I know, funny title – get your mind out of the gutter! What I mean by “selling yourself,” is that there is a high probability that you have some kind of talent or service that you can provide, that people would be willing to purchase. Whether you’re good at Photoshop, writing sales copy, or creating ebooks, there are daily opportunities out there to cash in on what you know best. Going even further than tech or writing related, let’s say that you’re especially well versed in researching family ancestry or even submitting websites to directories – trust me, there is someone out there that wants to contract your services! You just need to know where to go to find these jobs, and how to land them.
The first thing I would recommend is visiting a hugely popular forum called the Digital Point forums. If you’re not already a member, then register right away, as it’s free, and can provide you a ton of money making opportunities. Once you register and are logged in, head over to the Buy/Sell/Trade section, and start by getting familiar with all of the services being offered and analyze any services that you might be able to provide. It’s best to come up with a plan, which includes your pricing structure (which you can get an idea of by seeing what others are selling the same services for) and start honing your skills to make sure you can deliver quality. After all, you’ll be dealing with real customers who will be paying you cash to provide a product or service, so you want everything to be perfect and squared away on your end. At Digital Point, reputation means a lot, and will directly affect the amount of business you can garner in the beginning, so start contributing to other sections of the site with worthwhile content so you can build up your rep and post count. Eventually, when you feel that you are ready, make a nice sales thread in the appropriate section, and wait for the questions to start rolling in! You’d be surprised at the amount of jobs that may possibly thrown your way, most often you’ll have more on your plate than you can handle, and that’s definitely a good thing!
Another place to land gigs related to almost any service on the planet, is a website called elance.com. Elance is a site where providers of a skill or service, which ranges from simple data entry to software programming, can come to “bid” on jobs that people need completed. This site is huge, and it grows daily, as more people outsource these jobs to what is usually the lowest bidder. Keep in mind; in order to bid on jobs, you’ll have to pay a membership fee for the site, which is almost always more than paid for after your first successful project. At first, in order to land more gigs and make a name for yourself (this applies to selling your services on forums too) you’ll need to charge a little less in the beginning. But by sacrificing a little money in the beginning, you’ll effectively build a reputation more quickly than others, and soon enough you’ll have more jobs than you can handle, which again, is a great thing!
