How to Grow Your Freelance Business With Influencer Marketing

The term “influencer” has become very popular in the last few years. In a matter of years, it has evolved from a hobby and internet trend, to be considered a highly-rewarding career path.

If you had told your parents that you were dropping out of college to work as an “influencer” ten years ago, they would have thought you were crazy. Today, however, leveraging influencers is one of the most common marketing strategies at companies of all sizes and in all industries.

So in 2021, it’s actually not rare to hear parents encouraging their kids to start a YouTube channel or to aspire to become internet-famous.

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The reason is that the benefits of influencer work can go from getting free products and publicity to actually earning millions of dollars per year.

Since these synergies generate amazing returns on the investment for the brands and the influencers, there aren’t any signs of this industry stopping its growth. Projections foresee that the influencer marketing industry will be worth more than $15billion by 2022.

With that in mind, have you ever considered leveraging your influence to grow your freelance business?

In this article we will show you three ways you can benefit from working as an influencer while you keep growing your freelance business.

1. Side hustle and make extra cash

You don’t need a degree or specific niche to become an influencer. You can basically monetize your knowledge and audience in any niche and with any skill set if you take the right steps. In addition, you can do this work on the side, without committing to it full-time or neglecting your freelance business.

Sounds nice, right? But how do you get started?

You need to convince businesses or brands to pay you for influence and reach.
Our advice would be to start by creating some social reviews or give some shoutouts to supplement your income.

Companies will pay you based on the benefit they will get from your review or shoutout.
You don’t need 100k followers to be considered for a gig like this.

There are opportunities for people with audiences of all sizes and skills/interests of any kinds – as the stage, background, and budget of companies looking to make a match with an influencer is also very diverse.

Who knows? You may end up loving it.

So, next time you lose a client, pause a contract, or finish a project, you could consider scheduling some influencer collaborations to keep the cash flowing.

2. A consistent source of leads

Building your online presence, expanding your reach, and growing an audience come with a highly valuable benefit: you will have leads knocking at your door consistently.
It’s simple, if you become a voice or authority in the podcasting niche, people will come to you for help with their podcasts.

If you start making noise with your web design tips, I am pretty sure that more than one person will be interested in your expertise or will buy a course or training from you.

It’s so simple that it sounds silly, but if you ponder it for a second you will realize there’s no downside to this.

Becoming an influencer comes with some nice perks, including the ability to monetize your business on many verticals. You will get paid for your influencer work at the same time that your freelance work is appreciated and gets more recognition. Once you grow your online reputation, you can also increase the profitability of your influencer collaborations, freelance rates, sell your expertise through info-products, and more.

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3. Test new industries and concepts

Generally speaking, influencer work is not as immersive as freelance work. The jobs are quick and diverse. You can enrich your portfolio and network by getting involved in influencer projects or signing up with an influencer agency (that connects brands with micro-influencers) that go outside of your current sphere.

Getting out of your everyday routine and comfort zone can help you experience and understand industries or niches unknown to you, without having to spend as much and resources as when you take on a new freelance project.

Many individuals have pivoted or transitioned their business into new horizons after experimenting with temporary influencer gigs. Participating in influencer work will expand your mindset and it can help you distract from the stress and pace of your current freelance activities.

As you can see, influencer marketing work comes with huge upsides. So, start knocking on doors, you may be surprised by the amount of businesses that are looking to partner with the right person to promote their products.

If you want to speed up your way and get help from the pros, you should consider joining the influencer marketplace at Intellifluence. Start getting free products or cash for your reviews and monetize your influence.

It’s easy: create your FREE account here and get immediate access to a robust influencer marketplace. Browse curated offers from brands and apply to campaigns based on your interests. Brands can also send you pitches if they feel you are a good fit for their campaign. Go ahead and try it out and let us know what you think!