My journey on this new freelancing platform began in February of 2019. Unlike some of the other freelancer sites (such as Guru or Hubstaff) you have to apply to work on ProFinder – and there is a possibility that you won’t be accepted to work off of their platform. So I went ahead and applied.
The ProFinder folks didn’t accept me at first, when I first submitted my application to become one of their pros. I received basically a rejection letter, saying something to the effect that I didn’t have the necessary experience… which I thought was odd since I’ve been doing my thing (web development/design) for over 20 years. I responded to the rejection letter, explaining how I really truly am experienced and do know my stuff and why the heck did they reject me?? (I didn’t use those exact words, but you get the idea).
It turns out that they rejected me because I didn’t yet have any reviews on LinkedIn itself – on the regular LinkedIn platform (which I have been on for several years now). The ProFinder representative suggested I go out and get some reviews on my profile, then come back and reapply. That is what I did – then I reapplied to be a Pro, then they accepted me and here I am, still on the platform today!
Getting started
This FAQs article from ProFinder has some excellent details, including how to get started on the platform and how to set up your profile:
As they state in the article, your profile is VERY important, so take care in creating a good one:
“Having a fully complete profile is the most important piece to getting opportunities, as it’s one of the first things potential clients will see.”
Also important: at this time the ProFinder program is only available in the US.
One minor hiccup during the beginning stages when I was still setting up my ProFinder profile: I was not able to edit my own services myself. I added my services, then later decided to remove one of them, since I wasn’t as strong in that area as I’d like. However, once you have your 10 services listed there, you can’t edit them yourself. It took several days for me to message someone from the ProFinder team, have them respond and finally help me tweak my services. When they made the change for me, they didn’t actually do it correctly, so I had to ask them again. Not a huge issue, just something to be aware of and a heads-up that you should choose the wording of your services carefully when setting up your profile.
Side note: I don’t get inundated with emails – they only send me emails when necessary and only send me leads that are tailored to me, or at least that is the ultimate goal. (unlike Bark which clogged up my Inbox in about 2 days). And I hadn’t even signed up for Bark.. what is up with that?? (ok – we’ll leave that for a different review)
A brief case study of working with a client
I was only on the ProFinder platform maybe a week, when I submitted a proposal, and then was messaged by the potential client the next day. We went on to have a phone conversation a few days after that. Nice woman – it didn’t work out because she decided to go with someone local to her (the New York area), but she was super polite during the whole process.
Then, after being on the ProFinder platform only a few months, I found my first client for real! She just started her own business and was looking for a logo designer, so we met up at a local Dunkin to go over a few pencil sketches I did. The client was really friendly, our meeting went well, and she picked out a specific design that she liked.
Normally I like to take a little more time to design a logo and to create all the (multiple) file formats that logos need to be delivered in. But she stated that her goal was to start seeing actual clients in her business within 2 weeks… so this was a bit of a rush job for me. I delivered a final product for her in about 4 days. Some designers take weeks or even months to produce a logo, so 4 days is really pushing it – but I hustled and it worked out, and she told me she’s “really happy with the logo”. (woo hoo!)
After she signed off on the project, I sent my client an invoice for the second half of my design fee. (I always ask for a deposit at the beginning of any freelance project). She promptly paid it, I sent her the final files and that was that.
Oh! One more thing!
Make sure you ask clients for reviews. You have to ask – your customers probably won’t offer this up freely and/or it might simply not occur to them. After I sent this client the final logo files, I asked her if she’d mind leaving me a review on my LinkedIn profile. She finally did after I sent her 2 or 3 reminder emails. : )
Side note: one thing that the ProFinder team has stressed during my two short initial phone consultations was the important of writing articles on their platform. It took me a number of months to get this going, but it’s understandably important to get your articles out on this platform. I was coached on how it could tip the scales in my favor, if a client is trying to decide between me and another freelancer with similar skills. (“it sets you up as an authority in the eyes of potential clients” I was told).
A few more thoughts about clients
- This platform is totally FREE for clients and customers who are looking for hire freelance professionals.
- Unlike other freelancing platforms, on this platform most of the clients actually responded to my proposal – either way, whether they wanted to move forward or not. Some of the clients responded and let me know they found someone closer to their location or that they are still reviewing proposals – or otherwise gave me some kind of status update. This level of communication is refreshing, and only seems possible due to the 5-proposal limit.
- This might be because of where I live or that I’m not targeting the “ideal” clients, but my experience so far has taught me that clients are expecting LOW prices and lowball quotes from service providers. This makes me realize it isn’t all that different from the rest of the freelancing platforms in terms of [some] clients expecting dirt-cheap work.
- On a different occasion I submitted my proposal one day, and the client sent me a message via ProFinder that same day. After a few days I noticed she still only had 4 proposals in, so the max # hadn’t been reached yet. I am guessing it’s because the client was more local to me and we are in a smaller market. Generally speaking, the leads I get in from bigger markets like New York or the Boston area seem to get filled up with 5 proposals by the end of the first day (or earlier).
- So far with the client I just mentioned, we had a nice phone conversation the day after I sent my proposal, then corresponded a few times via email. She was also very nice and friendly to chat with.
Some comments regarding submitting proposals to clients
- There is a 1,500 character limit on proposals, so be sure to keep your proposals very succinct and state your main points near the beginning. I found this cumbersome at first, and had to keep removing parts of my proposals word by word until the form would submit.
- You can tell if a client has or has not read your proposal, and when they do read it you are notified of that via email.
- On one occasion I sent a proposal (on 6/3/19) and received a private message from the client the next day!
- The fact that ProFinder gives their pros 10 free proposals to start with really works out well. That gave me ample time to get to know the platform and see how well it would work for me – before being charged any fee at all. Because I had other projects to work on (from local clients), I wasn’t hitting it really hard in terms of sending proposals. Due to the fact that I was taking my time on this platform, it took me from February 2019 (when I first signed up) until August 2019 to deplete my 10 free proposals. When I did finally hit the limit of 10, pretty much right after that I received a notice from LinkedIn asking me to sign up for LinkedIn Professional.
- A word of advice if you are in a busier market than I am: please do not submit a proposal unless you are SURE you really want it AND have the skills the client is looking for in a pro. The fact that ProFinder accepts a maximum of 5 proposals per lead makes this piece very important. If you are submitting proposals willy-nilly on this platform, bear in mind that for every proposal you submit, you are excluding all but 4 other individuals from doing the same. So when you send a proposal here, you have to really mean it – to be fair to yourself, the client, and other freelance service providers.
- Within my smaller, less competitive market I found that I usually had enough time to send proposals, and when I did submit one, mine was usually only one of 2 or 3 other proposals.
- A few times I got caught in the situation where I received a lead from ProFinder, looked at it and saw that it only had maybe 1 or 2 proposals, then marked is as one of my “come back to this later” tasks. I figured “this job isn’t even close to the 5-proposal limit, so I still have time to submit mine.” Ahhh, but the issue is that there is also a time limit – of 24 hours– in addition to the 5-proposal limit. Consequently, there were a few instances when I was kicking myself for procrastinating! In my opinion this message should have instead said something like: “Requests expire after 24 hours.” –>
This particular lead only had 1 proposal at the time:
About the paid version of ProFinder (or the “LinkedIn Professional or Business version”)
For freelancers or independent consultants (insert whatever you call yourself here), if you’d like to continue with this program, it can get a little pricey at something like $59.99 per month (the actual price I was billed turned out to be $63.80 per month).
For more information on pricing, check out this article from ProFinder: https://www.linkedin.com/help/profinder/answer/67213
Here is an excerpt from that article:
“If you’re a service provider, your first 10 proposal responses through ProFinder are free to submit so you can get a sense for how the platform and the process works. After 10 proposals, a LinkedIn Premium Business subscription is necessary for unlimited responses to project requests. The Premium Business subscription costs $59.99 per month, or you may wish to purchase annually and save up to 25%.”
- After being on the platform for a long time, after receiving multiple emails from LinkedIn encouraging me to try their Pro version, I finally took the plunge and signed up. Shortly after I did sign up I started receiving leads from other parts of the country (up until that point the leads I was seeing were relatively local). I live in Connecticut, and leads started coming in from locations as far away as Louisiana, Kansas, Utah and Michigan – like this one below:
This is great in the sense that I’ve been waiting for a long time to start getting more of a flow of leads coming in (as I mentioned earlier, I’m not in a hot area for local leads)! However, I was disappointed to see that this client wished to work with the web designer in person (not too helpful in my case… ) :
It turned out that it didn’t matter what I decided on this request, as it had expired in about ½ a day (I guess Michigan is a much more happening area than my state is):
Receiving leads in my email inbox
I have waited until the afternoon of the next day (after receiving certain local lead notices from ProFinder) to finally decide to go ahead and submit a proposal. And the project was still open… but that’s in my market here in CT. In other more active areas, the projects can get snatched up VERY quickly. My advice here would be not to wait and just submit your proposal right away, if the project or job is one you are truly interested in and are qualified for. There were several instances where I had only just checked my email in the morning, opened a lead email from ProFinder and found that the job was closed already, like this one below:
At this point I’m seeing a clear trend of projects from busier/larger markets actually being closed before LinkedIn even gets around to depositing them into my inbox. Or it might be because I have a slow email service provider? Either way, not good.
- As far as the irrelevant leads go — I do recall that when I first was going through the on-boarding process, it was explained to me that if leads start coming in that are not relevant to my location (or job preferences) I can click into the email and choose “I am not interested”. This serves the purpose of refining ProFinder’s algorithm and fine-tuning its knowledge about me as a service provider – to better learn my preferences. The desired outcome is that the platform will continue to send me leads that are actually tailored for me.
- I can go a whole week without receiving a single lead sent to me from LinkedIn… it isn’t exactly a major source of potential clients, in my case. On average I would say leads come in every 2-3 days.
- One clear disadvantage this platform has (in my opinion): so far I have not seen ANY leads come in that even hint at what the client’s budget might be. There doesn’t appear to be a field for them to enter this information, when they are posting their project. I find this truly problematic. Frankly, if I’m going to be spending time researching a client, crafting a proposal, meeting with them, etc. then it would be good to have an idea of how much they are able to (or are willing to) spend on that particular project. A few times I ran into the situation where I spent hours on a potential client, only to discover – when it was basically too late to change my mind – that the client’s budget was something like $150. (I am totally serious about that). So this needs to be fixed by the PF folks (please!)
- Around 70% of the leads that come to me are asking for logo design, with only around 30% requesting website work. My profile emphasizes the web dev stuff much more, and I only mention logo design as a sub-skill or sub-category for me, so this was a bit disappointing. The old me (at the start of my freelancing journey a few years ago) would have been thrilled about this! However, the new (wiser) me is getting disillusioned with the direction of logo design in today’s world and wonder if I will ever find a client who truly understands how much work is involved. (sigh)
OK – that being said, if you are a logo designer then this platform might be a good thing for your business and you should give it a try. - In terms of local leads, to this day I have received only 18 that were local clients (in my state). This was out of 118 leads in total that I have received in my inbox.
My conclusion about the LinkedIn ProFinder freelancing platform
I think this platform has some critical advantages to all of the other freelancing platforms out there (especially the 5-proposal limit – that is GREAT!) That being said – most of the other platforms have an ongoing free option but this one does not. So here’s the big question: is it worth the $60+ per month to stay on this platform? For me, the answer is no.
I’m probably going to go ahead and cancel my subscription soon, and it’s killing me to do so. I love the IDEA behind what ProFinder is trying to do here. But unfortunately I live in a market that is just too slow (and nearly dead apparently), so the cost is just not worth it in my case. [OK, full disclosure: since I joined in February 2019 I have managed to earn less than $200 using this freelancing platform.]
However, if you live in a busy area where there’s a big market for freelancers and there’s a lot going on, then ProFinder would most likely be 100% worth the monthly cost for you!
What do you think? Have you had any experience with this relatively new platform? Please let me know all about your experiences in the comments.
