Most listings are not rejected. They are skipped.
Someone opens the catalogue, reads four or five listings in about a minute, and writes to one of them. The listings they skip are rarely bad work. They are usually listings that made the reader do too much guessing: what exactly is being offered, what it costs, and what happens after they press the button.
Here is how to write one that gets a reply.
Lead with the result, not the job title
“Graphic designer” tells the reader what you are. It does not tell them what they get.
Compare two openings for the same work:
- “Graphic designer, five years of experience.”
- “Logo and colour palette for a small business. You get files that work both in print and online.”
The second one answers the question the reader actually has, which is “will this solve my problem”. Put that sentence first, because it is the part that appears in the card in the catalogue, and it is often the only part someone reads.
Say what is included, and what is not
Vague scope is the most common reason a conversation dies after two messages. The client imagines one thing, you priced another, and both of you find out three messages later.
Write the boundaries into the listing:
- what the client receives at the end, in plain words (files, pages, hours, edits)
- how many rounds of changes are included
- roughly how long it takes
- what would be a separate job
This is not fine print. It is what makes you look like someone who has done this before.
Give a price, even when it depends
“Price on request” is a fair answer for genuinely custom work. The problem is that when every listing says it, the reader has no way to tell whether you are in their budget, so they message the one that gave them a number.
You have better options than silence:
- a starting price: “from 150 EUR”
- a range tied to size: “from 150 EUR (one page) to 600 EUR (five pages)”
- a unit price: “20 EUR per page”, “35 EUR per hour”
If you truly cannot price it in advance, say what you need to know in order to price it. That turns a dead end into the first question of a conversation.
Show the work, not adjectives
Anyone can write “high quality, fast turnaround”. Nobody can verify it, so it carries no weight.
What does carry weight:
- photos of finished work, in your featured image and gallery
- a short, concrete example: what the client needed, what you did, what changed
- the tools or materials you actually use
One real example is worth more than a paragraph of adjectives.
Make the first message easy to send
Many people hesitate at exactly the last step, because they do not know what to write. Tell them.
End the listing with something like: “Tell me what you need done and by when, and I will reply the same day.” Now the reader has a script, and the first message arrives with the information you need to quote.
Choose the category and city honestly
It is tempting to pick a broader category to be seen more often. It backfires. You appear in searches by people looking for something else, they skip you, and the enquiries you do get are a poor fit.
Pick the category the work really belongs to, and the city where you can actually deliver it. If you work remotely across the country, say so in the text.
Keep it current
A listing describing a service you no longer offer, at a price you no longer charge, costs you twice: you lose the enquiry, and you spend a message explaining that it is out of date. When your prices or availability change, edit the listing.
A quick checklist before you publish
- Does the first sentence say what the client gets?
- Is the scope clear enough that you could quote from it yourself?
- Is there a price, a range, or a clear reason there is not?
- Is there at least one photo of real work?
- Does the ending tell the reader what to write?
- Are the category and city right?
If all six are yes, publish it. You can improve a listing at any time, and a listing that exists always beats the perfect one still in your drafts.
