Want to be your own boss? In today’s world, you don’t have to go it alone. A host of websites can help you turn your idea or skill into a thriving business.
These side hustle marketplaces set you up for success by exposing your business to millions of potential customers and by helping you invoice and collect payment for your work. By handling the marketing and collection, be-your-own-boss sites save you time. So you can start your business on the side, while you still hold down a day job.
Importantly, these sites operate in virtually every industry — from construction to animal care, tech support to crafts. So, anyone with the interest and determination can be a success.
The challenge?
But being your own boss isn’t easy — even with help. Indeed, the tough part about getting started on be-your-own-boss sites is that you really are your own boss. That means your success or failure will largely depend on how well you differentiate your business from a vast array of competitors. And that takes both time and planning.
This is the first in a two-part series on using side hustle sites that help you be your own boss. Today, we look at the overall strategy and the steps you need to take before and when you join an online marketplace. Next week, we’ll walk through the best sites to sign up with to execute your vision.
Be-Your-Own-Boss Basics
The key to success on side hustle marketplaces is your profile.
This is essentially your resume and a sales pitch to potential clients rolled into one. But before you write a profile, you need to create a business strategy. And to do that, it makes sense to think about how to make you and your business stand out. This requires 5 steps.
Define your niche
When getting started, it’s tempting to cast your net wide, assuming that the more general your business, the more potential clients you might win. But, being a generalist makes it nearly impossible to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
The better strategy is to define a narrow niche that you’re uniquely qualified to address. By focusing on a narrow niche, you differentiate yourself from the competition. And, by specializing in a niche that you’re exceptionally good at, you can delight your clients and get terrific reviews and word-of-mouth referrals.
In other words, if you’re an editor, don’t edit all books. Edit investment books. Or, auto-biographies. Or graphic novels. Your business niche should meld your top skills and your passions.
Identify pain-points
Identify the pain points for your client. After all, that’s why they’re coming to you, rather than doing this job themselves. What are the most significant problems that your client is likely to face and how can you solve them?
For example, if your business involves writing resumes for recent college graduates or stay-at-home parents who are re-entering the workforce, their pain point is likely to be a lack of recent experience in the job. You might solve that by getting them to talk to you about what other activities they did that have translatable skills.
For instance, if they ran a club in college, they might need to employ both organization and leadership skills. The parent might have run volunteer events or served on the PTA — or not. Your resume-writing service can come up with imaginative solutions to that pain point.
Perhaps, for instance, your stay-at-home parent’s resume could say:
- Successfully managed a significant cost-cutting initiative as the result of a temporary 50% loss in revenue, without sacrificing long-term organizational goals.
- Created a coalition of diverse parties (so what if it’s your kids?) to achieve shared goals (getting to soccer practice).
- Consistently met or exceeded performance goals (i.e. keeping everyone alive and getting baths completed before bedtime), despite a sometimes hostile work environment.
Whatever the client’s pain points, because you are uniquely qualified in this niche area, you’re likely to have a good solution.
Make Your Profile Shine
Once you’ve defined your niche and thought through solutions to your client’s pain points, you’re ready to start writing your profile. There’s plenty of generic advice about what makes a business profile shine, including having good photographs and a polished description of what you do. However, because you’re in a narrow niche and you’ve thought through what your clients need, you can do better than that.
For instance, while hundreds of freelancers provide resume-writing help on Fiverr for as little as $25, this freelancer focuses on writing resumes specifically for IT and Cybersecurity professionals. And he addresses the top pain-point for this market — positioning yourself to succeed in these hotly competitive markets. “Whether you’re aiming for your dream job or looking to elevate your professional brand, I’m here to help you stand out and thrive,” he says. The result: He has had thousands of clients, generated more than 1,200 top reviews, and charges premium prices ranging between $85 and $165 per resume.
Get Your First Customers
While the whole point of signing up with be-your-own-boss websites is to get help finding customers, you’d be wise to find your first customers on your own. Why? The sites use algorithms to determine where different freelancer profiles are placed in a search. And those algorithms rely heavily on reviews. The more high reviews you have, the higher you rank in site search.
Naturally, when you’re a newcomer, you have no reviews. So your profile can be all but invisible in a crowded field. To get on the coveted first page of search, you need clients who love you enough to give you high marks.
So where do you go to find those first clients? If you’re designing resumes for recent graduates, hit college counseling offices. If you’re selling a dog-sitting service, bring fliers to local vets and travel agents.
But, if you’ve chosen your niche correctly, you’ll know where your potential clients gather because you’re intimately familiar with that group. Go wherever that is with business cards and/or fliers that have a link to your online profile.
Ask for feedback and reviews
As we’ve already mentioned, long-term success pivots on reviews. That’s because most of these marketplaces pull in millions of potential clients, who don’t know you, nor do they know your other clients. Thus, when past clients review you on the site, that’s golden “word of mouth” advertising.
How do you get great reviews from strangers? Obviously, do a great job. But, also ask for them. A simple request is sometimes all you need. “If you like my work, it would really help me if you’d leave a good review.”
Meanwhile, if a customer seems less than delighted with the job you did, ask for their personal feedback. Where did you go wrong? What could you have done to make the experience better for them? Sometimes even small things can rub a customer wrong. Gathering intelligence on where you’re falling short can help you adjust and make your business more successful. And, if what your client didn’t like is something you can still fix, there’s still a chance to save that relationship.
To be sure, marketing yourself — and asking for compliments and criticism — is never comfortable. But if you want to be your own boss, you’d better get used to it.
Next week: 5 be-your-own-boss-sites worth their salt.
