How LinkedIn Is Catering More to Freelancers With the New ‘Marketplaces’ Feature

Next to working from home, freelancing is the best way to earn additional (or even principal) income when Filipinos want to achieve as much flexibility as possible. It’s worked for writers, virtual assistants, and photographers. Most likely, it will continue to do so for many more professions in these times.

To keep up with the growing demand of these self-employed individuals, LinkedIn is launching Marketplaces, a new service for working with freelancers. As with online shopping marketplaces, it would enable clients to find independent workers that they can potentially work with. Not just find, but also hire and pay them.

Also read: 8 Work from Home Essentials to Finally Build Your Home Office

LinkedIn for freelancers

Think of Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer, but with an even bigger pool of users compared to these established platforms. According to its homepage, LinkedIn has nearly 740 million users worldwide. With Marketplaces, it would open up more opportunities to freelancers whose services are often overshadowed by full-time posts on the Microsoft-owned site.

Slated to launch in September 2021, Marketplaces would replace ProFinder. This is LinkedIn’s existing feature that helps users find freelancers.

Unlike Fiverr, however, ProFinder only lets one find these professionals. Users of the feature are unable to compare freelancer rates and book freelancers on the site. And unlike Upwork, which is one of the more popular freelancing sites for Filipinos, ProFinder does not have a feature that lets users post their own proposals for freelancers.

Marketplaces would resolve these issues by letting users see freelancer prices and hiring their services on the same platform.

According to the tech publication The Information, which was the first to report about LinkedIn’s new service, customers would also be able to post proposals. They can also post reviews about their experience with the freelancers they’ve worked with. With these services, using LinkedIn for freelancers could not be more convenient.

Also read: Work from Home in the Philippines? It’s Tough, But We’re Coping

Ever since the pandemic, more LinkedIn users have been actively searching for remote works on the site. This is according to LinkedIn spokesperson, Suzi Owens. Among them are executive coaching, marketing, design, and software development. Also via The Information, she adds, “In the future we’ll be building new ways to share more about the services you [could] offer directly through your LinkedIn profile.”

Featured image credit: inlytics | Unsplash