half – $170 billion – is in the U.S. 63 We invest in these energy companies for one simple reason: It’s our clients’ money. If they want to invest in hydrocarbons, we give them every opportunity to do it – the same way we invest roughly $138 billion in energy transition strategies for our clients. That’s part of being an asset manager. We follow our clients’ mandates.

But when it comes to energy, I also understand why people have different preferences in the first place. Decarbonization and energy security are the two macroeconomic trends driving the demand for more energy infrastructure. Sometimes they’re competing trends. Other times, they’re complementary, like when the same advanced battery that decarbonizes your grid can also reduce your dependence on foreign power.

The point is: The energy transition is not proceeding in a straight line. As I’ve written many times before, it’s moving in different ways and at different paces in different parts of the world. At BlackRock, our job is to help our clients navigate the big shifts in the energy market no matter where they are.

BlackRock’s next transformation

One way we’re helping our clients navigate the booming infrastructure market is by transforming our company. I began this section by writing about the owners of Gatwick Airport, GIP. In January, BlackRock announced our plans to acquire them. 

Why GIP? BlackRock’s own infrastructure business had been growing rapidly over the past several years. But to meet demand, we realized we needed to grow even faster.

It’s not just debt-strapped governments that need to find alternate pools of financing for their infrastructure. Private sector firms do too. All over the world, there’s a vast infrastructure footprint that’s owned and operated entirely by private companies. Cell towers are a good example. So are pipelines that deliver the feedstocks for chemical companies. Increasingly, the owners of these assets prefer to have a financing partner, rather than carrying the full cost for the infrastructure on their balance sheet.

I had been thinking about this trend and called an old colleague, Bayo Ogunlesi.

Both Bayo and I started our careers in finance at the investment bank First Boston. But our paths diverged. I lost $100 million on a series of bad trades at First Boston and…well, nobody needs to hear that story again. But it led me (and my BlackRock partners) to pioneer better risk management for fixed income markets. Meanwhile, Bayo and his team were pioneering modern infrastructure investing in the private markets.

Now, we plan to join our forces again. I think the result will be better opportunities for our clients to invest in the infrastructure that keeps our lights on, planes flying, trains moving, and our cell service at the maximum number of bars.

More about BlackRock’s work in 2023

In this letter, I’ve shared my view that the capital markets are going to play an even bigger role in the global economy. They’ll have to if the world wants to address the challenges around infrastructure, debt, and retirement. These are the major economic issues of the mid-21st Century. We’re going to need the power of capitalism to solve them.

The way BlackRock figures into that story is through our work with clients. We want to position them well to navigate these trends, which is why we’ve tried to stay more connected to our clients than ever.

Over the past five years, thousands of clients on behalf of millions of individuals have entrusted BlackRock with managing over $1.9 trillion in net new assets. Thousands also use our technology to better understand the risks in their portfolios and support the growth and commercial agility of their own businesses. Years of organic growth, alongside the long-term growth of the capital markets, underpin our $10 trillion of client assets, which grew by over $1.4 trillion in 2023.

In good times and bad, whether clients are focused on increasing or decreasing risk, our consistent industry-leading organic growth demonstrates that clients are consolidating more of their portfolios with BlackRock. In 2023, our clients awarded us with $289 billion in net new assets during a period of rapid change and significant portfolio de-risking.

BlackRock’s differentiated business model has enabled us to continue to grow with our clients and maintain positive organic base fee growth. We’ve grown regardless of the market backdrop and even as most of the industry experienced outflows.

I think back to 2016 and 2018 when uncertainty and cautious sentiment impacted investment behavior among institutions and individuals. Many clients de-risked and moved to cash. BlackRock stayed connected with our clients. We stayed rigorous in driving investment performance, innovating new products and technologies, and providing advice on portfolio design. Once clients were ready to step back into the markets more actively, they did it with BlackRock – leading to new records for client flows, and organic base fee growth at or above our target.

Flows and organic base fee growth accelerated into the end of 2023. We saw $96 billion of total net inflows in the fourth quarter and we entered 2024 with great momentum.

In 2024, I plan to do what I did in 2023 – spend a lot of time on the road visiting clients. I’ve already taken several trips in the U.S. and around the world, and it’s clearer than ever that companies and clients want to work with BlackRock.

For companies where we are investing on behalf of our clients, they appreciate that we typically provide long-term, consistent capital. We often invest early, and we stay invested through cycles whether it’s debt or equity, pre-IPO or post-IPO. Companies recognize BlackRock’s global relationships, brand, and expertise across markets and industries. This makes us a valuable partner, and in turn supports the sourcing and performance we can provide for clients.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve sourced and executed on a number of deals for clients. In addition to the STRATOS direct air capture project, our funds partnered with AT&T on the Gigapower JV to build out broadband in communities across the U.S. We also made investments globally, including in Brasol (Brazil), AirFirst (South Korea), Akaysha Energy (Australia), and the Lake Turkana Wind Farm (Kenya).

Our ability to source deals for clients is a primary driver of demand for BlackRock private markets strategies. These strategies saw $14 billion of net inflows in 2023, driven by infrastructure and private credit. We continue to expect these categories to be our primary growth drivers within alternatives in the coming years.

Our active investment insights, expertise and strong investment performance similarly differentiate BlackRock in the market. We saw nearly $60 billion of active net inflows in 2023, compared with industry outflows.

In ETFs, BlackRock generated an industry-leading $186 billion of net inflows in 2023. Our leadership in the ETF industry is another testament to our global platform and connectivity with clients.

What we have seen in market after market is that if we can make investing easier and more affordable, we can quickly attract new clients. We are leveraging digital wealth platforms in local markets to provide more investment access and accelerate organic growth for iShares ETFs.

In EMEA, BlackRock powers ETF savings plans for end investors, partnering with many banks and brokerage platforms, including Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, ING, Lloyds, and Nordnet. These partnerships will help millions of people access investments, invest for the long-term, and achieve financial well-being.

In 2023, we also announced our minority investment in Upvest, which will help drive innovation in how Europeans access markets and make it cheaper and simpler to start investing.

Then there is our work with Britain’s leading digital bank, Monzo, to offer its customers our products through its app, with minimum investments as low as £1. Through these relationships, we’re evolving our iShares ETF franchise to meaningfully increase access to global markets.

Let me also say a few words about Aladdin. It remains the language of portfolios, uniting all of BlackRock, and providing the technological foundation for how we serve clients across our platform. And Aladdin isn’t just the key technology that powers BlackRock; it also powers many of our clients. The need for integrated data and risk analytics as well as whole portfolio views across public and private markets is driving annual contract value (ACV) growth.

In 2023, we generated $1.5 billion in technology services revenue. Clients are looking to grow and expand with Aladdin, reflected in strong harvesting activity, with over 50% of Aladdin sales being multi-product.

As we look ahead, the re-risking of client portfolios will create tremendous prospects for both our public and private markets franchises. And integrated technology will be needed to help clients be nimble while operating at scale.

These are the times where investors are making broad changes to the way they build portfolios. BlackRock is helping investors build the “portfolio of the future” – one that integrates public and private markets and is digitally enabled. We view these changes as big catalysts. With the diversified investment and technology platform we’ve built, we’ve set ourselves up to be a structural grower in the years ahead.

Positioning our organization for the future

Just as we continually innovate and evolve our business to stay ahead of our clients, we also evolve our organization and our leadership team.

Earlier this year we announced changes to reimagine our business and transform our organization to better anticipate what clients need – and shape BlackRock so clients can continue to get the insights, solutions, and outcomes they expect from us.

For years, BlackRock has worked with clients across the whole portfolio, albeit with distinctions between product structures for ETFs, active mutual funds, and separate accounts.

Now the traditional lines between products are blurring. Clients are building portfolios that seamlessly combine both active and index strategies, including liquid and illiquid assets and spanning public and private markets, across ETF, mutual fund, and separate account structures.

BlackRock has been critical in expanding the market for ETFs by making them accessible to more investors and delivering new asset classes (like bonds) and investment strategies (like active). As a result of that success, the ETF is no longer just an indexing concept – it is becoming an efficient structure for a range of investment solutions.

We always viewed ETFs as a technology, a technology that facilitated investing. And just as our Aladdin technology has become core to asset management, so too have ETFs. That’s why we believe embedding our ETF and Index expertise across the entire firm will accelerate the growth of iShares and every investment strategy at BlackRock.

We’ll be nimbler and more closely aligned with clients through our new architecture with the aim of delivering a better experience, better performance, and better outcomes.

Voting choice

Healthy capital markets depend on a continuous feedback loop between companies and their investors. For more than a decade, BlackRock endeavored to improve that feedback loop for our clients.

We’ve done it by building an industry-leading stewardship program, one that’s focused on engaging investee companies on issues impacting our clients’ long-term economic interests. This requires understanding how companies are positioned to navigate the risks and opportunities they face – for example, how geopolitical fragmentation might rewire their supply chains or how higher borrowing cost might impact their capacity to deliver sustained earnings growth.

To do that, we built one of the largest stewardship teams to engage with companies, often alongside our investment teams, because we never believed in the industry’s reliance on the recommendations of a few proxy advisors. We knew our clients would expect us to make independent proxy voting decisions, informed by our ongoing dialogue with companies – a philosophy that continues to underpin our stewardship efforts today. For our clients who have entrusted us with this important responsibility, we remain steadfast in promoting sound corporate governance practices and financial resilience at investee companies on their behalf.

And for our clients who wish to take a more direct role in the proxy voting process, we continue to innovate to provide them with more choice. In 2022, BlackRock was the first in our industry to launch Voting Choice, a capability that enabled institutional investors to participate in the proxy voting process. Today, about half of our clients’ index equity assets under management can access Voting Choice. And in February, we launched a pilot in our largest core S&P 500 ETF, enabling Voting Choice for individual investors for the first time.

We welcome these additional voices to corporate governance and believe they can further strengthen shareholder democracy. I believe that more asset owners can participate in this important process effectively if they are well-informed. We are encouraged by their engagement and the continued transformation of the proxy voting ecosystem but continue to believe that the industry would benefit from additional proxy advisors.

Strategy for long-term growth

For 36 years, BlackRock has led by listening to our clients and evolving to help them achieve long-term outcomes. That commitment has been behind everything we’ve done as a firm, whether it’s unlocking new markets through iShares, pioneering whole portfolio advisory, launching Aladdin on the desktops of investors and so much more. Clients have been at the foundation of our mindset and our growth strategy, informing the investments we’ve made across our businesses.

The combination of technology and advisory, alongside ETFs, active and private markets capabilities, enables us to deliver a better client experience – leading to clients consolidating more of their portfolios with BlackRock or engaging us for outsourcing solutions. We believe this in turn will drive continued differentiated organic growth into the future.

As we do each year, our management team and Board spent time assessing our strategy for growth. We challenge ourselves to think: What opportunities will this economic environment create for BlackRock and our clients, what more can we do to meet and anticipate their needs? How can we evolve our organization, operating structure, investment capabilities, and service models and, in doing so, keep leading the industry?

We have strong conviction in our strategy and our ability to execute with scale and expense discipline. Our strategy remains centered on growing Aladdin, ETFs, and private markets, keeping alpha at the heart of BlackRock, leading in sustainable investing, and advising clients on their whole portfolio.

We have continually made internal investments for organic growth and efficiency, investing ahead of client opportunities in private markets, ETFs, technology, and whole portfolio solutions.

In private markets, we are prepared to capitalize on structural growth trends. Whether it’s executing on demand for much-needed infrastructure, or the growing role of private credit as banks and public lenders move away from the middle market, private capital will be essential. BlackRock is poised to capture share through our scale, proprietary origination, and track record. And we believe our planned acquisition of GIP will meaningfully accelerate our ability to offer our private markets capabilities to our clients.

In ETFs, we will continue to lead by expanding investment access globally and through innovation. The ETF is an adaptable piece of financial technology, and over time we’ve been able to do more with it than just making investing more affordable. We’ve been able to bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets. One recent example is offering people exposure to Bitcoin through ETFs.

ETFs have been an incredible growth story in the U.S., with iShares leading the way. We believe global ETF adoption is set to accelerate as catalyst trends that we saw in the U.S. years ago like the growth of fee-based advisory and model portfolios are just beginning to take root. Nearly half of 2023 iShares net inflows were from our ETFs listed internationally in local markets, led by European iShares net inflows of $70 billion.

Active asset allocation, security selection and risk management have consistently been key elements in long-term returns. Our active teams across multi-asset, fixed income and equities are well-positioned to seize on broad opportunities arising out of this new interest rate and potentially more volatile regime. We are particularly excited about the opportunity in fixed income and how artificial intelligence is propelling performance in our systematic investing businesses.

Fixed income is going to be increasingly relevant in the construction of whole portfolios with higher yields and better return potential compared to the low-rate environment of the last 15 years. Now that the rate on 10-year U.S. Treasuries is near long-term averages, clients are reconsidering bond allocations.

BlackRock is well-positioned with a diversified fixed income platform. It’s not going to be just about index, where we manage nearly $1.7 trillion. Or just about active where we manage over $1 trillion. Some of the most interesting portfolio conversations are with allocators who are blending ETFs with active or using innovations like our active ETFs for professionally managed income solutions.

Across asset classes, the need for integrated data, technology and risk management will continue to drive demand for Aladdin. Through its dynamic ecosystem of over 130,000 users, the Aladdin platform is constantly innovating and being improved. Investments in Aladdin AI copilots, enhancements in openness supporting ecosystem partnerships, and advancing whole portfolio solutions are going to further augment the value of Aladdin.

We are honored that our clients entrusted us with $289 billion of net new assets in 2023. And over the past few months, we’ve seen a decidedly more positive sentiment and tone in markets and among clients that I'm very optimistic will carry into the rest of 2024.

Our ability to adapt, evolve, and grow has generated a total return of 9,000% for our shareholders since our IPO in 1999. That is well in excess of the S&P 500 return of 490% and representative of a business model serving all our stakeholders.

Total return since BlackRock’s IPO through December 31, 2023

S&P Global. The performance graph is not necessarily indicative of future investment performance.

Our Board of Directors

BlackRock’s Board plays an integral role in our strategy, our growth and our success.

The diverse experiences and backgrounds of our Directors enable us to have rich discussions and debates. At each meeting, our Directors review components of our long-term strategy and foster constructive dialogue with our leadership team on strategic opportunities, priorities and risks facing BlackRock’s business. This dialogue ultimately pushes us to make the sometimes tactical and sometimes transformational moves to build a better BlackRock. This includes the two transformational moves we made in January: The strategic re-architecture of our organization and our agreement to acquire GIP.

These two transformational changes are the largest since our acquisition of Barclays Global Investors nearly 15 years ago.

Following the closing of the GIP transaction, we plan to have Bayo Ogunlesi join our Board of Directors. We will continue to evolve our Board over time to reflect the breadth of our global business and to guide us as we evolve ahead of our clients’ needs.

A final note

Over the past 36 years, BlackRock has grown from a company of eight people in a tiny Manhattan office into the largest asset manager in the world. But our growth is just a small part of a much larger success story.

It’s part of the same story that includes my parents retiring comfortably after 50 years of hard work. The same story where America was able to endure the 1980s S&L crisis and 2008 financial crisis – and rebound quickly and with growing strength.

And it’s the story that, hopefully, will include more people around the world. Nations that can outgrow their debt. Cities that can afford to power more homes and build more roads. Workers who can live out their golden years with dignity.

All of these stories are only possible because of the power of the capital markets and the people who are hopeful enough to invest in them.

Laurence Fink Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

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1 Based on a $1,000 investment from January 1960 to December 1990. Assumes reinvestment of all dividends. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

2 Federal Reserve History , Savings and Loan Crisis

3 OCED Economic Surveys: United States (2016)

4 Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association , Capital DMarkets Fact Book (2023), p.6

5 World Federation of Exchanges , Market Statistics-February 2024, (2024)

6 World Economic Forum , Ageing and Longevity, (2023)

7 United Nations , World Population Ageing, (2017), p.8

8 The Wall Street Journal , Japan’s Nikkei Tops 40000 for First Time, Driven by AI Optimism, ( 2024)

9 Cabinet Secretariat of Japan , Doubling Asset-based Income Plan, ( 2022), p.2

10 Note: 1. Format adapted from Adele M. Hayutin, New Landscapes of Population Change: A Demographic World Tour (Hoover Press, 2022). Data from United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects. (latest refresh 2022), Medium Fertility Projection. 2. Peak year is defined as the year in which working age population reaches its maximum for a country. Sources: United Nations Population Statistics (as of 2022). OECD (as of 06/2023). World Bank (as of 2022).

11 United Nations , UN DESA releases new report on ageing , (2019)

12 The New York Times Magazine , Can We Live to 200? ( 2021)

13 National Library of Medicine , Estimated Life-Years Gained Free of New or Recurrent Major Cardiovascular Events With the Addition of Semaglutide to Standard of Care in People With Type 2 Diabetes and High Cardiovascular Risk, ( 2022)

14 Source 1: Bureau of Labor Statistics , Employee Benefits in the United States , (2023), p.1; Source 2: Bureau of Labor Statistics , Employee Benefits in Industry , (1980), p. 6

15 BLK Estimates based on AUM as of December 31 st , 2021 and Cerulli data as of 2020. ETF assets include only qualified assets based on Cerulli data, and assumes 9.5% of institutionally held ETFs are related to pensions or retirement. Institutional estimates includes assets defined as “related to retirement” and are based on products and clients with a specific retirement mandate (e.g., LifePath, pensions). Estimates for LatAm based on assets managed for LatAm Pension Fund clients, excluding cash.

16 BlackRock as of Dec. 31, 2021. The overall number of Americans is calculated based on estimates of participants in BlackRock’s Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit plan clients. The Defined Contribution number is estimated based on data from FERS as well as ISS Market Intelligence BrightScope for active participants across 401(k) and 403(b). Defined Contribution includes plans with over $100M+ in assets where participants have access to one or more BlackRock funds; some may not be invested with BlackRock. The Defined Benefit number is estimated based on data from public filings and Pension & Investments for the total number of participants across the 20 largest U.S. Defined Benefit plans that are not also Defined Contribution clients of BlackRock.

17 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, (Feb. 2023)

18 Represents the total number of active public schoolteachers enrolled in defined benefit plans with assets managed by BlackRock. Excludes Virginia, Alaska and Pennsylvania pension clients, as the states’ DB plan is not the default plan for its participants. Public school teachers count from the National Center for Education Statistics, projection for 2022 school year. Pensions participation rate based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: 89% as of March 2022.

19 Social Security , Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area 1900-2100, Figure 3a

20 Social Security , When to Start Receiving Retirement Benefits, (2023), p.2

21 Social Security , Summary: Actuarial Status of the Social Security Trust Funds, (2023)

22 Dutch Government , Why is the state pension age increasing? (translated from Dutch)

23 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , Civilian labor force participation rate, (2000-2024)

24 U.S. Census Bureau , Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) , (2022)

25 Federal Reserve , Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022, (2023), p.2

26 BlackRock , Emergency Saving Initiative: Impact and Learnings Report, (2019-2022), p.2

27 BlackRock, Emergency Savings Initiative: Impact and Learnings Report, ( 2019-2022), p.12

28 BlackRock , What are target date funds?

29 AARP, New AARP Research: Nearly Half of Americans Do Not Have Access to Retirement Plans at Work, (2022)

30 CIA: The World Factbook , Country Comparisons: Population (2023 est.)

31 OECD , Pensions at a Glance 2023 , (2023), 222

32 Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives , State-Facilitated Retirement Savings Programs: A Snapshot of Program Design Features, (2023)

33 Parliament of Australia , Superannuation and retirement incomes

34 Human Interest , The power of 401(k) automatic enrollment, (2024)

35 BlackRock , To spend or not to spend? (2023), p. 2-5

36 Source 1: The Wall Street Journal, The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started, (2017); Source 2: Social Security Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and Its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of Baby Boomers , (2009)

37 U.S. Chamber of Commerce , Statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, (2012), p. 3

38 Harvard Business Review , Too Many Employees Cash Out Their 401(k)s When Leaving a Job, ( 2023)

39 The Wall Street Journal , Why China’s Middle Class Is Losing Its Confidence, (2024)

40   The Wall Street Journal , Covid-Era Savings are Crucial to China’s Economic Recovery , (2023)

41 The Wall Street Journal , The Rough Years That Turned Gen Z Into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters , (2024)

42 Financial Times , How Adebayo Ogunlesi’s contrarian bet led to $12.5bn BlackRock tie-up , (2024)

43 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE ), 2021 Report Card For America’s Infrastructure, (2021), p. 5

44 International Monetary Fund , Global Debt Is Returning to its Rising Trend, (2023)

45 Fiscal Data: U.S. Treasury , Debt to the Penny, ( Debt was $23.4T in March 2020 and $34.5T in March 2024)

46 The Wall Street Journal , A $1 Trillion Conundrum: The U.S. Government’s Mounting Debt Bill, ( 2024)

47 US Department of Treasury , Table 5: Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities

48 As of March 2024. Net Zero Tracker, https://zerotracker.net (last visited March 18 th , 2024)

49 Associated Press News , The year in clean energy: Wind, solar and batteries grow despite economic challenges, (2023)

50 BlackRock iResearch Services global survey, sample size n=200, May-June 2023. Survey covered institutional investors’ attitudes, approaches, barriers, and opportunities regarding transition investing. 83% of EMEA respondents surveyed have net zero by 2050 or other date as a transition objective across their portfolio. https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/brochure/global-transition-investing-survey.pdf

51 BlackRock’s 2020 Letter to Clients , Sustainability as BlackRock’s New Standard for Investing, (2020)

52 Reuters , Europe’s spend on energy crisis nears 800 billion euros, (2023)

53 The New York Times , Germany Announces New L.N.G. Facility, Calling It a Green Move from Russian Energy, (2022)

54 Texas Fall 2023 Economic Forecast

55 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas electrical grid remains vulnerable to extreme weather events, (2023)

56 U.S. Energy Information Administration : Electricity Data Browser

57 U.S. Energy Information Administration , Solar and wind to lead growth of U.S. power generation for the next two years, (2024)

58 BlackRock Alternatives, CFP, 2023

59 Kenya Power , Annual Report & Financial Statements, (2022)

60 Reuters , BlackRock, Temasek-led group invest $150 mln in thermal battery maker Antora, (2024)

61 Business Wire , Antora Energy Raises $150 Million to Slash Industrial Emissions and Spur U.S. Manufacturing, ( 2024)

62 Oxy, Occidental and BlackRock Form Joint Venture to Develop STRATOS, the World’s Largest Direct Air Capture Plant, (2023)

63 As of June 30, 2022. “Energy companies” refers to corporations classified as belonging to the GICS-1 Energy Sector.

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