thomas smale speaking at double your freelancing us 2016

Leveraging Your Freelance Skills to Build a Business You Can Sell

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DYFConf

Leveraging Your Freelance Skills to

Build a Business You Can Sell

Who Am I?

2010 2016

Launched 2010 400 deals Over $60M in sales 80% YoY growth Team of 20

champions 100% self-funded

SaaS Content e-Commerce


What Are We Going to Learn?


You Don’t Have To Work Forever

Build an asset you can actually sell

Leverage skills you already have!

Create freedom

What Buyers Want

• Blog

• Authority website

• Amazon FBA store

• E-commerce store

• SaaS product

What’s The Best Business to Build?


Site 1$2M

Site 3$225K

Site 2$680K

Lessons From Successful Sales


• Using a pseudonym

• Evergreen content/niche

• Consistent growth

• Outsourced content/basic tasks

Avoid Trends


• Trends can be predicted

• Ask yourself: will it still be around in 5 years?

• Look for consistent/growing trends

• Something popular all year


What is a Good Niche?

You Don’t Need a “Good” Idea

We’ve Seen Everything

Dog Food

Dog Owners Spend Money


• Blog about dog food

• $460,000 sales price

• Used a pen name

• Weekly post

• Prefer cats?

Fashion

Hundreds of Possible Businesses


• E-commerce store

• Selling sunglasses

• $240,000 sales price

• All drop-shipped

Credit Repair!


Credit Repair

• $510,000 asking price

• Owner is a writer

• Selling leads as an affiliate

• Multiple features on big sites

Anything Goes


What Do You Know About?

• Think personal

• Can you write code?

• Can you write well?

• A niche for everyone

Q&A

Free e-course:http://feinternational.com/d

yf/



Wrap Up

You don’t need an original idea

You already have the skills

Does not have to be full-time