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10 tips for an Eye-Catching Freelance Profile

Written by: Daryl James

Article Overview: So you’re a freelancer at an online outsourcing site with 25,000 providers to choose from. Seems like it might be hard to stand out to prospective outsourcing buyers. Here’s some quick advice...

10 tips for an Eye-Catching Freelance Profile

So you’re a freelancer at an online outsourcing site with 25,000 providers to choose from. Seems like it might be hard to stand out to prospective outsourcing buyers.

Here’s some quick advice:

1. Spell-check for goodness sake. There is no faster way to look unprofessional than to have “poorgrammer” as part of your freelance professional title.
2. Links, and links, and links. Whenever you can - show links to prior freelance work, prior outsourcing companies, anything to give the reader a better idea of who you are and what you’ve done.
3. Be creative with your title. You have about 0.1 seconds to make an impression when your freelance professional profile first appears in outsourcing search results. Better have some standout keywords in there. Be creative, be fun, be a “java ninja” or a “php rockstar”.
4. Upload a picture of yourself. While your coding ability may have little to do with your appearance, every outsourcing buyer we’ve ever asked has told me that the pictures gain their attention (by the way, logos don’t have the same effect).
5. Prove your skills. If you can, take online freelance certifications. Take oDesk tests, or Brainbench tests, or pursue a certification from Zend, MS, etc.
6. Prove your identity. Check out some of the online tools and sites for building a stronger online freelance identity. Beenverified.com has an embeddable online ID verification.
7. Don’t forget your keywords. Think as if you were an outsourcing buyer. You’re looking for a freelance professional just like you. What keywords would you use in your search? If you possess some unique freelance skills, put them into your professional profile. It’s not going to hurt and it will increase the number of outsourcing buyers looking at your professional profile.
8. Set reasonable expectations. You may not find Google outsourcing to freelance talent today, but you may find some outstanding long-term outsourcing clients. Set the right expectations and the right freelance hourly rates or bids with the right outsourcing audience in mind.
9. Stay on top of freelance tech trends. Is Ruby hot right now? Have you been an administrative assistant and now you want to do some freelance technical writing? Know what skills are in outsourcing demand and seek out learning opportunities. It may take you a substantial investment of time to become an expert, but the rewards could be worth it.
10. Include testimonials or references. It’s nice to read paragraph after paragraph about previous outsourcing client work that you’ve done, but a good old fashioned customer testimonial and reference is often the most powerful message on your freelance professional profile. If you don’t have any yet, do a tiny freelance project at a reduced cost to gain the experience and the reference-able outsourcing customer.

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Article Tags: appearance, embeddable, freelancer, goodness sake, google, logos, ninja, online tools, outsourcing buyers, outsourcing clients, outsourcing companies, professional profile, professional title, spell check, standout, zend



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