Carl Bortolami
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

First off, Thank You Mark and Stephan for starting Local Solo.
All of your long hours & hard work shows in the site and in the great emails.

Personally much appreciated !

I read through all of the post. Very informative.

One thing we all have in common is we have promote our self or business.
It is also the one thing we all hate doing.

The fact is no one knows who you are or what skills you have unless you promote your self. Most of us can’t just sign up on job sites and get steady quality work.

And like a lot of freelancers that posted, I have not picked up a job through LS. And I have NOT done any self promotion so that’s my Bad.

Like Mark, I have to take time to sit down, make phone calls and send out emails to promote my business. LS is one part of a promotion strategy .

I don’t have a one size fits all solution,

However here is an idea, with some tweaking and input, might
help to generate the needed cash flow and give all of us another tool to market our business.

How about a Annual Print & Digital magazine?
Both of these have been done before. In Seattle and Chicago resource magazines where handed out free. The talent paid a page or placement fee to be in the magazine.

From the early 2000’s we moved to a smartphone digital society.
High Quality Print is still a excellent way to market.

The talent to make this work for the 2020’s is in the LS community.

( these are basic numbers for example and discussion )

The basic print magazine idea: If you sign on, you get single 8.5x11 page add. Each freelancer buys $100 of magazines minimum, more if they choose.

High quality magazine printing is in the $6.00 per copy range.
each freelancer gets 10 magazines, $40 cover production & shipping.

To promote your work, there can be a single 8.5x 11 page print option.

By using high quality printing and paper, makes the over all magazine look great, and we are branding ourselves as high quality freelancers. The magazine should retail around $30 — $40. When you hand out a print copy it is a $30 — $40 resource.

The Digital version of the magazine can be produced with active links and video. Some freelancers will opt for just the digital version and there will be some associated production cost.

Some where in this mix LS should have a system in place,once a transaction has been made,to charge some sort of service fee from the client or freelancer.

Just an idea…

    Carl Bortolami

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