If you want to build a strong freelance career, stop listening gurus.
Most of the freelancers’ income is not consistent. This is what I discovered after 3 years of my freelance career. It’s the main reason for many people to prefer regular jobs rather than freelancing.
But it’s still possible to make consistent income with your freelancing. Please note that this process may take up to 6 months to get the output. If you’re not comfortable with this six-month time frame, do not waste your time reading further.
All the freelance marketplaces have their own algorithm. There is no guarantee to rank your profile always. Sometimes you will get huge clients and sometimes you have to just wait for clients.
None of your tricks & tips will work for ranking your freelance profile if they don’t want to rank you. No matter whatever you do, nothing overwrites their search algorithm.
It’s totally frustrating. Moreover, you don’t know about the estimated time of ranking your profile or services.
If you’re not aware of this type of circumstances and do not become proactive, the freelance marketplaces will make you cry at a certain point. And even it may bring your life at risk.
Build Strong Freelance Career
Stop depending on freelance marketplaces in order to build your freelance career. Instead, build your own online presence to get orders on regular basis.
Don’t get me wrong, your online presence does not mean your freelance account or social media profiles.
Rather, build your own blog & service website. Again, don’t get me wrong. I know most of you have websites & blogs.
I am referring to a traffic driven website. It should have a lot of helpful contents, specially blog posts.
Depending your niche and target audience, create a helpful blog. Try to post descriptive posts as much as you can. Those posts should be solution oriented.
Think of the problem of your target audience & customers, and write solution of their problems. This will allow Google to send traffics on your website.
You may think that what is your benefit solving their problem. Note that, people not only read your posts. They also see your website and the service you provide.
According to my past experience I saw that one visitor asks for paid help among one hundred visitors. So if you have 5000 monthly visitors on your website, you will get 50 customers each month.
The math is really simple & pretty straight forward. But it take huge effort to create a traffic driven website. However, it’s worth it.
Believe it or not, this type of website will be a source of your lifetime passive income. Also, it will help you to get orders on regular basis. This type of freelance income is consistent & reliable. At least you do not have to depend on freelance marketplaces and their commiseration, compassion & favor.
Main Barriers to Build a Freelance Career on Marketplaces
There are a lots of freelance marketplace websites where you can just sign up and start working. At the starting stage it’s quite difficult to land jobs.
However, if you stick with it and try very hard, you will get jobs on marketplaces. But there is no guarantee to get sales or your search appearance. All you have to do is try for sine-die.
At some point, you may get orders but there is no consistency. Their algorithm sucks.
One of the big problem is “Shuffle“. Let’s say, your freelance profile is in high rank and you’re getting huge orders on a freelance marketplace. After a certain period of time you will discover that your profile is no longer in rank. And they stop sending clients to you. It’s because of shuffle.
You may still think of “Shuffle” and what is it actually. Let’s clarify in depth:
There are thousands of freelancers just like you. It’s really not possible to give chance equally to every freelancers at the same time. So they give chance to certain numbers of freelancers. For the sake of discussion let’s say first 100 users are in higher rank on a certain category. That means, thousands of other freelancers have to wait for the rank. After a certain period of time they will turn off the rank for the first 100 users and then they will give chance to next one hundred freelancers. Now the first one hundred users have to wait for another chance. If a freelance marketplace have 1,000 freelancers on a certain category, then it will take them 10 cycles to rank all the freelancers. That means 9 cycles (900 freelancers) have to wait all the time.
I had been top rated freelancer on a freelance marketplace and I saw it generally takes 3/5 months to get higher rank (search appearance) for the next cycle. That means I have to wait 3/5 months to get huge sales. After one month huge sales, again I have to wait.
This wait time may vary platform to platform but it’s a huge pain for most of the freelancers.
Should You Leave the Freelance Marketplace
The answer is- “No”. Building your reputations on freelance marketplace takes huge time & effort. Take the freelance marketplace as your side & extra income. And focus on your own website and its content. Create unique contents and drive traffics on your website organically.
You’re the boss of your on website and you have full control over it. No one can kick you out from your own website.
The number of clients on your website may vary time to time but it will never reached to zero overnight.
On the other hand, you can also get AdSense revenue from your website as an extra income. There are other monetization methods you can choose from. But it’s not our topic here, it’s just a side option.
In the conclusion, there is no substitute for creating your own customer source in order to build a strong freelance career. You can take the freelance marketplace as your extra income source, or you should work on the marketplace whenever you will get a chance. But do not depend on them. Depend on your own website & blog to get clients on regular basis.
