Are you working from home as a freelancer? If your answer is yes, it is very likely that you are are always looking for ways to make more money.
Gig workers are always looking for work opportunities. You want more people to hire you and you want more people to buy your services and expertise.
But, how do you get more work?
The answer is “build your online presence.” Building your online presence means your clients and customers will easily find you and hire you to work on their projects.
However, the obvious question is how do you build your online presence?
Build Your Portfolio or Personal Website
If you are a freelancer working online, you need a website to showcase your portfolio. Having a website will allow you to share your bio, work experience, and contact address.
This will not only build your brand as a freelancer but also increases your online visibility and help you get more contracts. If you are working on freelance sites, you should share your link to your website to showcase your portfolio. This will also increase the chances of getting more jobs as your portfolio will establish your credibility as a freelancer.
However, building your own freelancer portfolio website may not be a viable option for some freelancers. For instance, you have to buy a domain and hosting, and hire a website designer if you do not know web designing. You’ll need to hire an SEO expert to rank your website if you do not know SEO techniques, and spend money on digital marketing.
Of course, if you have those skills, you can easily make a website yourself relatively inexpensively. The more that you can do yourself, the more money you can save.
If building a website yourself is too difficult, use a third party website to showcase your freelancer portfolio instead.
Here are some of the websites where you can showcase your portfolio for free. The best thing about these websites is they are ranked highly on search engines, thus, you do not have to work on SEO or digital marketing.
LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals. LinkedIn can be used by job seekers to get jobs, employer to find workers, and freelancer to network with clients. You can create four different kind of accounts on LinkedIn. They are Free, Business, Business Plus, and Executive, based on the features you are looking for.
LinkedIn Premium account is for recruiters, job seekers, and sales and marketing professionals.
If you upgrade to LinkedIn Premium you can see who viewed your profile, you can take various courses from LinkedIn Learning and sharpen your skills, access to InMail that you can use to apply on jobs or contact hiring managers.
Even though LinkedIn Premium has a lot of benefits, you can still use the free account and showcase your portfolio. Since LinkedIn is an authority site, you have a high chance of ranking on search engines.
About.Me
About.Me is a high authority site to showcase your freelancer portfolio. By signing up on About.Me you will be able to build one-page website easily.
You can showcase your portfolio on About.Me by creating a single web page based around your services. Since About.Me is a high authority site, your page will be ranked high on search engines and help drive extra traffic.
This will not only help you get online visibility but also help you get more freelancer contracts. You can also use About.Me to share your links to various social networking sites, freelancer sites, or even your blogs and websites.
About.Me has two versions, the free version and the premium version. If you are using the free version, your site will be something like about.me/yourname.
However, if you use premium version you can use custom domain. The premium service is $8 per month ($79 per year). The premium version will allow you to have about.me website with a custom domain. However, you can still use the free version and benefit from About.me.
Create Social Media Profiles
While your website is an important central digital property, social media profiles can be an excellent way to get more exposure. Social media helps to create a community of followers who are interested in your services. It also makes it easy to reach out to people who may buy a gig.
There are plenty of different social media sites that you can take advantage of as a gig worker. When you first start, focus on one or two before expanding to others. Over time, you’ll be able to add more platforms to improve your online presence.
Some of the best social media platforms to use are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Diversify Your Freelance Profiles
Getting more work as a freelancer starts with building a strong reputation on a gig site like Freelancer.com. Start by creating a profile that gives a little background about you and what sets you apart from others.
Next, you’ll want to add the specific gigs or services that you want to offer. Include a specific description of the service along with a competitive price. Try to build your reputation by getting good reviews from your customers.
After you have had success on one freelance platform, branch out to other ones. This will help to give you the best chance of winning more work and making more money.
Some great freelance websites to check out include Freelancer, Upwork, Guru, and Fiverr. You can also post your services on Craigslist and Facebook pages to get even more exposure.
The point is to diversify your online presence so that the most amount of people see your offer. This will help you win more gigs and earn more money while working from home.
