Learn About Service Offerings

You can make money with your blog in different ways. One of the most obvious ways is to write paid (guest) posts for other websites. But you can also offer one or more services on your blog. Don’t know where to start? Let’s take a look at these 20 ideas of services that are perfect to offer for freelancers working from home.

What is a service?

According to Wikipedia, a service is “the non-material equivalent of a good. A service provision is an economic activity that does not result in ownership, and this is what differentiates it from providing physical goods”.

For example, an economic activity would be you helping someone (e.g. another blogger) to help set up their website, for which they pay you. You can translate that to online services as well. So, you don’t need to physically be present to offer your service to someone.

Step #1: Determine what you’re good at or what you like to do

What kind of skills do you have already that you can make money with? Even if you don’t have 20 years of experience, your skills are worth money. And if you start now, think about all the knowledge you’ll gain in the next year. You’ll be able to charge more as your experience grows.

But it doesn’t work if you don’t enjoy it, so also think about what you like to do. Remember that you can always take a course to develop a certain skill more or learn something from scratch (kinda like what you’re doing right now).

Let’s take a look at some perfect freelancing skills to offer online.

1. Writing

You can look for freelance jobs on Upwork or other freelancing job sites, but you can also promote your writing services on your own blog. There are different categories in writing, so determine where your strengths lie and what you like to do.

  • Ghostwriter: ghostwriting means that your name isn’t published with your article. Usually business ask for ghostwriters to fill up their blog. If you don’t have any experience, your per word rate would be between $0.05-$0.10. Once you start to build up experience, you can charge a per word rate of $0.60 to $1.
  • Guest blogger: guestbloggers write blog posts for other websites, under their own name.
  • Copywriter: copywriters write with the objective to sell. It’s basically writing to convince someone to buy something or sign up (e.g. email list or competition).
  • eBooks writer: a good way to promote your website/business and get more followers is to offer a free eBook to visitors. Hence there’s a huge demand for eBooks because not everybody has time to write one. Besides writing one for your own website, you could offer to write eBooks for others.

2. Coaching

Once you’ve gained some experience and knowledge, you can offer to mentor or coach others. You don’t need any coaching certificate or something like that to offer coaching. If you have a background in website design for example, you can offer to help people design their website. Or, once you know a lot about blogging, you can help other beginner bloggers to build up their blogging career. You can do this in various ways:

  • Personal coaching via Skype
  • Personal coaching via email
  • Offering online courses
  • Offering a “library” of online videos and tutorials

3. Website Design

You have a background in website design? Then you can offer a service designing websites for others. You can offer your service one on one (e.g. you make a custom website for someone), or sell pre-designed templates like Lindsey from Pretty Darn Cute does.

4. Photography

Do you have knack for taking pretty pictures? Doesn’t matter if you’re self-taught, as long as you have a good SLS camera and can create beautiful photos, you can sell them online! High-quality photos are in high demand. Check out what kind of photos make the most money, and then offer packages of stock photos on your site. Take a look at how Rachel from Haute Chocolate is doing it.

5. Social Media Managing

Being active on social media takes up a lot of time. Time that most people don’t have. If you already know how to get the most likes on Instagram, how to reach the most people on Facebook, or build up a large following on Pintarest, you could definitely make money from that.

And it’s not like people will stop using social media any time soon, so it might even be interesting to build a whole business around social media managing. All you need to know is a basic understanding of the popular social media channels, the latest trends and news about social media, and how automation programs such as Hootsuite work.

6. Marketing

Do you have a background in marketing, know how to promote products and services, and create killer ads? You can definitely turn that into a freelance service as well! There are many different ways to offer your marketing skills to other businesses, bloggers or freelancers:

  • Influencer marketing: convincing influential people in a certain niche
  • Social media marketing (see also #5 above)
  • Traditional marketing (offline marketing)
  • Brand marketing: creating a strong brand or style for another blogger, or a business. If you have a knack for putting together colors, objects and visuals, you can help others to develop their unique brand.
  • B2B marketing: business to business marketing
  • B2C marketing: business to consumer marketing

7. Administrative Assistant

You’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs, freelancers and other businesses outsource their administration. Who has time to do that nowadays? You? Then get paid for it, freelance style! Offer your administrative skills to the world and help people to structure their life.

8. Web Development

Do you have the technological know-how to develop websites? Then help other people to set up their websites. There’s a high-demand for skills like this one!

9. Blog Management

Lots of professional bloggers have more than one site. They need to manage their writers, editors and are in charge of the content schedule. You can help them out by offering blog management services like setting the schedule, create graphics, sourcing images and edit posts.

10. Graphic Design

Are you good with graphics? Do you know how to work PhotoShop or Illustrator? Then offer banners, images, blog title graphics, or other visual content as stock images. Or, set up a service offering bloggers and small businesses customized visuals. You can also specialize in logo design or some other niche.

11. Virtual Tutoring

If you have an education background as a teacher, and you have access to a quiet space, then you can teach people online. Whether you’re teaching Algebra, Calculus and Statics, English, Chemistry or Physics. Just set up your service and use e.g. Skype to start sharing your knowledge.

12. Translations

Hablas español? Lots of businesses, authors or educational institutions, even freelancers, need translators to connect to their international customers / prospects. Some require that you are an official translator, but some don’t. You do need to be fluent in both languages though.

Pay varies, starting from $0.05 per word, also depending on the language(s) that you speak. Of course, you determine your own per word rate on your business page, or offer flexible rates (depending on the amount of work or type of organization).

14. Editing / proofreading

You can offer a proofreading or editing service if you are good at reading and noticing mistakes. You don’t need a certification in proofreading in order to offer this skill, but you do need a solid know-how on grammar and semantics.

15. Alternative medicine

Are you into alternative medicine? Offer holistic counseling and therapy.

16. Nutrition and dieting

If nutrition is your thing, think about helping people with their diet, create personal diet plans, or answer people’s questions by using email or Skype.

17. Legal advice

Have a background in law? Offer consulting services to companies or freelancers. There’s always a need for layers in this world!

18. Concept developer

Help people develop new ideas and concepts for their personal or business blog. If you’re a creative person, why not earn some money with your insights?

19. Recipes

Love to cook? You turn your passion for food into a lucrative business. Of course you should provide your readers with free recipes on your blog, but you can also offer a paid membership to receive special recipes or cooking assistance. You can even provide a live webcam service on how to prepare affordable and nutritious meals. Or publish an ebook with your recipes.

20. Entertainment

If you have a way to make people laugh, and love telling jokes, you can set up a service where you entertain people using a webcam, newsletter, videos, etc.

Extra: Promotional services on your blog

This is not so much a skill, but more a service that you provide to businesses to promote their products on your site and social media. Once you have built up a large following, you can ask money to promote products or brand names on your site. You can offer the following PR services:

  • Sponsored blog posts: when a company pays you to write something about them and publish it on your blog. You should always mention it when a post is sponsored to maintain your credibility.
  • Sponsored social media mentions: when a company pays you to post something about them on your social media channels.
  • Sponsored giveaways: when a company gives you a product (and money, depending on how big your following is) to give away to your readers in combination with a challenge or competition.
  • Advertising space on your blog: when a company pays you to place an ad on your site.

Learn how to set up a page, either for a skill that you want to offer, or a promotional service, in the next step.

Step #2: Add a services page to your site or make a new site

socially jess jpg

If you want to advertise your services on your existing site/blog, create a new page to add to your site with a name like “Hire me”, “Work with me”, “Services for small businesses”, or any other name related to your target group. Check out the example above of Socially Jess.

Or, if you want to offer a different service on a whole new site, then create an extra site dedicated to that specific service. You can always link to it in your other blog.

If you want to offer promotional services on your blog, check out this example on Christine’s Cook The Story.

Step #3: Tips for a successful freelancing career

  • Make sure your website is self-hosted with a pro domain name. It would have looked very unprofessional if her site was called “www.sociallyjess.wordpress.com”. It would just tell people that she wouldn’t take her business seriously.
  • Keep your blog up. Don’t just use your site as a business card. Regularly publishing posts helps to drive traffic (potential customers)  to your site.
  • Include a “Testimonials” page with reviews of former clients or customers.
  • Don’t just talk about you, but let your potential clients know what you can do for them. Instead of saying “copywriter”, say “attract more customers with irresistible content”.
  • Have one or more clear offers. What can people get from you, what is the cost, when would it be ready, etc.
  • Make sure your site is super user-friendly. The average visitor spends 6-8 seconds on a website before they leave. If they can’t find what they’re looking for straight away, or your site takes too long to load, you’ll miss out on lots of business opportunities.
  • Promote your services everywhere you can (without spamming people): on your personal and business social media, with your friends and family, network events, dinners, parties, anything. And hand out your business card.