So I have recently mentioned freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr, Odesk and Freelancer. Now these are amazing and can garner you a lot of attention. However some people prefer a more targeted advertising for their services as this drastically reduces the competition. Let me teach you how just choosing a different website can boost your earnings tenfold!
Now what does it mean to narrow your field? Well it can mean several things depending on how far you want to go. I will explain this in a simple way by using myself as an example.
Now, I am a writer. I can write in English and Swedish. I could for example try to compete with other freelance writers in the English language, however just on Fiverr there are at the moment over four hundred active writers. So how can I narrow myself?
Well in the example of Fiverr, I narrowed myself by focusing on Swedish. I currently offer translations between Swedish and English primarily. Other than that I also offer to write articles in Swedish for a small sum. Now, I narrowed myself quite a bit there as Swedish is a fairly small language when compared to other large ones like Chinese, French, German and Russian. However, I get new work daily. How does this actually boost my earnings? Well, I pretty much went down from around 500 competitors to four or five. Now that is a much easier amount to manage, which I easily did and now most come straight to me for any Swedish related work they might have.
So if you know a field, try to target it more. Instead of offering "Graphical design", try to niche yourself and promote something more specific. In this example, how about just doing editing? Pick your favorite thing in your field and focus on solely that. If you notice that you only get about half of the amount of work you can handle, specalize yourself again in another offer. Keep doing that and you will be known as an expert in those specific tasks, meaning your old customers will keep coming to you and they will start recommending you to their friends and partners!
However, there is more than one way to target your audience as a freelancer. Most of you have probably heard about the freelance websites like Odesk, Guru, Freelancer, Fiverr and Elance. However, did you know that there are over ten thousand websites where freelancers can market their services? Now lets face it, at least 80-90 % of these are empty and useless. However, there are a lot of sites out there where you can expand your career.
For example, targeting specific countries is an amazing method. Here in Sweden we have a freelance marketplace I recently got active on again. They have taken a lot of inspiration from Fiverr which makes it easy to use. Now Sweden doesn't have a huge market but there are a few thousand people who use the website. By expanding there with my translation skills I managed to expand my potential market with about 20% (Fast head calculation using traffic statistics).
Now I know, some of you are now going "Where do I find these sites?". Well I can't help you completely since there are so many. Googling can get you a long way but I will give you a blog article here that will help you out. They listed freelance websites that focus on specific countries, niches and such. Check it out by clicking here.
So don't just sit there, start experimenting and watch the results! Failure only comes to the one who doesn't try.
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