Facts About Freelancing You Didn’t Know
Do you remember when odesk was still a thing? Doing freelancing back then is as if you bought bitcoin in 2012! No hype but only one way you could fail: by not doing anything! Unlike today, the industry didn’t have “much” standards or simply put: you could afford few blunders. Here are stats to show YoY growth of freelancers:
How To Thrive In Freelancing
Today, even if you’re 100% qualified, tad too many applicants have been trained to catch clients attention. If you just don’t want to survive … but thrive in freelancing, you not only need to master the skills of your profession. You MUST master marketing. Marketing beats talent when talent stops marketing. To “brandify” yourself follow these steps:
⁃ Learn copywriting
⁃ Get yourself a professional headshot
⁃ Be japan-like punctual
⁃ Make sure your portfolio is always updated & has navigation + great SEO
Fact: Most people don’t keep their portfolio updated because there are too many steps involved.
Freelancing used to be Free
Before COVID, freelancing was free (~almost) … now it’s not. Fact is most people are quitting freelancing due to heavy investment and poor ROI. It’s harder for newbies to enter the market because they have to invest connects (upwork) and ad spent (fiverr). You’d think that freelance platforms are maximizing for profit? They are barely surviving. Upwork reported a loss of whopping ~$90 MILLION in 2022. See its stock price to see how the platform itself is struggling
Recently Upwork opened applications for “Expert Vetted” badge and invited 20 MILLION+ freelancers to apply for 300 connects ($45).
Remember: Expert Vetted is decorative badge showcasing Top 1% talent and was only invite-only earlier
Imagine its attraction to newbies, if only 1M apply for it from 20M, the take home for UpWork is $4.50M — ofcourse non-refundable & only a handful applications will be accepted.
Freelance platforms are playing dirty tricks to juice out profit from freelancers? Maybe! Take this as opportunity and play smart on these platforms otherwise you might just end up wasting your money!
Lies Of Freelance Gurus
Freelance “gurus” market themselves as THE GODs getting tons of projects in DMs via magical sales funnel. Reality is far from it. How do you plan on standing out from 50+ proposals in first 5 minutes of job posted? Instead of bragging “I” in your proposals, focus on telling the client that you understand his pain point and how you are capable of solving it. Your past projects experience should NOT take place of it.
The Solution
With Devswall Portfolio Builder, you can create portfolio in minutes, share instant link to your portfolio or specific projects. No hidden server cost, no domain cost and it comes with out-of-box SEO!
Building portfolio is the first step to nail freelancing. It’s not just for experts, even if you are fresh grad you can put your research papers or course projects. Well… if you’re expert flex your Github with our seamless integration and add as many projects as you like!
Interesting Fact: People with portfolios win 59% more jobs than those who use conventional resumes/cover letter. (research done by adobe)
It’s not an easy journey but definitely worth it.
Happy hunting!