Am I doing something wrong, or is there something else I should do?

Hi everyone!
I was browsing for solutions and I admit I got a little lost. There's tons of information here! So I decided to post my little "problem" and hopefuly find some answers.

So, I own a freelancing site (much like scriptlance, getafreelancer, etc). I have done everything I think I can to promote it.

• I have manually submitted to directories with high page ranks...
• I have manually submitted to major search engines...
• I used Internet Business Promoter to help me with the above tasks...
• I started exhanging links with other sites (very carefully though)...
• I use Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing

The thing is, that it's taking too long to see some results. I find listed sites that have been online less time than mine and yet, I am NOT listed. I have been submitting for over a year to DMOZ and they just won't list my site, even though I submit to the right category and follow their rules. And the worst thing is they don't let me know why...!

I understand that I have to pay for results, but everyone is asking for money for their "express" or "guaranteed" listings. If I paid all of them I would go broke before I even had a chance to operate my website.

So this was problem #1: How to get listed, increase traffic and site awareness.

Right now, my site has about 260 registered freelancers. I believe that's an adequate number but I'm sure this will get better since I get about 1-3 new registrations per day. So, I am getting freelancers seeking to get some projects. Why am I not getting any buyers to post them?

And so we come to problem #2: How to attract buyers?

Can you please propose some ways to improve my situation?

Thank you and Happy Holidays.

 

Give some incentive for new buyers such as a $5 bonus promo code or something when they make their first purchase.

 

If you have not already done so I would suggest direct advertising in webmaster newsletters. It will cost you so you will want to estimate a return on investment, but I think that would be the best way to advertise directly to the people that would be interested in your services.

Also list your site in your signature here and at other webmaster forums and make relevant posts.

 

Bofia, thanks for the tip. The funny thing is that I already had setup my site to give a 3EUR bonus for every new registration, I just forgot to mention it ...

rdv187:
Thanks for the info. Forgive me if I sound stupid, but where do you find webmaster newsletters??? You say, advertise directly to the people interested in my services. How do you do that?

I have tried putting myself in a prospect buyers position trying to outsource a project and I asked myself "Where would I look for freelancers?" I performed relevant searches but the only thing that came up were my competitors sites.

I tried to find sites that link to my competitors, so I could maybe ask them to place a link to my website. The majority of these sites contain articles and they provide no means of communication...

And one last thing: I use Google Alerts so I can get some clues about my main keywords, my competitors sites and my site. I posted for the first time in this forum yesterday and today I receive an alert about the keyword "eulancers". How and why some sites get indexed so fast?

Thanks...

 

Well, I can tell you that you have joined a very crowded market. I own a freelance website (see sig) and I know that most people would rather go to established sites like getafreelancer or scriptlance than join a very small and unknow website.
In order to make it, you have to offer something that the other big ones do not offer. I have not figured out what that something is yet.

 

I know that you have to offer something, ablaye. The question is what?

By the way, I noticed that you have a few projects going on. How long have you been in business? (Nice looking site too!)

Looking at most signatures, I realised that most of you have more than one websites. So how many websites does somebody need? Do you use them as marketing and promotion tools or are you making money out of them?

 

Project4Hire.com has been live since June 2006. It is fairly new but has been steadily growing.
When did you start eulancers.com? By the way, your domain name is not very intuitive for the kind of website you have.

I wish the DP members would be more supportive of us newcomers but no, instead, they keep going to established websites like elance and getafreelance.

You only need to have one successful website. Most people start one website, then realize they are not making enough money or not being successful with that website, then try another one and so on and so forth. At the end, having too many websites can become un-manageable.

I would advise you to only stick with one good website and invest all your efforts to try to make it successfull.

Anyway, I feel your pain and wish you the best.

 

Here are a few newsletter links that I subscribe to:

http://www.sitepronews.com/

http://www.site-reference.com/advertise.php

http://www.webpronews.com/

http://www.ientry.com/page/ad/

Hope this helps

 

You need tons of money to advertise on any of the newsletters you mentioned.

 

You can try targeting it to a specific group like php or web work

 

That is one thing that concerns me. Pretty soon wouldn't just about every market be saturated?

 

Uve forgot to tap the biggest source of buyers on the web. Forums just like DP! All the webmasters needing help coding/wanting freelancers are on these forums. Webmaster forums should be your primary targets.

Simply post your your website and your services. Explain the benefits of your site. Having 260 freelancers ready and waiting is great.

Good Luck

 

That's exactly what I have been doing. It helps a bit. If you are lucky enough, you can get one or two people to post jobs. But as I said, the majority of the people in the webmaster forums are familiar with elance, getafreelancer, etc.. so they just go there to post their jobs and the little guys like eulancers.com and project4hire.com are left out in the cold

What we have to tap in, are the clients who need work done but are not familiar with the big players. You have to figure out where to find them

 

Since you seem to target the EU market, you would need to find regional directories and forums for businesses. Also - in the EU it would make sense to have your service in the various languages. I mean, would a German website even consider hiring anybody that doesn't speak and write German fluently? Same with Dutch, French and Swedish (you get my point). So your site has to be organised by language, or you might as well just limit yourself to the UK.

 

Go Viral.

Add a blog to your site (i.e. sitedomain.com/blog) and write articles about the freelance industry, how to succeed in freelance, how to pick the best freelancer, how to guarantee a project's success, top 10 freelancing mistakes, Top 10 freelance tips that work, How to know if a project is worth working on, etc. You don't have to do a ton of articles at once. You could do one weekly or monthly even. Just make it quality content. When it is a particularly good article, submit it to digg, reddit, digitaljournal, del.icio.us, etc.

Also get a myspace account, a squidoo page, a VOX account, MyBlogLog, etc. I'd get the accounts immediately, but don't plan on building them all on up at once. Start off with MySpace. Get friends (especially freelancers, designers, programmers, SEOs, internet marketers, graphic artists, photographers, and others in the web design industry). Get a unique design. Place links and banners to your freelancing site from there. Tell your users that you'll announce coupon codes in your MySpace bulletins from time to time, so they'd benefit from adding you as a friend.

I haven't utilized my Squidoo account properly yet, but I do know that the more defined the niche, the more popular the page can be. Make yours about European Freelancing, Budget Freelancing, Perfect freelancing, etc.

VOX and MyBlogLog are also fairly new. MyBlogLog lets you make lots of friends and get a steady supply of traffic to your site. VOX is more like myspace.

Also, if those newsletters are too much, then start your own. Create a Freelance Industry Newsletter and offer content for both freelancers and project masters. You could even have an article for each newsletter be one of your featured projects and allow a freelancer to write it.

Next, place a lot of incentive on getting new projects into your system. Freelancers will come if the projects are there. Offer 0 fees for the first transaction, have a contest where one project manager will get the entire cost of their project back (up to XX amount of dollars that you predetermine). Have a "most unusual project" of the month page, or a "most popular project" page showcasing the projects with highlevels of interest. Feature a high profile project owner with an interview and a bio once a month (do the same with a freelancer too), etc.

Ok, so this is one of those brainstorms that I can't stop the ideas from coming. I'll stop here before my ideas start becoming stale. Take all the above for what its worth, but I do hope you find some useful information.

 

Thanks guys.... Boy! Tons of good advice here!
A word about targeting... I target my site not to a specific skill (php, web development etc) but rather to a specific geographic region (Europe).

The problem with more than one languages is that if someone posts a programming or design project (which is actually language independent) in let's say romanian or greek, nobody who doesn't speak those languages will be able to bid.

I want to thank you again for the great advice. Keep it coming...

Do you think I should hire someone to post to different forums? Because I like participating to this one (I think it's one of the best), but with my daytime job, my website to run and participating here, doesn't really leave much time for anything else. Besides, posting just for advertising purposes feels a bit like spamming.

Roadies, great ideas...! Thanks!

 

So you are having trouble penetrating your target market, thats natural for the "underdogs". But The only way to gain some market share is to take it from the competitors! You need to change the habits of the current webmasters that use sites like elance. I cant see how going after only the new webmasters is going to be enough - remember that your competitors are doing exactly the same.

Give webmasters a reason to switch to your site. and let this reason be heard. Failure to do this will result in your site becoming a "me too" business where your site wil always lag behind the competition.

 

Vigor, you are so right.
But, how could I go to scriptlance and let everyone know that I run a similar site, propably with more benefits, without getting banned? People who have completed more than 10 projects are likely to remain loyal to this site. So, my guess is, that I need to find these buyers before they get to scriptlance.

And you are right. There's no way that I want to have a "me too" business. You gave me food for thought. I 'll try to penetrate the market....

 

Let's face it. We both have a "me too" business
We don't offer any additional value that the big players don't already have.
We are just an alternative for those who get banned from those sites, those who don't know about those sites, or those who are nice enough to give us a chance.

 

While it is true markets can get saturated with todays high tech fast moving worls there is always something to market. As you know the first one in usually weathers the storm the best.

It is also obvious that social networking is having a huge impact on how people buy things online and those that fail to implement the latest technologies or find unique solutions will probably fall by the wayside ...