The world’s largest professional network LinkedIn has introduced a service marketplace that helps individuals, business startups, or freelancers to get orders by promoting their services on LinkedIn for free. In 2021, the LinkedIn services marketplace became available with limitations, but it is now available for all to get started promoting their businesses. It was first launched in February 2021 to a small group for testing, and it has been expanded to more than two million freelancers.
This guide will show you how to get started with LinkedIn Services Marketplace with a step-by-step guide and how it can lead to lucrative opportunities as a freelancer.
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What is LinkedIn Services Marketplace?
You can say, that the LinkedIn Services marketplace is a search engine that is used to find experienced and qualified professionals to hire for short- or long-term projects.
Anyone, including freelancers, can list their services in this marketplace across 250 job categories and get the relevant audience and orders without paying anything. On the other hand, people find service providers by choosing the right category or searching it on the Service marketplace landing page.
Moreover, clients can also publish requests for proposals (RFPs) same as Fiverr or other freelancing platforms offer to encourage the service providers to bid on the job they are hiring for.
In short, the LinkedIn service marketplace is a professional tool used to connect clients with service providers or freelancers. All other things, including negotiation, invoices, or other tasks, should be done off-platform.
Freelancers or individuals can’t review the client, but clients can review them so that they can make their final decision.
As you know, it is not a freelancing platform, so that’s why you can’t actively search for work, but you can only list down your services and wait for the clients to get discovered.
At the moment, you have an idea of what it is and how it works; here is how to use it to get started with it and found by the clients.
How To List Your Services on LinkedIn Marketplace For Free?
Whether you are a freelancer, a business startup, or an individual service provider, you can list your services by following the simple step-by-step guide if you have a LinkedIn profile.
First of all, login to your LinkedIn profile and click on the “Open To” button at the top of your profile or click on the “Get Started” link as shown in the screenshot given below:
When you click on the Get Started button or “Providing services,” you will see a popup or navigate to the “How it works.”
Click on the continue button and add the services you are providing.
Write down the introduction content of up to 500 words choose the work location, turn on review visibility, and allow clients to request then click on the next button to proceed further. You can add up to 10 services from a list of 16 main categories, and each one has multiple sub-categories to choose from:
- Accounting
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Consulting
- Design
- Events
- Finance
- Home Improvement
- Information Technology
- Insurance
- Law
- Marketing
- Operations
- Photography
- Real Estate
- Software Development
- Writing
Now, write attractive and descriptive content to tell the clients more about who you are how you work, etc. As you can see in the screenshot given above, you can choose whether you are available for remote work, in-person, or both. After completing all these additions, you can now publish your services in a dedicated section to get started.
After adding your services, either share in a post or a message to your LinkedIn connections so that you can get an instant response.
How to Find Freelancers or Services Providers on LinkedIn Services Marketplace?
Clients who are looking to hire service providers or freelancers can search the LinkedIn marketplace and start typing the service they need.
They can also choose from popular services as shown below:
If you are not sure how it works, then watch the video on this landing page or see the simple steps given below:
Now, start typing the service that you are looking for, and LinkedIn will suggest the most relevant category as seen below:
Click on your specified job category to find service providers who offer these services. These results will be displayed according to how closely you are connected with each freelancer or individual on LinkedIn.
When you find a freelancer that you are interested in, send him a message to get started with the hiring process.
How to Offer your Professional Services under your brand name?
If you are a freelancer or provide any type of online service, then it is the best option to buy a domain name and reliable web hosting to build your business website. If you buy a Linux shared hosting except the starter plan, then you will get a free .com domain with it to start developing your website. We provide a step-by-step guide on how to get your own website without having any coding or development experience. Share your valuable feedback or questions below in the comment section. I would love to respond to you.