The internet has opened up a window of possibilities in the field of commerce and business that is unparalleled by anything before it. The internet has become a great venue to find and to offer services in a way that paid ads on newspapers and magazines could only dream about.
It is now quite common for regular folks to work only on the internet. You can have a good portion of independent professionals on the web just looking at the results for local job searches on any search engine, but who are these people and what are they doing?
What is an Independent Professional?
An independent professional is an individual conducting business on their own. These individuals can be anyone using a useful skill for practical purposes to make a living out of it. Independent professionals usually are in charge of one task at a time.
This kind of professional is self-employed in the sense that they do their business by themselves. They don’t only have to complete jobs, they also have to manage the financial and public relations aspects of their activities.
They have to handle contact with clients and follow up support, they have to set a guarantee for their services and they also have to oversee their own work and measure their results. Their clients become their employers and they become the face of the company.
Independent professionals can also be referred to as freelancers, depending on the kind of services that they offer. In past decades, only individuals that were hired to work on short-term projects involving journalism, research and photography were considered freelancers.
Today, a freelancer can be anybody working for hire on their own, someone that is not employed with a large company or directly employed by a regular business, which means that freelancer and independent professional have become interchangeable terms.
Of course, independent professionals can be individuals offering a specific service through a business that they manage on their own. In this sense, an independent professional is accurate in the traditional meaning of the term.
Examples of independent professionals offering their services on their own are plumbers, house painters, electronic repair technicians, carpenters, lawyers, interpreters, make-up artists, tailors, and software programmers, among others.
Independent professionals offering their services as business include roofers, sewage repair crews, computer repair technicians, patent lawyers, architects, and pest control crews, among others.
Independent professionals that are often referred to as freelancers include writers, bilingual and multilingual translators, graphic designers, voice talent, audio producers, entertainers, and musicians, among others.
How can eCommerce help you as an Independent Professional?
First and foremost, the greatest benefit that eCommerce offers you as an independent professional is in the many ways in which you can advertise your services. Let’s break it down to how can you offer your services and how people can find you.
You can easily offer your services online on multiple platforms at the same time. eCommerce can help you by giving you instant access to your ads, so you can modify them without the need to contact third parties to do it for you.
eCommerce will give you the freedom to choose between going with free ads and to manage the rest of the paperwork and contacts the old-fashioned way, or going with paid ads on dedicated platforms and let them manage the rest for you.
eCommerce will help you simplify everything through automation, including paperwork, contacts and payment methods. You’ll just need a working computer to have your own office!
eCommerce will expose you to many, MANY prospects from day one. In the old days, if a reader didn’t find your ad in their newspaper, magazine or TV channel of choice, they were not going to find you. Thanks to the internet, a simple Google search can land them face first on your ad.
eCommerce will give you the tools to show prospects a sample of your work before they hire you using audio and visual material, as well as images and documents, so they know how you work in advance.
eCommerce can help you diversify according to your means. As an example, you could reach clients from other cities or states for in-home services and charge extra.
If you work with digital media, eCommerce will OVERSIMPLIFY your work, because you can deliver your final work easily through email or store them using cloud services.
Where can you start?
You can start by publishing a free list of your services on the yellow pages website. Enter yellowpages.com and click on “advertise with us”, where you’ll be invited to get your free listing by clicking on “get your free listing” and registering your business info.
You can offer your services free by using message boards and services like craigslist.org, where you can simply register and then post an ad for your service.
You can also enter a service like Amazon services where you can easily sell your professional services. The benefit of the Amazon services platform is in how it will help you to find a wide local audience that didn’t have access to your services otherwise.
Besides the previous options, there are many, many other sites where you can offer your services as a freelancer, like Fiverr.com and upwork.com, which are easy to use and will give you the opportunity to be found by many interested clients on a daily basis!
