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Page updated:
3 April 2000

Page owner:
ETO Site Team

How can I market, advertise and sell my services on the Internet as a Teleworker?

This is one of a cluster of FAQs about Finding Work and Finding Skilled People on the Internet The right hand menu guides you through this cluster What is your "product"? Thinking of your skills as a "product" A zero-cost strategy Web presence as part of a strategy A collective/collaborative strategy The role of work-finding services This page proposes that the question isn't how to advertise telework but how to decide and then advertise the product or service you are selling. "Telework" itself isn't a product or service, just a way of working. The kind of work you do, the skills you apply, the experience you can provide - these comprise the product or the service. The problem can be broken down into some key questions: Knowing what is the product or service you want to sell Finding people who are likely to want to buy your product or service Making contact with these people and establishing a positive relationship - making it attractive for them to buy from you Making them aware of what you can deliver

Finding work, finding telework   and finding skilled people   Online services for finding work: introduction and overview    Should I be a teleworker? Can I find work? Pricing your skills Marketing your services    (this page) Finding a (teleworking) job online List of sites/services Tested and Selected services Other FAQs Home page

What is your "product"?

• You are trying to sell your own skills - to get contract work;
  or
• You have used your skills to create or find a product that can be sold across the networks as some kind of package;
  or
• You are trying to get a conventional job, working for an employer and paid a salary.

If you are trying to sell a product, then you should read this page but also look at our Teletrade (e-commerce) pages (see main site menu).

Thinking of your skills as a "product"

I can do translation from German into Spanish, please can someone give me some work?

• What kinds of people and organisations are likely to need translation from German into Spanish
• Among these organisations, which ones are most likely to be connected to the Internet so that I might be able to reach them online?
• How can I find them and how will I recognise them?
• How can I reach them and get their attention?
• How can I persuade them that they need my skills?
• How can I persuade them that I am the right person to do the job for them?
• How can I make it easy for them to decide to try out my services?

Everyone has to work through this for themselves, but some possible answers to these questions will be helpful in showing the way. The answers may seem obvious, but the thinking is essential. This kind of marketing assessment is not difficult, but relatively few people do it!

What kinds of people and organisations are likely to need translation from German into Spanish

Companies that are based in Germany and sell in Germany but have export opportunities in Spanish-speaking countries

Among these organisations, which ones are most likely to be connected to the Internet so that I might be able to reach them online?

Companies that have a website in German, and who do exporting, but currently don't have web pages or a web site in Spanish

How can I find them and how will I recognise them?

Search (in English) for websites that are in Germany but have pages in English - that means they are already trying to sell outside Germany. You could also search in French for sites in Germany that have pages in French.

How can I reach them?

Use the Zero Cost online forums strategy (see below) as background marketing, and email directly to the site owners as foreground marketing/sellling.

How can I persuade them that they need my skills?

You need a good, short, punchy message. Getting this right is a skill and it may be worthwhile paying for some help in this. The main thing is to point our what they are missing. After English and Chinese, Spanish is the language by the most people and has its own online communities.

How can I persuade them that I am the right person to do the job for them?

This is a question of example and packaging. You need at least one "reference site" - a customer for whose web site you have created the German-to-Spanish translations. Its worth doing this for free if necessary! You also need your own website where you explain why and how your German-to-Spanish web translations are the best value and the best service for German site owners.

How can I make it easy for them to decide to try out my services?

Provide an easy-to-accept starting offer. This could be (for example) to create for them a single page that summarises the facilities at their site in Spanish for the benefit of their customers who may search and browse in Spanish but will be prepared to read pages of interest in either German or English. If they buy this simple, short term task, they have become a customer. Famously, 80% of business tends to come from existing customers, so getting a customer is more important than getting a big order!

Of course at the end of all this, you must also apply the most important (and for some people the most difficult) of all sales techniques - you must ask for the order!

The most important thing to do - and to keep doing - is to study your market. For example, do you know how many people are connected to the Internet in your country and in countries you might sell to? Do you know which of these countries spends the most money on computers and telecommunications, making it more likely that people will be "buying online"? One of the best resources, to which European Telework Online has contributed, is the EITO Report (European IT Observatory).

A Zero Cost Strategy

You need to find all the Lists that have some relationship to the kinds of work you do and the services you offer. Join all the relevant lists and read all the messages. Don't just jump in with your advertisement, since in many cases this will just annoy people and damage rather than improve your campaign. What you do is to wait for a message that somehow has some relationship to your work and then come in with a good answer to that message, plus of course your name, your business title and your e-mail address. For example if you do market research you provide some useful information from some market research you have conducted.

If you do this as a regular habit, many good things are happening:

1. You are building a personal reputation with other members of the list as a helpful person who is well informed about your particular subject;

2. Your messages will in their turn generate replies, some of which will be from potential customers;

3. You will be building a network of contacts, all of whom have an interest in your field of work;

4. You will learn more about your field and, by watching others, you will learn what kinds of messages get a positive response and what messages cause annoyance.

This is of course marketing not selling and it takes patience - its not a good method for selling some exciting new product you want to sell in large quantities in a short time but it is a good method for developing a network of "good connections" that will almost certainly lead to some business sooner or later.

In a later FAQ we aim to cover "how to find the right discussion forum".

Internet Web Presence Strategy

Build a WWW site (pages) that carries a strong set of useful information about your chosen field/subject. This European Telework Online site is an example - the kinds of information can include FAQs, links to useful resources, lists of customers you have worked with (given their permission), examples of your work.

You don't need to build a site on the scale of European Telework Online (around 2,000 pages). Your goal is to build a set of web pages of interest for people who are interested in your work subject, then to make it a really excellent site that will attract people who share that interest. Think about building it in different languages, the languages of your customers. To reduce cost and effort you could build a joint web page with other specialists in your field. Future FAQs here will address the basics for an effective website for marketing and sales purposes.

Don't abandon the List strategy, instead use the website address as the reference point - when you reply to messages direct the readers to the appropriate web page for further information. When you see a pattern of questions arising, think about answering them in a FAQ. That is exactly how the large collection of FAQs at European Telework Online has been developed.

As well as the email strategy you will also need to invest some effort to make sure your website is properly indexed in the main search engines and directories and is mentioned in magazines etc - none of this costs money but it does cost time and effort. There are many places on the web where you can get advice about websites and tools to help you build an effective one. The key is to make sure you have really useful content on your site.

A Collective/collaborative Strategy

You will need to have clear agreements about responsibilities and how the work is to be allocated. You will still have to be very clear about what it is you do, what are your strengths, who are your target customers.

Having established your group you will share the work of monitoring and responding to email lists etc. Maybe one of the group joins CompuServe, giving access to their relevant forums. Another joins AoL. One takes responsibility for maintaining an excellent set of links on the website, one is responsible for getting into the search engines etc. Perhaps between you you develop a more commercial website.

The role of work-finding services

This and related topics are regularly discussed in the Telework Forum.