1527
9 min 14 sec

To Find Freelance Work, Look at Full-Time Job Listings

A laid-off social media strategist gets creative, using LinkedIn job listings to find candidates for freelance work. One year later, he’s bringing in $10,000/month.
Service Social Media

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What It's About

A social media strategist finds success promoting his work through social networks.

Business Model
Social Media
Skills Required
Marketing
Complexity
Low
Profit Potential
Medium

Words of Wisdom

Damion shares an important piece of advice about pricing your services, “If I could go back, I think I would have started off charging more in order to better communicate the value of the expertise I was offering."

Fun Fact

When it comes to online retail, Amazon is king and ships over 45 million products around the world. According to Investopedia, other options for the company’s name included "Cadabra" (as in "Abracadabra") and "Relentless". His lawyer convinced founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that "Cadabra" sounded too much like "cadaver". And although "Relentless" didn’t make the cut, Bezos bought the domain name relentless.com, which now redirects to the Amazon homepage.

Notes from Chris

Episode 1527
Damion Taylor began his social media career after joining a startup that was one of the first YouTube multi-channel networks. He was responsible for tracking data and setting strategies across YouTube and other channels to grow the company’s audience.

But unfortunately, the company shifted its strategic direction … and he was let go. Damion took on freelance contract work in the meantime while looking for a new job. As it so happened, he was quickly hired by another startup but something had changed—now he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t worry if he ever lost his job again. In 2019, a post on the Next Door app caught Damion’s eye. A local business was looking for someone to manage their Instagram and Facebook pages. This was right up his alley and it turned out that all they required was for someone to post content they already had.

Damion applied for the gig, and he received a reply almost immediately. For $500 a month, he would manage the business’ social accounts. It was shaping up to be a standard freelance contract until Damion blurted out that he would offer her a $100 discount/month for every client referral she sent his way. He doesn’t remember why he made such an offer then since he didn’t need to, but it turned out to be a career-changing offer.

The client was so impressed with his first month of work that she immediately spread the word to her friends, earning her several referral discounts. By the third month of their arrangement, she had sent Damion two clients his way, bringing his earnings from his side gig to $1,200/month. This was quite a sum of money considering that he didn’t have to dedicate much time to the effort.

Word of mouth and LinkedIn outreach sounds simple, but in Damion’s case, it worked to perfection. Within 9 months, he had gained enough clients that he had crossed the $10k/month milestone that he’d been striving for. This was enough for him to go full-time since it not only covered his expenses, but also allowed him to grow his savings.

Of course, you’d also have to keep up with the latest developments since social media is an evolving space—Damion has had to pick up TikTok and Pinterest lately even though he started out only with just Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. But the reward is worth it, because now he can’t be fired.

 
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Quote of the Day
"If I could go back, I think I would have started off charging more in order to better communicate the value of the expertise I was offering."
—Damion Taylor #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau