What 3 Successful Entrepreneurs Can Teach You About Selling Your Creativity Online

Are you finding it difficult to sell your creativity to clients? Here’s what 3 successful entrepreneurs can teach you about selling your creativity online.

Quick question: Should you sell creativity online?

My answer to that is a big fat YES!

And I have reasons for it.

1. Creativity is awesome. So why hide it.
2. If you don’t sell it, you’re doing the world a lot of harm. You’re depriving people of something that could help them.

So what’s your opinion? Should creative people sell their services online?

Now my next question is, “Can you sell creativity online?”

Yes? No? Maybe?

Well, if selling creativity online is not a valid business model, then why do people do it in the first place? When it comes to testing the viability, you can’t base your decision on hope or faith.

This is reality and your pocket we’re talking about here.

So, to answer that question, I need to be sure we’re on the same page as to what creativity is and what it isn’t.

I wrote a post that defined creativity in three ways. You can check it out here then come back to continue reading this post: 3 Reasons Why Creative People Should Be The Richest In The World.

Now, can you sell creativity online? Yes you can.

The question is how? That’s what we’ll be discussing below.

 

How To Sell Your Creative Services Online

I’m no guru on this subject. So for each point below, I’ll lead you to people who are actually selling their skills online for big bucks so you realize how valid and possible it is for you to do the same.

 

1. Confidently Demonstrate Your Expertise

Regardless of how long you’ve been selling your services, you’re still good at something. Men With Pens is a design and copywriting blog and the founder, James Chartrand, happens to be an expert designer and copywriter. How do you think she reached expert status? By hiding behind her computer and revealing her work to herself only?

Nope! She let everyone see it. And she talked about it too.

Now the funny story behind this is about 6 years ago, everyone thought the brains behind Men With Pens was a male. After all, only dudes went by the name ‘James’. It wasn’t until I read her post on Copyblogger that I had a jaw dropping moment.

My reaction was, “Huh? A woman? You’ve got to be kidding me”.

Her reason for hiding behind the male persona as she stated was because of confidence and acceptability. She felt that people would accept the male gender more than the female. She felt clients would preferably hire a man to a woman.

However, when her confidence built up, she decided to come out openly. Note: This is nothing related to the Caitlyn Jenner phenomenon that seems to be raking in the news.

James uses Men With Pens to demonstrate how she runs her business and teaches people design and copywriting tips she knows and uses. Over the years, this has made her an expert on the topic and has delivered to her a ton of juicy clients, as she stated in her blog post.

So, if design is your area of expertise, you could follow her model. And if you’re female and are shy about revealing your identity, don’t worry, clients hire females now :-).

[Tweet “Want to sell creativity online? Confidently demonstrate your expertise like James @MenwithPens http://wp.me/p5GyOY-n0”]

 

2. Attract People Who Have The Same Worldview As You Do

What if you’re a writer, can you get people to believe in your creations? To answer this, let’s take a cue from Jeff Goins, veteran blogger and author of “The Art of Work”.

It’s a tough job making it as a book author. Really it is. This is why one good business model for authors, at least the younger ones, is to sell freelance writing services online to support their writing careers.

This way, they’ll be able to get clients to hire them to write. And they can use this revenue to feed their families and their bank accounts while they create more ways to sell their books.

But this isn’t exactly what Jeff did. As an author of 4 books, with “The Art of Work” being a best seller, Jeff started out building his audience. He also understood that to be successful online, you need a blog. And so he got one.

On his blog, he simply talked about his beliefs about writing. He had a worldview and by doing so attracted other people with that same worldview. The result? He created books around that worldview and always made sales.

In Jeff’s words, “Focus on the how, the worldview of what you write. What about the way you see the world is different? What would resonate with some and cause others to disagree? Write that.”

[Tweet “Want to sell creativity online? Attract people with the same worldview like @JeffGoins http://wp.me/p5GyOY-n0”]

 

3. Cause A New Kind Of Innovation To Exist

Building a business requires a lot of creativity on the part of the entrepreneur. Now how about building several businesses for different people? That’s a mother lode of creativity.

Online, one of the most crowded niches is the marketing niche. Everyone wants to give marketing advice. Everyone knows the 4 best ways to do something. If you don’t have something new to say in such a crowded niche, you can’t stand out.

But Danny Iny had something new to say. He almost invented the audience business model. As a marketing expert who had failed at building his own business a few years back, he saw a trend that he felt would become the new way of doing business – building the audience first.

And so, on his blog, Firepole Marketing, he simply talked about the importance of an audience. But he didn’t just shout about it in his domain. He went out, onto other blogs with large following (called authority blogs) and wrote about this new way everyone should be doing business.

The result? He was given the nick name, “Freddy Krueger of Blogging” and that’s because during his guest blogging period, you’d see Danny Iny on almost every Marketing blog.

During this period, he sold consulting services, launched “Engagement From Scratch” which became a best seller, launched several other products and 4 years later, he has built a 7 figure business where he teaches people how to use the audience model.

Now finding a new trend in your market could be hard, especially when you don’t have experience in that market. But it can also be as simple as doing something in a way that’s different from what other people are doing.

The audience model wasn’t a new thing. But Danny saw the profitability in the model and decided to talk about it. So find something unconventional, and give your opinion about it.

[Tweet “Want to sell creativity online? Cause a new kind of innovation to exist like @DannyIny @FirepoleMRKTNG http://wp.me/p5GyOY-n0”]

There’s something the three case studies I mentioned above have in common.

They all have a platform from which they sell their services. They talked about it online. And the good thing about such platforms, whether it’s a blog you own or another platform, is that you’re not restricted by geographical area. You can reach anyone, anywhere, and at any time. You can get clients from any end of the globe.

So why restrict yourself to your local community when there are opportunities to explore?

These are just 3 out of the different ways you could sell creative services online. So, whatever method you choose to use, build your confidence by demonstrating your expertise online. If you have beliefs, share them like Jeff Goins did with his blog and his books.

And if you see something new, test it and tell people about it. You could be the one to lead the pack.

Are you finding it difficult selling your creative services online? Share in the comments.

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