Published on December 29th, 2020 | by Bibhuranjan

How Marketplaces Are the New Sales Channels for IT Experts

Online marketplaces are becoming a popular way to find new business for many IT companies. Some companies have been establishing themselves on these websites for many years and competing with freelancer while there is an increasing number of businesses looking to harness the power of marketplaces since recent global events have made it more difficult to network.

Marketplaces are essentially a SaaS system. You get both people that are looking for work and people that need to hire particular skillsets for their projects.

Using Marketplaces to Hire Skillsets

One of the advantages, or if we can take something good out of the pandemic, is that IT businesses can now fill in aby shortage of skills in their IT set up by hiring a freelancer rather than a full-time employee. Many businesses have only just discovered that they can find people via an online marketplace. With the pandemic hitting the economy hard, it has driven many IT firms to look for staffing solutions.

One of the hardest things to do when you own a business is to weigh up the value of hiring a person that can work full time and using those people 35 to 40 hours a week or hiring a freelancer for a job that required just 10 to 20 hours a week.

On top of this, with many offices closed due to lockdown and the need to remote remotely, by hiring resources on a marketplace, you are already hiring people that work remotely.

Furthermore, the interviews are quick and easy while you also see their feedback from other people they have worked with which when compared to hiring people in person, you may have 2 or 3 references from previous employers which are not always as honest as they should be – granted some are restricted by law from giving a good reference.

In the end, finding a jobs in an online marketplace has many advantages over looking through traditional channels such as It recruitment companies and websites.

Using Marketplaces to Find Work

Using a marketplace to find work is certainly a lot trickier than hiring people. When you hire people, they generally want to work and are unlikely to scrutinise your profile. Even if you have no feedback and advertise a job on a marketplace, you will generally find it easy to get applications.

Conversely, when you are looking for work on marketplaces, you need feedback. Most people will not hire you without feedback unless they say they are specifically looking for someone with no experience as an opportunity to gain positive feedback. Therefore, you will most likely need to offer some hefty discounts for your first few jobs within the online marketplace you join.

Once a company or a freelancer builds up its profile, any job is open game. Those with plenty of feedback can start to ask for higher rates for their work and only attract serious employers. This generally also means longer-term contracts and work with high pay.

With the latest pandemic, marketplaces certainly are the ideal place to find work other than going to network events or spending a fortune on advertising. You can also use IP masking software to open other accounts to give yourself feedback and kickstart your online marketplace profile. Check out the next section for information!

How to Create Your Feedback?

Sometimes people can create their feedback of their own on marketplaces, but this is tricky. Firstly, if you get caught, the website will likely ban your account. One way most people get around this is to use a VPN. However, even with location identity hidden, you still need to create a legitimate account somewhere else your country (it’s better not to have an account in the same location) and make sure that the accounts can never be linked.

You will also need to fund that other account. Some marketplaces will only allow you to use verified payment methods. On top of this, after 2 or 3 transactions, you will need to provide some form of ID. Therefore, the best way to create your feedback is to find a family member or friend in another part of the country willing to help you.

Another issue you will need to be careful with is too much feedback from the same account. It would look odd if a new account was just created at the same time as yours. Suddenly the new account is buying regularly from your account. Marketplaces know that this activity occurs and have systems in place to spot it happening. Therefore, you should be very careful about how you decide to manipulate the system.

There you have it. You can use marketplaces for both hiring tech staff or to find tech jobs that suit your skillset. There are tricks to getting feedback, and once you begin to get customers and deliver high-quality work, you will start to build a client. Eventually, you should have so much work that you can then considering hiring help for projects.

Photo by Adam Kring on Unsplash

Tags: hiring, IP masking software, IT hiring, online marketplace, VPN

About the Author

Bibhuranjan Editorial Officer, technofaq.org I'm an avid tech enthusiast at heart. I like to mug up on new and exciting developments on science and tech and have a deep love for PC gaming. Other hobbies include writing blog posts, music and DIY projects.