Who hires freelancers online in Kenya? This is a question you will get a lot when you are a business owner already employing the services of freelancers on some of your projects or if you already do online jobs as a freelancer businesses outsource work to.
In this post I will answer this question; to show people interested in doing online freelance work some of the things employers and businesses in and outside Kenya are looking for when they decide to look for outside help on some of their projects.
But first, who can benefit from the services offered by freelancers online?
It is usually businesses that:
Want to increase their production capacity without adding new staff immediately. You see this with websites and blogs using advertising and affiliate marketing as a way to make money.
If they use their staff to say produce 10 pieces of content per day and suddenly a trend comes along that want to capitalize on, they can just turn to freelance writers on various freelance marketplaces like UpWork or Niabusiness.
Their staff can then just concentrate on the content they had planned to create weeks earlier. So, their employer can stop them from getting distracted with new things while still benefitting from creating content pieces on whatever new trend they want to capitalize on (by just outsourcing writing work to contractors).
That don’t have an employee with certain skills they want. For example, if a business runs an online shop selling electronics they might be really good at what they do, but when something breaks (or when someone attacks their site) they might not know what to do.
And it is at this point that the owner of the store can get a freelancer online to fix the problem for them.
The same thing happens with business owners who are good with sales but don’t want to be bogged down by bookkeeping tasks. They can get someone from outside the business to help them keep all their records properly.
New businesses. Businesses just getting off the ground can also turn to freelancers at the initial stages for one-off services such as logo design, website design services, packaging design for their products among other services.
A business owner need not have an employee that can do all these things for them in order to enjoy the benefits of having these things.
What freelance services do businesses usually pay for online
Here are some of the things you will find businesses and individuals in Kenya outsourcing to freelancers on the internet.
Ad management. So, hiring someone to create and manage PPC / pay per click ads for them on Google Ads and Facebook advertising platforms. Usually the ads are directed to their product and service pages or to product pages on their websites.
Web design. So, hiring freelance designs to create great looking websites for them. Clients here usually let a web hosting / web design do all the work or sometimes they just choose to work with freelancers they find on the web.
Search engine optimization. So, hiring someone to optimize their site’s pages and blog posts for search. In Kenya, some clients will go with digital marketing agencies while some will hire freelancers to help them build links to their pages or help them format their content in a way that leads more people to the checkout pages or their email newsletters.
Social media marketing. So, hiring someone to come up and add content to their various social media profiles regularly. Most businesses will rely on their social media manager to update their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
They will also ask their social media manager to engage with their followers, to answer any questions they encounter in the comments section and to also do light customer work on these platforms for them.
Video production and editing. So, hiring someone that can create videos that can be used as advertisements on television or video ads on platforms such as YouTube.
Sometimes a business may also hire freelancers to create videos they can use to teach their new hires internally or to just create videos they can upload to YouTube to promote their products and services.
Website building. So, hiring someone that can build a website a business owner can use to showcase their products and also to add a blog where they can publish content prospects can turn to when they have questions regarding a service or product they are interested in purchasing.
The freelancers hired to build websites can also be asked to sometimes work on building an online shop and integrate certain services to the shop such as payment gateway / providers like Pesapal or Kopo Kopo Lipa na M-PESA.
Content writing. This is also another popular service with businesses in and outside Kenya. Businesses usually turn to freelancers to create copy for their advertisements (for radio, TV or online on social media), to create articles, to write email newsletters and to write manuals for the products they create and sale.
Coding, programming and development work. Businesses hire freelancers in this area mostly to fix problems on their internal systems, on their websites and mobile apps. Some businesses also turn to freelancers to help them develop mobile app versions of their websites or to create custom extensions / APIs to help them integrate other services to the systems / software / apps they already use.
Email outreach. This is another thing that businesses in Kenya hire freelancers to do. Usually they just give the person they hire a basic template they can use when emailing people who might be interested in the product or service linked to / mentioned in the emails they send.
The business owner / employer will then tell the freelancer what type of people / organizations to email and then let them do the work. Sometimes they might be given a list of contacts (name and email) to use or told to go find a certain audience and email them.
So, these are just some of the things you will find some businesses in Kenya outsourcing to freelancers on the web. For a list of all the things a business might want to outsource, browse the ads listed in the various categories mentioned on Niabusiness Classifieds.
Place your own ad on Niabusiness for free
If you are a business looking to outsource work to freelancers, see if there is something in your own business that is similar to some of the ad listings you see in the various categories. If you find one or two, you might want to consider placing an ad on the site. It is free to do so.
If you are a freelancer and have a skill that you think other individuals and businesses in Kenya might be interested in, create an ad listing with details about what it is you can offer others for a fee. Creating an ad on the site is free.