Freelancing Best Practices
Are you trying to make money online, look no further than a freelance marketplace? I believe, for people who have professional-level skills, they can easily make a living by working on freelance sites. However, you need professional-level skills that are in great demand if you want to work and earn on freelance marketplaces. If you have skills better join the established platforms like fiverr and upwork that have been paying to a lot of people for many years.
I am using Fiverr and Upwork and trust me it is not easy to make money on these platforms. Technically speaking, you can make a lot of money through selling gigs on Fiverr and bidding on jobs on Upwork but practically speaking, that does not happen. You might never get any sales on your Fiverr gigs or your job bids might never be accepted by the employer on Upwork. Despite having skills getting jobs on these platforms is really difficult
Fiverr is the best freelancing platform. Fiverr is not just a website where you can hire freelancers for your business or sell your freelancing services to make money, it is also a publicly trading company in the United States stock market. However, Fiverr is so challenging for newbies that it is really difficult to get hired if you have recently started on Fiverr. If you are not getting orders, you might try Upwork as well.
What Are The Major Issues In Freelancing
If you have professional skills in the areas that are in high demand and pays well, you can make full time income as a freelancer. However, freelancing is not all about lofty promises. There are a lot of issues in the freelancing industry. One common issues is getting scammed. You might encounter clients who run away without paying, and another issue could be cancelling the contract when you va e almost completed the assignments. Interestingly, freelancers may also engage in fraudulent activities. For instance, they might continue to push deadlines, might not deliver work after receiving payment, or submitting the same work, especially work related to writing, to multiple clients.
It might be easy to start as a freelancer but could be really difficult to build freelancing business. Do not confuse freelancing with freelancing business. There is a difference between working as a freelancer and owning a freelancing business. To start a freelancing business you might have to create an agency where you hire freelancers to work for you. You are basically taking orders and letting freelancers under you work on the orders. You make some portion to your freelancer and keep the remaining for yourself.
Freelancing: Selling Independently Vs. Selling Through Freelance markets
You can either offer your freelancing services through your website or social sites, or use freelancing platforms. When you sell form your website or social pages, you keep 100 percent. When you work on freelancing sites, you have to give commission to the platform. Interesting, freelancing platforms provide some protection, but when you sell independently you are also susceptible to scams. Getting freelancing contracts through freelance markets might be easier because these platforms have a lot of registered buyers, however, getting contracts independently is difficult. Whether you want to sell independently or through markets, you need to be very careful when engaging in freelancing.
Do You Have Freelancing Platforms in Your Country
Do you also have freelancing platforms in your home country? I mean are there any freelancing marketplaces catering to the local people in your country.
There are a couple of freelancing platforms in my home country. I have joined some of these freelancing platforms. I have even managed to sell a couple of gigs. However, the problem with these platforms is there are not many buyers. If there are not many buyers, the chances of making money by selling your services become almost nil.
How to Secure Your Payment as a Freelancer
If you are working on freelancing sites like Fiver or Upwork, you don’t have to worry about your payment because the platform makes sure that you are paid. Before you are hired, the platform secures the payment from the client. However, when you are working independently, you are always under the risk of not getting paid. You might ask for advance payment but the client is also worried about getting scammed, therefore, he might not offer advance payment. So, how do you deal in a situation like this?
There is a payment management company called Escrow, which works as a bridge between the buyers and sellers mostly for digital goods and digital services. It secures payment for the sellers as well as the buyers. Escrow was started in 1999 and it is a very popular online payment processing company, even the freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Flippa use Escrow service.
As a freelancer, you can use Escrow to secure your payment.
Upwork Vs. Fiverr: Which Freelance Marketplace is Better to Make Money Online
In terms of popularity, Fiverr is the number one freelancing platform. It is even a publicly-traded company, not just a random website for freelancers. However, Fiverr is very popular does not mean it is also the best. I have listed a couple of gigs on Fiverr, my gigs are related to designing and developing apps and websites, and online stores, but no one has ever bought my gigs.
I am on upwork and on average I get one assignment per week and I earn $100 on average per assignment, which means I earn $100 on average on upwork and make $400 in a month. Fiverr was launched in 2010, whereas Upwork was launched in 2015, it was called Odesk previously. Fiverr launched its IPO in 2019 and when the IPO was launched, the Fiverr shares were priced at $21. The price was high for a company that was recently listed on a stock exchange. Fiverr is not just a random freelancer site, it is a company whose shares are traded on the stock exchange. Fiverr has remained the number one choice for freelancers for over a decade. But sadly, a lot of people cannot earn on Fiverr because it is very competitive. I am on Fiverr but I don't earn
The best platforms to find virtual assistant jobs on Upwork. On upwork you can find a lot of employers looking to hire virtual assistants. Alternatively, you can also make yourself available as a virtual assistant on fiverr and sell your service as a virtual assistant. LinkedIn is basically for professionals, it is really difficult for semi-skilled or unskilled people to find jobs through linkedin. Between fiverr and upwork, my personal recommendation is upwork as it is easy to convince your employers through your resume and application. On fiverr, you will have to sell your gig, and it is really difficult to sell gigs.
I am on Fiverr, but I have not been able to sell a single gig. I am on upwork and on average I make about $400 per month. Fiverr is a nice place but the only problem with Fiverr is no one is buying from someone who is new (the one who is yet to sell his gig), Upwork is also hard on newbies but the best part of upwork is you have a chance to convince the client through your portfolio and previous experience. You can also bid for a low price in order to increase the chance of getting hired.
Freelancing on Upwork is my favorite way to make money pretty fast. When I am hired to work on a project it takes me just 1-2 days and I earn $80 per task on average. I make apps and websites. Some of the freelancing jobs I do demand elaborate work for instance creating an ecommerce app and website with products added. For this kind of work, I earn at least $200. My success rate on upwork is 80 percent which means for every 100 jobs I bid on, I am hired for 80 jobs. Upwork is a niche place to make money fast.
If you have professional-level skills in any area, subject, or niche, you can make money on fiverr. Graphic designing and writing are the most common skills that people have. It is very difficult to make money if you are a writer or graphic designer as there is a lot of competition.
Best Alternatives to Fiverr and Upwork
Fiverr is undoubtedly the best freelancing market for highly skilled individuals, such as SEO consultants, SEO writers, copywriters, digital marketers, animators., video editors, programmers, web developers, etc. It is not a place for average skilled people or even the newbie. It is really difficult to get into Fiverr as a newbie. What are the best Fiverr alternatives, especially newbies? Well, you might suggest Upwork. But believe be this is even harder as they are very selective in accepting freelancers for their platforms. I frequently heard about Freelancer and People Per Hour. But I do not know if you can actually find jobs here.
I know hyve but I have not tried this platform yet. This platform is build on web 3 where you can work as a freelancer and make money or hire freelancer for your projects. You pay freelancers with crypto tokens and also receive crypto tokens for your work. This platform can be a good alternative to Fiverr and Upwork but it is not popular yet, in fact I do not see a lot of freelancers talking about hyve freelancing platform.There are a lot of freelancing platforms but if you check online searching for the top 5 freelancing platforms, HYVE will not appear on the list. Actually, HYVE will not even appear on the top 10 list.
There are a lot of freelancing platforms that work just like Fiverr or upwork. While the well-known freelancing sites like upwork and Fiverr can be very difficult for newbies, the little-known freelancing platforms may not have enough jobs for freelancers. I am saying this from my experience. I was once on a freelance site where there were not many jobs and I could not find a single suitable job. The little-known freelancing platforms also do not have high-paying jobs.
Let me exemplify, there is a freelance site called webloaded solutions. They have $10 payment threshold, and this is nice because low payment threshold is preferred by many users as they are unable to earn big. They tell you that you can easily make $10 per day and there are already 400,000 users on the site. However, I did not find a suitable job on the platform.
You should avoid joining new sites because most of the new sites are either low paying or scam