Of all the methods discussed so far, freelance job sites are among the most popular ways to market your services over the web. With these sites, you will sign up as a member, and you will sign up as either an employer who is looking to hire freelancers, or a freelancer who is looking for work. On these sites, you will often be able to showcase your own portfolio of work, and you can search through the database to look for jobs that people are currently bidding on. There are a number of these sites on the web, and some of the most popular are Rent a Coder www.rentacoder.com, Get a Freelancer www.getafreelancer.com and I Freelance www.ifreelance.com. These are just a few of the sites available, and there are many others.
While these sites have their advantages, they also have some disadvantages. The advantage of using these sites is that you will get access to a large number of clients who are looking for freelancers in your area of expertise. The bad news is that you will be bidding against other freelancers in order to get these jobs. When you're joining the site for the first time, you will be up against people who are often veterans, who have built up a good reputation on the site and who have high quality work.
You will also be up against people around the world, which means if you live in a wealthy G20 nation like the U.S. or a country in Europe, you may find yourself up against people living in places like India or China, places where the cost of living is currently much lower than your country. This means that while you may charge $20 per hour for your freelance programming services, you may be up against an Indian freelancer who only charges $10 per hour. While it will be tough to compete against these challenges, it isn't impossible.
Another thing that I should mention about these freelance sites is that many of them are starting to charge people monthly in order to maintain a membership. While the fees are generally low, around $9 per month for some sites, you still have to pay monthly before you can sign up. Additionally, much like Paypal and the other payment processors we discussed in previous chapters, all of these freelance websites earn their money by taking a small transaction fee from each job that you complete through their site. Each company has its own internal payment processing program it uses, and all members of the site must use this payment system.
The good thing about these freelance sites is that they protect you from fraud, a serious problem in the freelance industry that we will be discussing in more depth in later chapters. With most of these sites, your clients will be required to deposit a portion of all of the money up front in a escrow account before you begin your work. This ensures that they are legit and that you will be paid for the work you do. These websites also have elaborate systems for dealing with any disputes that may occur between you and the client.
In general, we recommend requiring all clients to pay a deposit up front before you begin work on their project, especially once you've become established. The issue of charging deposits is tricky, and in future chapters, we will be talking more about how to do this properly. With the things you've learned so far in this chapter, you should have absolutely no problem finding clients. During the transition period, we recommend using every method discussed in this chapter so far in order to quickly build a client network list.
The cool thing about building this list is that, according to the 80/20 principle, twenty percent of your customers will bring in eighty percent of your profits. These clients are your bread and butter, and you will want to treat them with a lot of respect. Many people fail as freelancers, not because they don't have the skills which are necessary to succeed, but because they don't know how to properly market their services. Being able to properly market yourself is crucial in the freelance industry.
In fact, even if you're up against someone who has the edge on you when it comes to technical knowledge, if you are superior to them when it comes to sales and marketing, you will make more money than them in the long run. Success as a freelance involves more than merely being good with a particular skill. It is also closely connected to your ability to market your services as well. The truth is that you must be good at both in order to make real money in whichever area you choose to specialize in.
As your client network continues to grow in size, you will find that a small percentage of your clients will send you back-to-back work. These customers are the best, and can bring in as much as 90 percent of your profits. Like any business, whether small, large, or freelance, when you experience slow periods, which will happen from time to time, all you need to do is contact everyone on your marketing list in mass, and from this list you will get a percentage of customers who will be in need of your services.
If customers aren't contacting you, it isn't necessarily because you're doing a bad job; it may be because they have a group of freelancers they're working with, and if you don't remind them of your existence, they will gradually forget about you. This will rarely happen if you're highly skilled and reliable, as they will want the best for their money. It is crucial to maintain regular contact with your clients so that you can continue getting jobs from them. This means that maintaining a client list is crucial.
There is no limit to the many ways you can find work over the Internet, and unlike the physical world, many of your clients won't care about your appearance, or even whether or not you have a college degree. If you have a professional portfolio which showcases your work, and they're impressed with it, this is usually all you will need in order to get hired. Because much of the general public is still not using the Internet in order to find work, it is unlikely that you will have much competition.
It is debatable whether or not this will change in the future. To be self employed requires a lot of courage and discipline, and it also requires you to have focus and take risks. Most people are comfortable with the idea of being hired by a company who will hold their hand and do everything for them. What this means is that it is unlikely that most people will become freelancers, and this leaves many doors open for those that choose to take this path.
When you first begin the transition period, finding clients will not be easy. The key reason for this is because you're just starting out, and no one knows whether or not you're good or even legit. It will be up to you to prove to them that you are. On the first projects you get, you cannot afford to do a poor job. If you do, word of mouth can work against you, as your clients will tell others about the poor job you did. The danger of having a website is that if you make mistakes, and don't complete your projects successfully, it takes nothing for your unhappy clients to report this to others, placing links back to your site where people can visit.
Within itself, Internet Marketing is a double edged sword. If it is done properly, it can bring in large and sustained profits. But if you scam people, or do a poor job, you can be hurt big time. It is best to always be honest, and always complete your projects at the highest level of efficiency. Once you do a good job, and your clients are pleased, they will often refer you to other clients, and these are people yo u don't have to market to. I like to think of this as being easy money, because it is.
As the Internet continues to evolve, so will the methods used for marketing your services. It is up to you to keep up with these changes. Remember, if your competition is using marketing methods that you're not using, this means that they're taking market share away from you. One thing that has become wildly popular on the Internet in recent years is social networks.