How I Created A Successful Freelance Business Using Steem & Bitcointalk
Some of you may already know that I've been working towards building my own freelance business here on Steem and the Bitcointalk forum. I've been thinking a lot about writing a post about how I've managed to secure a decent income doing all of this, since it could possible help other people do the same.
Let me preface this by telling you that it's impossible for me to earn enough, just from my post rewards here on Steem. I wouldn't be able to cover all of my expenses, even if I wrote 5 posts per day. Additional forms of income are needed to keep myself afloat, meaning that I regularly secure deals with companies to write posts for them in exchange for additional payment.
A second way for me to get a nice chunk of additional income, is by writing posts for @oracle-d. While that alone wouldn't support me either, it does add up if I participate with a lot of tasks. Keep in mind that the rewards you'd get from Oracle-D, might actually be enough to support someone living in a country where the overall cost-of-living is significantly less than here in Belgium.
Getting new clients
Most of my clients have actually reached out to me via the Bitcointalk forum. There I have an old and trustworthy account which provides me with a lot of exposure for my writing services. Companies generally contact me to either do promotional work on Steem or Bitcointalk.
I've met one person on there who secures a lot of additional gigs for me as well, the creator of the Coinbound website, which is a marketplace for influencers. I'm currently the only Steem content creator on there and I've received quite a lot of work from them. If you look up my profile on there, you'll get an idea on how much I make for writing a single post, it's more than you'd earn from your post rewards...
Oracle-D
The guys over at Oracle-D, especially @starkerz, have been the biggest contributors of my success on Steem. Especially with regards to increasing my overall post rewards. Thanks to them, I've had months where I earned around $500, just from my post rewards alone.
Anyone can join their open tasks and the rewards for them are definitely worth it! By writing content for Oracle-D, I also improve my writing skills in a way that's suitable to promote blockchain businesses. Their general guidelines are set up in such a way that your writing automatically improves when you adhere to them. Heck, I've seen a clear improvement of the Google search results of my posts, meaning that they generally rank higher than they did before.
Bitcointalk
This is where it all started for me, I wouldn't even have joined Steem if I hadn't been a member of Bitcointalk first. This is also the place where I made my first earnings online. It's still an important part of my business, the amount of money I earn there basically covers my food cost for the entire month.
I've recently pushed my buddy @bozz to join Bitcointalk as well and I'm glad to see that he's slowly building up his account there. I constantly try to advertise Steem on Bitcointalk and vice versa.
The amount of people you meet there who have contacts in some of the biggest blockchain businesses, is just staggering. For me, it has come to a point where I can be quite picky with the jobs I want to do, which is always a great feeling.
Advice for freelancers
The single most important piece of advice I can give to people who want to start their own freelance business, is to build a network of potential customers. Put yourself out there and offer companies deals to promote their services. You'd be surprised when you see that there are companies that really value Steem as a content platform.
Definitely join Oracle-D and participate with their open tasks. As I've mentioned before, this is an amazing way to get better at writing good content to promote/review businesses or services in the blockchain industry. You'd be surprised how valuable honest & personal reviews really are!
Do build your Steem account as well in the meantime, I've noticed that having a decent sized account is extremely important. I'd really urge anyone to not power down and just keep turning your Steem rewards into SP as much as possible.
You definitely have a good thing going there! I am building mine as best I can. I have a feeling I might have started a little too late. We will see though. Time is tough because of my full time job :P I think you gave a lot of good information here that will help a lot of people given the right skill set, motivation, and time.
Yeah I don't know how you get it all done with your job on top of that :D
Well, I kinda know, you just know how to combine those things :P
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I found this piece of information very useful. Thanks for sharing. I will try it out--bitcointalk
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It basically felt like hearing the voice of the angels while reading this post to myself.
First of all, you're totally right about @oracle-d and you basically summarised my feelings as well.
Secondly, I would like to get acquainted with bitcointalk and after researching it personally, I'd love to hit you up on discord to learn better from someone that's already in it.
Last and most importantly, I'm actually working towards creating my own website to be the freelancer I always dreamed of being.
I powered down to fund domestic activities and I actually live in the parts of the world where one can get by(but only just) through steemit rewards. Wish you the best bro
The oracle-d team has really help people a lot on steemit by their task as I have seen people inlvove in their task much. I will also be hoping to get involve in their task soon
Such an informative post and impressive what you are doing, I am just focusing on Steemit at the moment, maybe when I retire and have more time I will be able to look into other areas
Thanks! Yeah I don't blame ya, it's pretty hectic for me now, so it's definitely not for everyone ;)
I am glad its working out for you and keep it up
https://steemgigs.org is gradually building too.
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Interesting, I'll definitely take a look at that. Do you have any stats regarding the amount of gigs that are processed daily or weekly?
Any idea what you’re making per hour? I’m not a great writer so I’d probably have to branch into travel photography or videography if I could ever make it work
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Thanks for the post! I enjoyed reading the article, and thought that you presented valuable information for beginning entrepreneurs.
I included a link to your post in my most recent article, Interesting Links: June 2, 2019, and set the beneficiary rewards so that you'll receive 5% of that post's rewards when it closes.
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