By Lindenberg Junior
During this time of many layoffs and strong job market competition in the U.S economy (and other countries), a good alternative is planning a strategy to work for yourself, whether as a designer, writer, personal trainer, and so forth. Self-motivation, discipline and networking are key characteristics for freelancers and home workers. If you don’t know how to get start, here you will find some ideas and tip.
Our first advice to start freelancing or work for yourself is to develop a portfolio. This can be a basic website of 1 to 3 pages that can includes your service information in detail, your resume or experience and also your customer’s references. If you still not have this references, a good idea to start building it is providing your service for a good discounted rate or even free (2 or 3 professionals or business is enough) in exchange for their positive testimonial . If your start a website and would like take full advantage of this tool, you will need a SEO service (Search Engine Optimization) as your new website does take time to get well placed in the search engines. As plan B, you can start with a Facebook Page, but a website is more professional and you should consider it, at least later.
You can also start a blog and write or give tip in your industry or niche. Content will help with SEO and better, you may be noticed as an expert on the subject. Blogs have grown to be more than just personal diaries to become an excellent communication tools especially for professionals showing up their expertise. Don’t miss the opportunity to create a profile in the most important “business networking” website: LinkedIn. One of my favor channels is the Questions & Answers section, which connects professionals and providers them with marketing strategies for improving their outreach efforts. Need a boost in your LinkedIn profile or resume? Check Kisuccess, our marketing and tools website Find discussion boards not only where potential employers are, but others in your industry as well. They might just pass work on to you.
A growing number of prospect clients or “temporal employers”
like the idea to access talented workers who may not be available locally and inclusive provides off-hours support and help. Mostly of them use freelancers to reduce overhead expenses. With the internet and the new digital era you are able to locate prospects clients or jobs through different free and paid resources. For sure, the most basic thing you can do to start is networking.
Use Facebook and networking with others and inclusive with marketing purpose, but in this case, be smart and not spam. Posting good content is always a good strategy. Align yourself with many different companies and brands by interacting with existing Facebook fan pages or by creating one for you from scratch like mention above. Photos and videos on Instagram business account or even personal account these days are great to build followers and associate you and your products and services, and in the same way, Pinterest.
For freelance resources, there are quite a few websites dedicated to getting freelancers jobs. Many of them work in a reverse auction manner; that is, you bid on the jobs, and the bad with it is that the prices for the job can go down. Initially I suggest three. Upwork – for high quality professionals. It emerged oDesk and Elance and is possibly one of the largest marketplaces for projects. You name any expertise and you will possibly see projects and freelancers related to it. Apart from a wide variety of technology it also has shorter-term projects, longer-term projects, entry-level projects as well as well as expert level high paying projects. Interesting to say that since 2018, it includes a real-time chat platform aimed at reducing the time to find and hire freelancers.
Guru is still one of the best marketplaces for finding job and projects for freelancers. They have a very simple hiring process and so it makes really easy for the clients to hire. You don’t see as many freelancers if you compare with upwork which makes it less competitive. Interesting to say that the site has Work Room feature which makes it really easy to manage all the jobs. Freelancer (previously GetAFreelancer) is quite a big marketplace and possibly second best to Upwork – as it quotes having “more than 4 million clients” on their home page and Freelancer quotes as “millions of small businesses use them”. The difference should be that with Freelancer you see more jobs posted by clients of clients and not by direct clients.
* Visit our other website focusing on marketing, business, and entrepreneurship and learn more, from content marketing and video production for small businesses to design, SEO, and web development – www.kisuccess.com
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