Hey guys, so in this video, I wanted to kind of talk about freelancing websites and how I've been using them to essentially get more SEO and client work. You could also obviously use these sites for doing other types of work, you know, maybe if you're good with graphic design or programming, the kind of potential with these freelance sites is really endless if you have other skills in other areas. But I wanted to show you how I'm using it for SEO and how I've kind of optimized my profile here on Elance, which is kind of the place I'm currently spending most of my time applying for jobs and talking with people doing things of that nature. So to give you some idea, I've basically gone in and I've set up my profile. You'll you'll have to also, I guess, first off here, I'll note that I had to verify my identity, which I think actually puts me in really good graces with Elance and probably gets me more jobs.

Bytes, and other things that are just going to help me like rank better within their, their system. I pretty much filled out my profile 100% you can see right here, your profile completeness. 100% I added a video that that people, you know, potential clients could watch has all the information about where I am put in this good overview, if I hit read more, you know, it's very generic. You know, my name is john, I've been doing internet marketing for four years. I mentioned, you know, my business, and just kind of this generic thing about Google and traffic and I list some of the services that I offer. I happen to be Microsoft Certified.

So I just, you know, put that in there. Some education, you know, I have an associate's degree and I'm currently employed doing e commerce for this company. So I thought all this stuff would be good to add. You know, I worked on this link building, you know, company with someone for a few months, so, I was managing a lot of clients. So that's definitely a really big thing to have. In here, beyond that, you know, if I go in, you can dig in all these different things like portfolio.

And this is really good because every time you apply for a job, you can use things that are in your portfolio to basically apply and kind of set you above others that are applying for these positions. So what I did was I took some screenshots, you know, here's like a local rank and got for an insurance agency, if you type in insurance agent and over mass, my clients like in the third spot, and, you know, when I started working with this client, they were nowhere here. And now they're also kind of shining above the competition with these reviews, you know, now they get the stars showing things like that. And insurance in general is pretty competitive. So it's definitely a good thing that have some sort of social proof like this. Honestly, if you don't, you know, I'll probably get into this a little bit later, a little bit more in depth.

But if you don't have any social proof right now, what I would honestly suggests doing is learning some skills, going out and learning, you know, through other Udemy courses or just anywhere you can find free resources, there's tons of sites that teach local SEO, go find some people that you're friends with and work on ranking their sites and get them good results. And then you can use that is sort of, you know, something as criteria for your resume or for your profile on these sites. You know, some proof to show that you're actually doing the work, you know, even if it's free to start out, that's honestly what I would do. So anyways, moving on, you can put in a little description, add some tags, and I basically did that, you know, with a couple of these is another screenshot of another rank example that I have here that I can send to potential prospects.

This is basically a PDF you can even upload PDFs into their system. I basically have a report that I'll generate, you know, monthly for any clients that I work with. So this is like, I just took one of those existing reports and basically put it together into my portfolio here. So I can send this to people and they can get an idea of like what they would expect when they get reports from me monthly. So it really, really helps. You know, when getting clients things like that.

Some other things that I've done is mostly, you know, like, here's when I ran an SEO service with someone else for several months. You know, I mentioned that, you know, that's what I did, I managed over 50 clients, and here's the site, here's like, a screenshot. And then I put in a bunch of other sites, like, here's a skull clothing site that I run, you know, not really too relevant SEO, but I've actually had some people ask about, you know, e commerce SEO and this is like a great thing, you know, to be able to mention to them like, Hey, I built this e commerce site, so I know a lot about e commerce as well. So you know, anything like this that you can come up with, definitely would help. I wanted to show you so Some other things as well. Here's an example job that I recently have been speaking with the client, I kind of wanted to go through this and show you like what my proposal look like and kind of how things have progressed with this particular job.

So this is a company, they actually happened to be based in Massachusetts, and that's where I live. So that was one of the big reasons I applied to them. Obviously, it's not always going to be the case. And it doesn't necessarily have to matter. But you know, that is one advantage. I have one of my biggest clients right now.

They I meet with them like monthly and I'll sit down in their office for an hour and I really think that kind of sets me apart from a normal agency. Most agencies aren't going to have like someone go to the client's office and sit down with them face to face to actually talk about what's going on. So that's something that I can propose when it comes to local stuff. I guess I just wanted to mention that. So I'll kind of go through this job listing they said you know, looking for experience in a marketing specialist to help us optimize our well websites for upcoming expansion. You know, they want someone who's in education, marketing and wants to help them local search social media, you know, and then they kind of just threw in this generic stuff.

Please respond with a resume, summary of your experience examples of work success stories and references compensation depended upon experience. We're willing to pay for expertise and results. So here's what I said when you're applying on Elance. You basically have to put in two things, your relevant experience qualifications, and your approach to the job. So I said Hello, I'm a local Massachusetts residents. So that is one of the reasons I wanted to apply for this position.

So first off, you know, I'm mentioning them in mass, that's a huge advantage for them. And that's the reason I brought it up immediately because they're gonna get they've gotten 24 proposals. So there's a lot of competition going on with this and they said, I've been doing SEO for over three years. Last year I ran a link building company with a partner. As a recently started venturing into some of my own projects. I attached a resume and some examples of sites.

I've worked on some recent work. I Don is ranking the local Insurance Agency here in mass. So that's when I basically, you know, attach those portfolio examples of those ranking results. And I mentioned, you know, screaming haul now shows up for various local ranking ranking such as, and these are the same rankings that I put in those screenshots. Then for my approach, I said it would all depends on the needs of the client, most likely keyword research, site analysis, content creation, on page SEO and link building, you know, it's very kind of generic. And then I attached the three portfolio examples, you know, my example report, the two ranking results, and then a copy of my resume, which also includes, you know, recent work experience, I happen to work in e commerce full time.

So, you know, having that on my resume, all that stuff really helps. And then what you can do is you have credits. I'm not actually going to propose anything here, but you have a credit system and if someone invites you, you don't have to basically use any of those credits up. I think the credits you get new ones like every month, if you have a free counts less. If you pay like 10 bucks a month, you'll get quite a bit of them. I think this past month I had like 100 in most jobs that only cost maybe like 10 to 20.

No, not even it's like four or five to submit maybe even less, maybe like two. I think you can also do what's called a sponsor proposal. So it will shoot your proposal all the way to the top, and it highlights it with this like yellow. So with this one, that's what I did. So you can see there's all these people here, you know, it's 24 people. And when the prospect or this potential client here, they go to look at this, they'll see you know, mine's highlighted pull mine right at the top.

So it's basically putting them above every single other person. Of course, other people can put themselves in here too, but you'll have to pay a little extra credits. I think it might end up being like five or six as opposed to say, like, you know, two or three. If you get invited to the job, sometimes you can't do the sponsor proposal. I don't really know how they kind of differentiate That but the other thing I wanted to mention about elands is you'll notice as I go through here, you know, I've got all these people from India, you know, then here's this guy, Shawn, Switzerland, India, India, India, like literally tons of foreign companies. Now I've got some here, like this person has earned apparently they're sharing they've earned over $80,000.

So I think they're also freelancers, a small company member. So I don't know if this is like, this might actually be a full on like company. But this, this particular person, clearly they've been on Elance for a while they've completed 154 jobs. So they've been doing an awful lot of work. But in terms of, you know, comparing to some of these other folks, like, you know, this is obviously an agency so they might be you know, probably probably pretty competitive in terms of trying to get in there. They these guys might be really really high in terms of their price quotes, and then the India guys, I'm sure they're probably quoting really low.

But, you know, I can't really speak much for the quality of work, like, I don't know whether or not these guys are doing things that are going to be legitimate or if you're, you know, going to get spammed or whatever it is they're doing, but a lot of people I will find will, you know, only be looking for people in the US. So, if you're watching this, and you're in the US, more advantage to you. So beyond that, that's kind of Elance I guess that gives you an idea of how I'm doing things. And just to give you an idea what happened with this client was they actually I got, I was able to get on the phone with them. And they asked for some references, you know, like a legit job interview and I had to give them like, I gave him three references. They asked for two I gave him three.

And I'm currently waiting to hear back but I've already quoted them and you know, things are going really well. In terms of like this being kind of a hot lead, I guess you could say in terms of other freelance sites. There's also oDesk. I'm not going to assign in I do have a profile on here, but it really is not complete. I mostly use oDesk for hiring not so much looking for work. But this is another really, really good choice.

You're going to kind of be in the same boat in terms of people looking for SEO and dealing with a lot of foreign foreign competition. And then one of the other bigger sites is freelancer.com. That's another big one that you could check out. If you're looking to get into freelancing, I honestly would suggest getting getting on one of these sites, optimizing your profile and then just focusing all your time there. That would probably your best choice instead of trying to split all the work between all three. Alright, thanks a lot.