The need for freelancers is on the rise in any industry. For online academies/educators, the biggest and the most important hurdle after creating a top-notch course is, of course, marketing it. Marketing is one business practice without which the others would cease to exist. After all, it is what attracts and brings in students. 

But does it mean you have to hire people for your own marketing team or outsource it to an advertising/marketing agency? Both of these options are likely to be complicated and expensive.

The other viable option is to hire freelancers. India especially is the second-fastest-growing freelance market in the world. This presents you with a wide range of talent to choose from, including copywriters, designers, social media marketers, and campaign specialists; basically, everything you need to successfully market a business in today’s digital-first world. 

This abundance of talent can also pose a challenge in finding the right people. In this article, we will discuss the ways in which you can find freelancers to do marketing for your online courses.

But first, here are some of the benefits of hiring a freelancer: 

• Handling marketing on your academy’s digital channels is not easy. Your time as a business owner is better spent in building courses. Hiring a freelance marketer will give you this flexibility. They can also offer you an outsider’s perspective of your brand to better strategize marketing and brand initiatives
• Freelancers are cost-effective, especially if your requirements are for the short term. You do not have to worry about additional costs like providing medical benefits, dental insurance like Metlife, and others. Freelancers efficiently handle your projects and use an invoice maker to create and share invoices with you.
• Freelancers are a lot more flexible with their timings and will mostly assist you with any urgent requirements. They do this to build a good reputation and stay competitive in the market. 
• Freelancers work on multiple projects from multiple industries. This exposure gives them the ability to use their experience and broad perspective to solve complex marketing challenges. 

How to find freelancers 

There are multiple sources through which you can find freelance marketers for your online academy. Listed below are some of the best places to find them.

Freelance communities

There are lots of digital communities built by freelancers to sell their services. These groups are a great place to organically network with people and build a list of people you would like to work with. For example, search for groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Reddit to find people. The benefit here is that you won’t have to pay the fee charged by websites like Upwork. You can also target niche groups to improve your chances of finding top talent. For example, look for groups like Freelance Content Writers, Content Editor, Proofreader, & Digital Marketers, Freelance Design, and The Freelance Writer.   

Colleges

This is one great place to find some great talent. Consider contacting some local college professors to see if they know any students who would be interested in some freelance work. You can reach out to professors from multiple departments. For instance, if you want a content writer, reach out to a professor from the English department or if you need a marketer, get in touch with a marketing professor. You will also be helping students earn some money on the side to take care of a part of their own expenses. 

Your own network

This is the easiest and most overlooked tactic to find marketing freelancers. All you have to do is ask your friends and family if they know someone. Maybe they have worked with some great freelancers and gotten results. They can do the same for you. This way, you don’t have to take the word of someone who left an anonymous review of a freelancer online when you can hear it from people you know yourself. 

Ask other business owners and marketers

Many businesses land freelancers through recommendations from other business owners. Ask people who run online academies and local businesses for contact details of freelance marketers they are working with or have worked with in the past. This lets you filter out top-quality freelancers who are also reliable and consistent. 

Look at writers and publications

Most freelancers love to work on more than one project at a time and it is perfectly fine to reach out to them. For example, as you are creating content for your course, you are bound to read articles written by many people. If you like something, in particular, you can always find out who wrote it and ask them if they would like to do the same for you. Reach out to them through email or social media. Freelancers also tend to post samples of their work on LinkedIn. So, it is one way to pre-qualify them before making contact.

Craigslist

Craigslist would not be one of the first preferences for someone looking for freelancers. But a lot of people who hire freelancers prefer to find talent who live relatively nearby. When looking for freelancers on Craigslist, look in both the “jobs” and “gigs” sections of the city or region you prefer. Search using skill-specific keywords. For example, if you want a copywriter, search for it. You can also create a detailed posting with the keywords of the skills you are looking for.

Upwork 

Upwork has been in the business of connecting freelancers with talent requirements for a long time. They literally have millions of freelancers from around the world just looking for the next project to take up. Lucky for you, writers, designers, and animators (essential for marketing) make a huge portion of the talent on Upwork. You can get started by creating your account and posting details about your project, and just wait for freelancers to start bidding. Then you can choose the one that is suitable for you. The best part is – freelancers go through a strict approval process to assess their skills to make sure mediocre freelancers don’t get through.

Freelancer 

Very much like Upwork, this platform also works on a bidding system that will help you choose only the best freelancers to work with. You can expect to start getting bids within minutes of posting your project requirements. Since this is a huge platform, you will easily find the right person for the job in a short period of time. But you should always keep an eye out for spammers. 

Fiverr 

Next to Upwork and Freelancer, this is another popular platform where businesses find freelancers. What’s different is that instead of posting your project requirements, you can directly search for freelancers using keywords and choose whoever you like. The starting rate is usually $5, but it can also be a bigger number depending on the freelancer’s experience and the complexity of the project.

With that knowledge of how to find freelancers, it is now important to understand what Learnyst is.

Further Reading: Marketing your Online Course – Tips and Tricks

What is Learnyst? 

Online educators sometimes use multiple tools to run their online academy/courses. As a result, integration, data transfer, and overall operation are likely to become troublesome. With Learnyst, you can manage everything from one single place. Create course content, upload them on your custom website and mobile app, market them and do everything in between. Thousands of educators have chosen us to run and scale their online academy business. 

To know more about us, get in touch with us now!