Marketing on Platforms? Here’s What Freelance Writers Must Do Instead
Have you been using platforms like UpWork and Fiverr to market your freelance writing business? I know it sounds like a great idea…clients need work AND come to me? Awesome! It’s not so simple and it’s robbing you of important skills you need as a freelance writer. After starting out on platforms like oDesk and Elance (now UpWork), I took my businesses off-platform and you may want to consider that, too. Here’s what to do when moving your marketing off platform and how to set up your new systems.
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So, if you have been marketing on platforms, you're not alone as a freelance writer. And that's how I started. I did, um, Upwork. Well, now it's Upwork. It was called oDesk. And then I had E-Lance. So when I started out as a freelance writer, I did only platforms. I didn't understand how to pitch. I didn't understand how to send an LOI. I did not understand marketing at all. So if you have been marketing exclusively on platforms as freelance writer, like Upwork or Contently Skyward, any of the platforms that are out there, you are not alone. And there's a really important difference between these different platforms. They all operate differently. So we're going to go over kind of what you need to do when you're marketing on platforms, what you should do instead, and kind of walk through the little pieces that I experienced as a platformer.
You know, I was at former platform worker. I'm on no platforms now. Um, I might, you might find my Contently profile, but I don't really go on there. So, Hey, Vicky, welcome in. So let's roll through this all. I'm going to give you a little backstory. So I started, excuse me. I started on oDesk and Elance back in 2013. Um, and that's how I got all my work. And then, then I had a scamming incident on one of those platforms and it just totally lost my trust in them. And I realized how deeply I needed to learn how to map market on my own. I actually needed to build a real business. I couldn't rely on these platforms to do it all for me. And I also had this mentality that I was using the platforms like monster, or like I would, um, you know, indeed I was using them as basically like, how do I find a job ad submit a resume and submit a cover letter, basically like I would a full-time job and that's just, man, it's just not how freelance writing works.
I keep trying to impress upon different people and like coaching students and that it's a one-to-one experience. So if you're on a platform in your marketing there, you're competing with hundreds of other writers. So that's a dang right there is like, it's just like any other job platform. Like you are competing with tons of other writers and this goes for Contently and this goes for Skyward too. Um, there's a bunch of other ones too. Like I have a post on, um, Carol Tice make a living writing blog that are all about different job boards sites that you can go look up if you want. Um, you do have me turned up a bit. Okay. Hmm. Well, we're just going to have to figure this out cause I, I moved the mic, but we'll figure it out later. So, so, um, yeah, the, let me see if I can just turn it up here just a tid bit.
Okay. Let me know that it's better. If, let me know if you can hear me better. Cause I turned up the volume of that. So if you're marketing on these platforms, you're, you're often, I'm not saying always just it's often that people I find from coaching students or different people in communities that they're using it like a full-time job. They're saying like, Oh, well I'll just submit a resume and cover letter and I'll do this thing on this platform. And I'll have people coming to me and I can set my own hourly rate and all this stuff is going to be really great. And it doesn't quite work
Like that. Some freelance writers do get a hundred. Yeah.
I was an hour. I think there was a lawyer like a freelance lawyer or freelance law writer or something like that a long time ago who was charging $200 an hour. I don't even know if his profile still exists, but I have not seen that be the norm. I think that's kind of the issue is like that a hundred dollars an hour where people are coming to all the time to do this work. It's not common. And oftentimes they want you to get it done in less time because they're like, okay, if it's a hundred dollars an hour, I want the quality of your work. I just want it in three hours. Like I don't want to pay for you to like do all this extra stuff. And um, I don't want to pay for you. I would just want to like screen, capture your screen while you're working and make sure you're doing it. So there's a lot of weird little things that happen with the platforms that I don't think people know about. I haven't been on them in a long time. So maybe, um, like oDesk used to have this tool
That would, uh, record your screen
As you worked. So if someone wanted to check to make sure you were working on their work and not working on something else or watching YouTube or getting paid for stuff you weren't supposed to get paid for. Um, that was there. I don't know if it's still there.
So, um, so when you're working
On these platforms, your marketing isn't active per se. It's not really building your business. It's not something where like, if the platform disappears overnight, then you have no business. So if you learn how to do marketing, like you're sending your letters of introduction, which is your LOI and you're sending pitches, you're learning how to make those one-on-one connections, relationships learning how to actually pitch without being gross and salesy.
And you know, all that. These are skills that you,
You need to build an actual business when you're on a platform you're just submitting and submitting and submitting. Yeah. Sometimes those platforms are sending pitches. So, um, there's a platform where like, I think I had a client who was on Skyward, who was just like, they would call for pitches and you would pitch on Skyward. Um, and the same thing in Contently, but that's kind of not the same way it is on like
Work or, um, Fiverr. So you want to make sure that you're learning these skills. So if you do get on a platform and you are doing that, um, that you
They'll understand how to send an LOI, that you understand how to use LinkedIn, that you understand what it means to be on Skyward or Contently. And I know that I have writers reach out to me all the time and like leave me comments on LinkedIn and other social platforms like Instagram, about how they're like, Oh my gosh, I left this platform. My life is so much better. Like now I can actually like build my business, you know, and do all these other things like I'm out of the platforms and there's nothing wrong with being on the platforms. Like if you have a particular client, like I had a magazine, I really wanted to write for that. They would only work on the platform. So I had to decide like, okay, I guess I'll get on this platform to work with them. Um, and send them my pitches there.
But you have to decide if that's really going to work for you. And you also have to remember, there's a bunch of different things with these platforms that you don't have in your regular business. If you're building it outside. Number one is that if the platform disappears over night, there goes your business. Like if you don't have a website, you don't have LinkedIn. If you don't have a place to hold your samples, if you don't have a place for people to contact you, you don't have like a presence where people can find you off the platform. Now you have no business. Now you have to start over because the platform disappeared overnight or they changed their terms and the terms aren't gonna work for you anymore. So now you have to go do something else that doesn't exist. If you already built a business outside of a platform, number two, is that they're taking a cut of your money.
Um, I think it was 10% when I was there. I don't know if it's still 10%, but um, they take a cut of your money, which is like, you use the platform for free, but every time you get paid work, they're taking a chunk and you're also paying payment processing fees. So you're paying to be on the platform. So you're paying a percentage of everything you earn to the platform instead of a flat fee being like I'll pay 35 bucks a month to be on here. I don't know if it's still exactly that way, but I would assume they would take a percentage because that would make more financial sense for them. Um, so they're taking a cut of that. Then they're also going to take, you're going to have to get PayPal. You're gonna have to have Stripe connected to actually get the money.
And that's another fee. If you're building your business off the platform, you're only paying the Stripe fees or you're getting like a bank to bank transfer where you pay no fees or you get ACH, um, which is just direct deposit. So that's, that's a big downside is you're losing money. Every time you get on there. The third thing is that you're working hourly. So the better you get and the higher hourly rate you've charged, the less money you make. So you're, you're charging a high hourly rate. People want that quality of work. They see that you've got five stars, whatever. Uh, that's great. But then they're like, Hey, can you keep it to five hours? Cause we only have a budget of $500. Well then why didn't you just come in and say, I have $500 to do this. Can you do this work for $500?
There's this weird thing where you get on this platform. And they're like, Oh yeah, like, try to get it done. And we'll pay you this much money. But like in the back of their mind, they know how much they can spend a lot of times, like, they're not going into it saying like, Oh yeah, like I hope this they're always like, I'm generalizing here obviously. But a lot of clients I found when I was working, there were like, yeah, we have this budget, but it would be nice if we could save some money and you could work under it. So like, if we have $500, we hope you get the work done in four hours. So we only pay you 400 bucks. That's kind of. That's not paying for value. That's still paying for time. And now we're back to the monster, indeed job ad situation where someone wants buy your time.
They're not buying your value. They kind of see value in your hourly rate. Right? They're giving you, um, you're saying like my hourly rate is a hundred bucks an hour. My hourly rate is 200 bucks an hour. And um, they see that you have this many, five star reviews, but the issue is they're still buying time. They're, they're not, sometimes you can do a per project fee on there. A lot of my clients wanted to work hourly. Like a lot of times I didn't end up doing per project fees on there, even though that was an option because they were like trying to save money. They're like, yeah, can you, like, I had this conversation so many times like, yeah, we can pay you X amount per hour, but like keep it to 10 hours or keep it to this. And that's just not really the way we want to build our businesses.
Freelance writers, number four, it goes back to that star rating. So when you're on a platform, you have a star rating, which means if you have a client who's really unhappy with your work, they will rate you one star that will take down your star rating. It's just like a Yelp situation. So you can't like address it. Like you can't change it. And for me, I would rather have a testimonial. Like if someone has a problem with my work, I would rather handle that like, and, and deal with it via email and say like, Hey, look, I'm happy to write until you have what you want. Like I, you know, or I'll, I will refund you the money. If you feel like we're just not a fit like this, you know, I don't want you to be so happy. So unhappy that you like, feel like you have to make a review on a public place telling everyone how terrible I am.
Like, I'd rather just give you your money back. Like go find another writer who works for you, like works for the type of work that you like. I mean, if we're not a fit, we're not a fit, but what you want really is a testimonial. And a lot of times I found on platforms is you don't get a testimonial. You just get a star rating, which means nothing. Like if they give you four stars and you don't know why you didn't get five, that's a problem. If they knew five stars, you're like, great. What did I do right now? You don't know because they didn't leave it. I always liked getting the testimonial because you know, like you can write to your client and say, well, you know, can you write two to four sentences about how I helped, um, why this content is important to your business?
Any results or ROI you've gotten or, um, you know, basically like how my writing was useful to you, you could ask for things that like guide them along the way of like, Hey, can you kind of give me some idea of like, how this is really helping you in your business rather than on a platform where a lot of times it's like stars or like random stuff or it's, it's not really giving you a chance to get a deep, meaningful, uh, piece of information from a client that you've had. So that's number four, number five. I have a list here. Um, Oh, the important skills. So your important skills that you're losing are that you still kind of stay in this employee mentality. You don't get to build the skill of having a mindset of like running your own business, understanding where your boundaries are, your prices, your price.
Like a lot of times there's this weird negotiation. Like I said, where they're like, yeah, we can pay you your hourly rate, but keep it to this many hours, which sucks. Um, and you're also losing your marketing skills. You're losing your confidence building skills because you can build all these things with people off of a platform. Like you can build your network on LinkedIn, you can do all of these different things on your website. Um, you can start a YouTube channel. You can do a lot of things, but when you're on the platform, like they often, um, I don't know if they still have this, but they had a, um, a warning on there that says like ruining, if you work off platform, like we can't guarantee anything. And it's like, okay, you know, like, it's, it's just, you know, trying to keep you in the platform and learning how to market your own business and build your own website and learn what your clients need.
Like, you know, a lot of times when you're on those platforms, it's just people coming into you from all different places. And it's not as, um, as sharp of a funnel basically, as you would with your website where you can write exactly what you need. And here's all these testimonials. Here's my samples. Here's what I want to work with. With clients. You have a lot more opportunities on the space that you own, which is your website. Then a little profile. It's on a platform. So morning, Linda, welcome in, well, I guess it's afternoon here, but it's morning for you. So, so far, if you feel like this has been helpful, make sure to give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about making more money and saving more time and getting better clients as a freelance writer, make sure you subscribe. I'm going to go through a few more things here. I'm gonna give you guys quick pup date, just so we can see how they're doing over there. Charlotte has a new shirt on having to look at Dawn. Let's see if I can get Charlotte to set up so she can show us your new shirt. It says French AAF because she's part Frenchie. So she has her French after on.
Hey. Good. Good job. Here you go. Good job, Charlotte. You look beautiful today. Yes. Good job buddy. Good job
Today. I just felt like today was a French JF day. Today was just a day to have her French shirt on. That's the mood I'm in now. But you look a little blown out. I feel like the light is hitting you in a weird way. Making
It look super blown out.
Yeah. So Linda says, I'm gonna pop this up here real quick.
I have the is on here. The job fair. I would pick you. You're far away.
Linda says, Oh, I worked on a platform and it was a nightmare. Big joke for a high-profile writer. Yeah. So the platforms have different experiences for different people, right? The platforms sometimes have a bunch of people where they just like run their business off of it and they end up getting a ton of great work and they're really happy with it. That's fine. If you feel like you like the platform and it's running your business, that's, that's great. Just make sure you're also building all of your other skills when decide. Good morning pubs. Yes. They're.
They're being cute. Hi.
Um, just make sure you're building your other skills, that you have a business outside platform that if the platform goes down in flames, like let's say it just gets wiped out. Like there's a lawsuit or something happens and it just disappears. Or a few months, they're like, we're closing it down. Like if something were to happen and it disappears, it's just the same way. When people market only on social media, like if they only have a social media following and this, and like the social media platform disappears, then you have nowhere else to go. Like you have, you didn't build anything. Like you don't have an email list. You don't have something else where you can fall back on. So if you work on a platform, make sure you charge an appropriate hourly rate, but also make sure you're learning how to send an LOI that you're learning how to network with other writers that you're building a Lincoln linked in network.
You have a website, you have a place to house your samples. You have everything you need off the platform to do it now. Like I, I am not a big fan of platforms just because I feel like a lot of times it's forcing people to, um, bid to the lowest rate. You're kind of competing with other people on like, well, this one's 500 and it has four stars, but this person charging $400 and there are five stars. Like you're getting into this weird realm of like, it's not like they want to you to be their writer. It's just this like price game. Or it's competing against hundreds of different writers for the same thing where then it's the same thing as a full-time job. You're not making those one-to-one connections and marketing to specific people at specific companies. So if you're working on platforms, build those skills, you need marketing, you need a website, you need to understand who your client is, who you want to attract, what the rates are in your industry, all that stuff.
So that's another thing about, so, okay. The next thing I have on my notes is like, when you decide, like, let's say, you decide, you don't want to work on, um, that say you don't want to work on a platform anymore and you decide, you want to get off. That's when you need to have these systems already in place. Let's say, if you decide, you want to get off the platform and you're like, Oh man, I don't know what to do. That's when we start setting up all these things, like we need to learn how to write an LOI, a letter of introduction so that we can market to business clients. We need to learn how to write a pitch so that we can market to magazines. You need to have a website with all the content on there that has your samples, your, um, clients that you're looking to go after what you do in your business, your services, how to connect with you, um, how to basically like contact you right. To work together. All of that stuff needs to be set up. You also need to have some sort of onboarding system. I liked absurd. D U B S a D O D [inaudible]. They are really great. You can put all your clients in there. You can invoice proposals, um, do your scheduling and there you have your calendar in there, your profits, um, uh, your profits and expenses and profits and loss to your to-do list. It's really great. Um, so
You need to have all these systems set up beforehand.
Um, sorry. I'm just poking around in my notes. So
There's a few more things I want to go over before I hop in here, I just kind of want to go through this. So Vicky says that she worked on a platform when she was very unwell and it took her from being unable to do anything, to becoming a real writer, but the relationships I'd form with the platform wouldn't grow with me. Yeah. Sometimes this is a positive of the platform as you get on the platform to start your writing career, which is what I did. I started on oDesk and that's how I kind of started my writing career and got my first clients. Um, I don't recommend that to coaching students now because I think there's a better way to do that. But that's the thing is like, you don't grow with these relationships a lot of times, it's a, one-off a lot of times it's just like, Hey, I need this right now, go do this thing. And,
Um, yeah.
And then there was the same, Linda kind of says something similar where she's like, yeah, I pitched against people who were submitting lower bids. Like she was one 50, like they were one 50 and she was more than double that. And it didn't work. Yeah. There's a lot of times where you might charge a pro, like you've talked to other writers in that niche and they're like, yeah, I charge this. You go on the platform. And they're like, Nope, it's a hundred bucks. So the scale is different
There too. Um, yeah. And
It does kill your mindset. Linda. I see that in the chat. Yeah.
So yeah.
And Vicki said something funny here too. She said, you try to search for higher paid work. Um, higher paid job postings on the platforms, but there it's an impossible amount of work. It's like a $5,000 gig, but 25,000 words a week. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes when you get on these platforms, it's unrealistic expectations. You're not meeting with people who are operating on their, like a lot of the higher up clients, at least I've found like there are higher up clients on the platforms. Let's just start there. There are higher up clients on the platforms, but there's a lot of other clients like thousands of other clients that like, the way you get in touch with them is you send them an LOI or a pitch. You don't get out of platform. They don't think about getting on a platform. They're like looking for the right writer. They're not looking for a writer. That's the whole point. We want someone looking for the right wider, right. Writer, not someone just looking for a writer, um, a last few points. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. And
I agree with this too. So I think this is a really good comment to address too. Um, it's tough working with clients who prioritize price. That's a problem because you really want someone to prioritize value. You want someone to prioritize the right writer, someone who prioritizes the content itself and how it's been delivered for their audience and the content that actually gets results. Not just creating content in general. Like not just saying like, I need this blog posts right now, all that kind of stuff. So last couple points here. So when clients are coming to you, a lot of times on these platforms, right? You set up your profile, let's say you have a ton of work experience. People love it. And they're coming to you. You're also not learning your outbound marketing skills. You're just like for people to come into you. And that's a problem because the pipeline always shuts off.
Like every writer I've ever known throughout history, no matter how much money they make the pipeline, doesn't just keep going. Like eventually there's a wall. And then maybe the pipeline goes, but the low could be a month or it could be three months or six months like that happens. And if you're waiting and waiting for someone to pick up your profile or whatever, or if you're only applying to ads, like job listings that are on the, on the platforms, then you're losing out on a ton of other work that's available to you. So you have to learn how to go to the clients you want and ask them like, do you need help? I would be, I would love to help you. Like w you know, what's going on with your content. I'd love to like, ramp this thing up or whatever. But that connection is a lot different than like looking for a job and being one of a hundred writers to like, ask for the work.
Um, let's see if there's anything else. Yeah. So I, okay. So the other thing is that, um, when you're getting off the platform, you have to make the mindset shift. So we kind of mentioned this before, but when you're getting off the platform, you have to make the mindset shift that you have a small business. You have to do all the other things that small businesses do. You have to have a website, LinkedIn, you have to do marketing, and it doesn't have to be sleazy or gross. It doesn't have to be gross marketing. I feel like a lot of times people hear the word marketing and they're like, Oh my gosh, like, I don't want to be salesy. I have a really hard time with that. And it's like, you don't have to sell them on, on anything. All you have to do is ask them if they need help, do you need help with your content?
That's it, that's it. Do they need help? I can help. Not. I want to tell you how great I am and you need a blog post, and you need a case study. And like, let me prove to you through all these stats, you need this thing, which is, I used to do that. I used to write these long LORs and just try to convince someone of like, why they needed this thing. And all the time I would get responses being like, that's nice, but we actually need this all the time. I would pitch like blog, post topics or case studies, or, um, like a content marketing scheme, or like all these things, uh, or content marketing project. And they would always get back to me and be like, Oh, that's nice. Like, but we're actually doing this. That's when I just said like, do you need help with your content that opens the door to any content that they're working on?
And then you don't have to do this weird salesy thing. You just say like, do you need help? I'm a freelance writer in whatever niche you're in. Tell them your past clients. So they know that you've worked with people or not. And if you don't have any clients, all you have to do is explain your skills and experience. Like I have 10 years as an HR professional, I'm doing this, this and this. And you can just name the things that you did at your old job that would apply to new clients. Um, and then roll from there. We don't have to do this weird sales thing. And I think a lot of times that's what the platform kind of trains you to do is it makes you into like another buzzy bee on the platform. Who's like, I need work. Please give me this work.
And it turns you into this. Like, it, it, it trains your mind to still think you're like an employee. You're not a team. You're not a partner. You're not helping someone else. You're just like someone just hires you off the platform. I think if you want to get off the platform, you gotta make the mindset set shift that you're a small business owner. And I know that there are people who are on the platforms who already have that mindset, that they're a small business owner. They get work off the platform. It works really well for them. Um, but they have a website. They have other things going on. Like the platform is one piece of their whole strategy. So you gotta make sure that you remember, even if you're on a platform that it's all about your small business owner, you need to have marketing. You don't have to be salesy. You can just ask that they need help. You need to learn Lys and pitches need to learn how to run your business. That means onboarding and all the stuff off platform, all the things like contracts and NDAs and negotiations and all that stuff. It's really important. So I'm going to pop in here. As soon as we have a bunch of things, I'm going to give you guys a quick update again. So they are kind of sleepy. We took them on a very long way
Today. She's up, she's up in active to talk, but I don't think you can catch it. I was going to say, I was going to try to give it to you so you could catch it, but I don't think you'll be able to, Oh, you look super cute today. Good job. So
I'm going to hop in and see if there are any questions. So if you have any questions, pop them in the chat now, and I will get to them. Or if you have questions and you're watching this later, feel free to pop them in the comments and I'll get to them. Um,
Yes.
So this is an interesting comment from Linda. She says she founded X marketing manager and CEO from Disney on a platform, but couldn't charge what the project was worth. That's interesting. I find that with, with the platforms a lot in no matter if they're like the nice platforms or, or, or not, um, it's just kind of like, you know what the project is supposed. Like, you know what, the project you should charge for the project, but then they're like, no, it should be half that. And then you get this weird conversation about it. So if you guys have questions, pop them in. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, if you feel like, Whoa, um, if you feel like this isn't helpful so far, or, um, you like have gotten value out of this and make sure to give it a thumbs up, if you feel like you want to hear more about freelance writing, make sure to subscribe, um, make sure they have enough income to support the projects.
Yeah. Sometimes what happens on a platform is that you don't know how much income they have to support the project, because you don't know what company they're with. Or, um, sometimes it's anonymous. Like I used to have anonymous ones or it's like a small business owner. Um, but you know, it's, um, it's hard to like figure out how much revenue is in their business so that you can market to like the right types of prospects for you. A lot of times, freelance writers get stuck marketing and PR in places where, um, they clients can't afford them. And sometimes that's on the platform, um, any easy. Okay. Yeah. So Linda says any easy way to transition. I missed the first point. So if you're transitioning off of a platform, you need to have your website set up, you need to set up your LinkedIn. You need to learn how to write an LOI, need to learn how to write a pitch.
You need to onboard them with dub Sato. If you don't know what dub Sato is, D U B S a D O. I have a video right before this, where I talk all about how great it is. So you can go back and watch that one, but it's basically a platform that helps you run your business from financials and calendar appointments and proposals and contracts to like managing all of your projects and making sure everybody gets what they need at the right time. And you have your to-do list. It's just like a really great platform. So this is another good question from, Linda's got a lot of good questions today. So, um, do you consider platforms like content mills sometimes? Um, it depends on the client though. I think the platform itself isn't necessarily a content mill because there are people on there who make good money.
Like if a platform, if someone's on a platform and they make good money on there. And I'm talking about like a livable income, not like 30 K I'm talking about like, people who make six figures, like who make the platform work for them. Then I don't consider an, a content mill because content mills often are like pennies per word. And it's like, really turn and burn. Like I need 10 articles a week, like every week. And we're going to pay you 20 bucks each. So the platforms, I wouldn't say that the clients themselves. Yeah. Like you'll find clients on there who want to pay you like a penny per word, or like they want to, um, have you do like, kind of what, um, there's that comment that was back up here from Vicki that yeah. Where she was talking about $5,000 for 25,000 words a week.
Yeah. That's, that's a thing that happens. Um, and then the last, so there's like a, I got a little note here, um, from those from, uh, a friend talking about, I, I got scammed on the platforms. Like I, I made a bunch of mistakes on those platforms. I don't know if they've changed their privacy or their security or how that works. Like this was a long time ago. Um, like at least like, so this was back 2014, I think. So it was a while ago, but, um, yeah. There's like people can get on those platforms and have gigs and then scam people. Like you can give them different details or they can call you and say, they're from this thing and they're not. And so it's, um, it's much different than when you go to LinkedIn and see that they work there and then talk to them and they have an address that's like at company name, not a Gmail address or something that's not relevant to that company.
Um, yeah. So I'm going to, okay. Yeah. So these are, yeah, I'll go through them. So platforms can be like Upwork, Fiverr, Skyward, Contently. Um, those are all the ones I have on mine right now. There's a ton of platforms though. I have a post, um, that's on make a living, writing the blog. I Carol Tice that you can go look it up. It's like 17 job boards or content places. There's a whole bunch of places that you can join to like find clients. But, um, I am, I am not I'm you might find my profiles on them because I haven't deleted them, but like, I don't do any active marketing on there. I don't participate in my business on there. Um, yeah. And visas, they also don't tell you how often you get the 5,000. Yeah. It's not every twenty-five thousand words that you get the 5,000 either.
Yeah. There's a lot of like sticky, weird stuff. So if you have your own business and you are, have your own processes, right? You have Deb Sato, or you have a sauna, you have some sort of platform that helps you manage all your processes. You have your own contracts with your own terms. It's not this. You don't have to abide by all of the weird things that are on the platform, or you don't have to wait until they like accept all these magic things for you to get paid. Or like, it's more of a business when you have your own business and you're not working on a platform, you have your own terms, you have your own contracts, you run your business a certain way. You say like, this is my business policy. This is how I work. Um, all of that stuff works together.
Instead of it being a platform where it's like, you miss all those things, you miss out on learning how to write a contract and you miss out on marketing instead of app like answering job ads. There's a lot of important pieces that you lose. And if that platform disappears, they have like, they have overnight, like, we're not talking about how Elance and oDesk became Upwork. We're not talking about that. We're talking about like, platforms that just like, they shut down. Like they get a lawsuit or they, um, the, the founders shut them down. Or, um, they CA they moved the business. Cause they're like this isn't making money. Now we're going to go do this. Um, they shut down all the time because the platform is in it for the platform they're in it to make the platform work and make the platform make money.
And yes, there are a lot of things where they connect people, right. They connect people in terms of, um, job ads or they connect, like, like I said, there's a few magazines that I wanted to write for that. Like, you can only, um, send them pitches on Contently or Skyward. I can't remember, but you have to know all the other pieces of your business. So that you're like, this is kind of the exception. The exception is I want to write for this magazine, this magazine operates this way. Does that work for me? Okay. I really want to write for this magazine. Yes. I'll get on this platform to do it. So that all kind of depends, but I still have my business. I still have marketing knowledge. I still know how to send a pitch. I still know how to onboard someone. I still know how to get my contract, get my work done without the platform situation going on.
So, um, yeah. Fiverr, all of those. Yep. Okay. So, um, one last pup date. We'll give him one last treat. Oh. Cause it's Friday. And I want to give him one more Trudeau. So we're going to give him one more treat. Oh, let's see if we can get her to sit up, to get it. Good job. You did it. And then we got very over here. Oh, there you are. So far away. I need one of those things. I need one of those grab or things. I need to move, move the grabber thing in here. So I give him his trio. Cause he's so far away. So far away. Maybe if I back this up, you won't look so blown out and that didn't really work in any case. I can't pet you bear. Cause you're too far away, but I'll give you lots of pets after.
Okay. So updates over. So he felt like this was helpful. If you felt like you got value out of this, make sure to share it, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe below. If you want to learn more. Oh, few last notes that I just realized. Um, free pricing guide is below. You can, you can get my free pricing guide below. It's free. You can sign up and get all of the things about what people are currently charging for projects. I ask people all the time, what they're charging and what the work looks like. So I'm constantly updating it. And I let everybody know when I do an update and send it back out. So free pricing guide. The other thing is, um, I am dropping my course soon. I'm really excited. I am, um, going to, um, let you guys know. I think in on Monday, Monday, I think I'm going to send some details on Monday about, um, my course, and then also my masterclass.
So I'm running, I'm going to run a free masterclass. Um, I will let you know more about that soon. You, if you grab the free pricing guide, then you'll be on my email list. So you'll hear more about all the details about all the free masterclass and then also the course stuff. Um, yeah, so that's really exciting. And um, I hope you guys will join me on the free masterclass. It's going to be really fun. Um, maybe I will like do something fun and cool. I don't know yet. Um, but I'm really excited about it. So, uh, I think that was it. And I hope you guys have a great weekend and I will see you next week. Same time, noon central time. You're on YouTube. Bye.
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