Linkedin recently announced the launch of the Linkedin marketplace for freelancers. Amidst the rising gig economy, it’s very lucrative to make money online or find talent online. Businesses are preferring freelancers more than agencies for several genuine reasons. One of many reasons is the specialization that freelancers have. Agencies have several services which the businesses do not need. Furthermore, according to BusinessWire, 73% of hiring managers prefer Freelancers & not agencies.
This post is for your if you’re either a freelancer or someone who’s looking for talent online.
Best Freelancing site for Freelancers
While freelancing is at its peak, there wasn’t any serious competition for platforms like UpWork & Fiverr. Now that Linkedin has entered the arena, it’s obvious that things will change. The Linkedin marketplace is a dent & turning point in the freelancing industry.
Freelancers who have been paying at least 20% as fees to the platforms can now save money. Odds are, people would prefer subscribing to premium features of Linkedin like Sales Navigator, learning, etc to find more & quality leads and to upgrade themselves. That would still be exponentially cheaper than giving away 20% per project.
As far as the best freelancing site is concerned, the Linkedin marketplace seems to be the best platform right now. The biggest hit UpWork & Fiverr will face is slashing down the percentage cut & creating a freelancer-safe platform. No more getting bullied by the “$5 for everything” price point.
Even from the employer’s standpoint, not only the quality of work will improve, but the overall experience of working with professionals will get better.
But as a downside, cheap providers who used to pollute freelancing sites like UpWork & Fiverr will start populating on Linkedin. Since getting work on Linkedin will require a freelancer to create content on the platform, chances of this happening are mild.
From a neutral point of view, Linkedin seems to dominate the market for now. This is the best time to grow your freelancing career & business.
What is Linkedin Marketplace
Even though there are players like Fiverr & UpWork, there was a huge market for a platform where providers & buyers can meet. Linkedin being Linkedin, came up with Linkedin Marketplace. The main reason I think this has happened is the poor quality of the work userbase. I have been a freelancer on both platforms in the past & I must say, freelancers aren’t getting the respect they deserve. On the other hand, even buyers didn’t have a great experience. Many have got coned, many lost money, many had to do go through a lot of pain to get the job done.
On Linkedin, unlike other freelancing platforms, you don’t look for jobs, you look for people who can give you jobs. Similarly, for buyers, you don’t have to find people, you have to search for services and Linkedin will show you top providers to choose from.
Note: Check out all the services on Linkedin Marketplace
Furthermore, both Fiverr & UpWork lack the trust of people. Linkedin is the most professional platform on the internet. The quality of professionals is second to none. This makes hiring from Linkedin Marketplace very lucrative.
Check out this video from Linkedin on How Linkedin Marketplace works:
Why & Why not Linkedin Marketplace?
If you’re using a free account, you can’t reach out to too many people. there’s an upper limit to that. Check out the official documentation from Linkedin about people’s search limits here.
Spending time on both sides of the spectrum, I can relate to the pains & gains of both sides. While on freelancing sites like UpWork & Fiverr, you have to pay a huge cute to the platform owners. On top of that, you have to deal with buyers who don’t care about the quality of work, their priority is “cheap services”, irrespective of who provides it.
On the other hand, there’s Linkedin where there’s the quality of providers on the platform, there’s authenticity in the people you work for/with but there’s one problem with Linkedin, reach, especially for freelancers.
If you’re a freelancer, reaching out to find work on the platform will not be easy. Most part of your lead generation will rely on content creation on the platform, which isn’t scalable & slow in terms of growth.
Here’s the loop you will be trapped in:
You create a marketplace profile, optimize your profile for sales, create content to get discovered by your potential customers, repeat. Apart from working hard on the projects you get to work on, you will also have to create content for the platform to be relevant. Considering the life span of a post on social media, you will have to consistently keep working on content creation.
How to get started with Freelancing on Linkedin Marketplace?
For freelancers, it’s very easy to get started with Linkedin Marketplace. All you need to have is an active Linkedin profile, (if you don’t already have one, sign up to get started)
If you already have an account, you can either access the marketplace from the Work menu, as shown below:
Or you can directly go to the Linkedin Marketplace (bookmark this in your browser)
Once you’ve logged into the marketplace, create your Linkedin Services profile by clicking on the “Get Started” button as shown below:
Alternatively, you can create your Linkedin Marketplace profile from your Linkedin profile as well.
Whichever option you choose, you will land on the screen to get started with creating a provider profile as shown below:
Click on continue & fill in the relevant details matching the skills that your potential customers are looking for.
Specify if you’re open to working from a specific location or you prefer remote work, like a typical freelancer.
Click on “Next” to preview the profile & publish if it looks good.
Optionally, you can create a post announcing your services. This will inform existing connections & followers about services & this will immediately start as the first token of promotion.
Note: Just in case, if you ever wish to discontinue working as a Linkedin Marketplace provider, unpublish your provider profile accessing your service page from your profile as shown below:
Once you’re in the admin view as shown below:
Click on Edit & then scroll down to find the Unpublish button as shown below:
That’s it. That’s all you need to create & manage a provider profile on Linkedin Marketplace. Now that you have a profile, it’s time to learn how to get more leads from Linkedin.
How to get more Freelancing gigs from LinkedIn?
Linkedin is becoming the epicenter of lead generation. You can cultivate potential leads on the platform and directly get in touch with them to grow your business.
While you can handpick the potential leads from Linkedin, we have amazing tools to do the same redundant steps with our automation. We have 180+ automation to help you get leads from various entities on the internet.
Let’s share our hand-picked list of some of the most lucrative automation you can use to generate leads from Linkedin.
Automating Lead generation on Linkedin
Extract list of profile visitors: One of the hottest sources of lead generation is the list of profile visitors. We have created this automation to help content creators grow their network by connecting to the right people, especially those who’ve visited their profile. If someone is visiting your profile, it clearly means they’re interested in your work or they want something from you. This automation can help you get in touch with such people and hit a conversation.
Linkedin profile scraper: When you find a profile of a potential customer, you’d wanna know as much as possible to personalize your pitch for them. This automation is for those who have that knack for generating outbound leads, who’re good at sales email/messaging.
Find emails using the Linkedin profile: Emails are the bread & butter of digital marketing. There’s no algorithm to govern your emails, there’s no distraction while reading your emails. You have the highest chances of conversion when you’re interacting 1 on 1 with your email subscribers. Which other platform is better than Linkedin to get emails from potential customers? Use this automation to get emails from any Linkedin profile.
P.S: These were some of the most lucrative Linkedin automations we have on TexAU. You can visit the automation store to find a lot of automation that you can use for generating leads, growing your network & more.
Freelancing best practices
Starting a freelancing is very easy, you just need to create a profile on freelancing platforms like Linkedin marketplace. But sustaining & growing the business is something that not everybody is able to do.
While we’re discussing things about freelancing, I have compiled a couple of best practices for people from various walks of freelancing.
#1 Take care of cash flow
The pandemic has taught us that relying on just one income stream isn’t going to help anymore. You have to create multiple income streams to take care of yourself & your family financially.
With that said, as a freelancer, you have to take care of how cash flows in your freelance business. If you’re not operating as a registered business, it will be easy but if you are operating as one, then you will need to focus a lot of the flow.
You will have to take care of the taxes, reinvest a certain percentage of revenue back in the business, the salaries (if applicable), control unwanted business expenses & whatnot.
Dedicate dedicated hours (or hire someone who can) to manage & track the cash flow. It’s important & worth every second you put into it.
#2 Create ‘other’ income streams
By other income streams, I mean focusing on signing other clients while working on the already acquired clients. Businesses are preferring freelancers over agencies, I have seen several proposals clearly stating their disinterest in agencies.
I understand that agencies aren’t scalable. You get paid only for the time you have, it’s basically 9 to 5 but paid better. You can choose to offer to consult clients to create more money out of your time.
#3 keep upgrading your skills
Those who were able to upgrade themselves during the pandemic have made the most out of it. Even if I eliminate the pandemic from the equation, I can still argue that upgrading your skills is so crucial for anyone in any business, let alone freelancing.
Back in the days when Amazon was a tiny baby, people have questioned the future of the internet. Jeff Bezos was a visionary who saw the potential Amazon had & upgraded his skills & business acumen matching with the rise of the internet. Those who didn’t were left out. Remember what happened to blockbuster? The inability to adapt to change killed one of the very first billion-dollar companies.
Talks a lot about why upgrading skills is crucial.
Frequently Asked Questions
As part of summing up, I’ll address the top questions I found while researching to help you close your thoughts around this.
Linkedin has recently announced a marketplace for freelancers to get clients from the platform. This seems like an attempt to boost the subscribers of sales navigator since generating leads requires either of the paid versions/features of Linkedin.
The Linkedin marketplace is direct competition for Upwork & Fiverr. You can create a provider profile & start generating leads for your freelancing business.
Getting started with the Linkedin marketplace is easy. Click on the “Work” menu on your Linkedin feed & find “Services Marketplace”
One of the major reasons why I like Linkedin Marketplace is the fact that there’s no fee you have to worry about while taking up clients on Linkedin. On Fiverr & UpWork, you have to charge at least 20% extra to the clients if you don’t have to pay the fees out of your pocket. Doing that, there’s a fair chance of losing the bid because most buyers want ‘cheaper’ options, even if the quality is questionable.
Absolutely. You can do that. All you need is a proper system that matches your own work ethics & standards. You can charge a small percentage as your profit & create a business where you only operate and run a full-fledged agency of freelancers, no strings attached.
Depends on how you approach. If you don’t want to pay 20% fees to the freelancing platforms, the Linkedin marketplace is the best you can get. However, you will have to build a reputation that can get you enough clients from the platform. That will require you to create content to reach the right & relevant audience.
Finally, I found the best success on Linkedin. The way things are going on Linkedin when the population is not even a billion, it seems like getting freelancing clients on Linkedin is going to be mainstream.
I hope this article has helped you get close to more winning opportunities & I invite you to check out TexAu Automations to find leads for your business.
