- Shannon G Hansen
- Posts
- Freelancer to Founder
I earned Upwork’s rising talent badge in my first two weeks on the platform. I did all the right things and found myself in the top 5% of freelancers.
It didn’t make a hill of beans worth of difference when the average US company seeking workers in my niche wants to pay $15-20 an hour. Freelancing has a dirty little secret—-the lowest bidder usually wins.
47% of the global workforce are freelance in 2024 according to Forbes. There’s been a significant shift in the corporate SOP away from hiring full time employees and using contract labor in their place.
I have great reviews, happy customers and a solid portfolio….yet I was struggling to get consistent work. I spent a lot of time & care crafting proposals…more time some weeks than I did earning any money.
This isn’t fun anymore. The freedom I thought I’d find in freelancing turned into constant worry & hustling for clients. I started to feel like a barker hawking my wares in a 18th century alley.
I’m a big believer in destiny and those random events that change people’s lives. I experienced one a few weeks ago when I stumbled across a video on YouTube (WGMI Media) about building a productized agency instead of freelancing. I got sucked in and binged the channel over a weekend.
Productized agencies offer a very specific service to a specific niche of people for a flat fee or subscription rate. They do not trade time for money. They get paid for a result not the number of hours they worked.
It was the perfect solution, I even felt a little dumb that I had never even considered it as a viable option.
Never one to waste time or get stuck in “analysis paralysis” I dove in. I studied all the PA websites I could find, learned a ton about the unique copywriting style required and went to work setting it all up.
I productized the shit out of what I do best….SEO. I’m a data geek and a technical writer (complicated how-tos and industry whitepapers) and SEO content combines both.
I soft launched my agency on February 2, 2024. And, yeah, I still have to hustle to get clients. But there’s a critical difference this time.
I’m onboarding into a monthly, revolving productized service that will result in ongoing, recurring income. It is less expensive for a company to subscribe all year than to hire a single part-time employee. And the productized model allows me to stack a lot of clients in a month.
I can easily scale to 20-30K a month without adding any cost.
Next, we’ll talk about how I did the research to position my offer to take off in a hungry market and getting set up.
In the meantime, have a look at these websites utilizing the productized agency model.
Publishing Empire Pro (this one’s mine)
See y’all at the next stop. ✌️