Best Practices for Landing Gigs as a Freelance Creator with Isabella Lampson of Contra

7 Dec

As freelancers, sometimes it can be difficult to find jobs. Being a freelance creator is a rocky road, but it’s one that you get more and more comfortable with as you learn more about how to navigate this type of career.

But as you’re learning, you’re probably wondering things like what to charge, where the future of our industry is going, and how do you set yourself apart when applying for different gigs, right?

This week, we’re here with Isabella Lampson, the Social Partnerships Lead at Contra, a platform that gives you everything you need to launch, build, and grow your independent career.

Today, we’re diving into everything you need to know about working for yourself and landing gigs as a freelancer. What types of jobs are being posted more and more? What should creators do before applying to gigs to better their chances at landing it? How can creators stand out when applying for these jobs?

Listen to Episode 50— Apple | Spotify

Find this episode’s guest:

Isabela Lampson
Contra | Instagram | TikTok

The Social Scoop ⤵️

💰 TikTok’s “Creator Challenges” invites creators to create ads for brands

I just got an invite to TikTok’s Creator Challenges that allows creators to “earn money by creating video ads”. There’s no need to post them on your own account. They claim that the current highest reward of a single video is $15k.
You can submit as many video ads as you like for each challenge. Rewards will be calculated based on the ad performance.
There are about 220 brands signed up as part of this program now like PicsArt and CapCut.
However, you are creating an ad + handing over full usage rights to the brand without any specified payment rate.
There wasn’t any information that I could find about how much money you make per view.
Some “challenges” give you a “newcomer bonus” of $20 for your first submission. There are other bonuses such as “a $200 bonus if you have at least 4 submissions that generate $10 or more in rewards respectively in a single month.”
The guidelines for all challenges are extensive.

💰TikTok is making improvements to the Creator Marketplace

At TikTok World 2022 last week, they announced that they’re introducing two new tools on the Creator Marketplace to help you find the best creator for your brand’s needs
Here’s what we need to know as creators:
- There’s going to be an AI tool which generates a custom list of us to 200 creators in under 30 seconds
- There will also be “open discovery” where brands can now post a quick and easy application with specific criteria and creators can apply to these gigs

🔗 A look at Instagram’s multiple link in bio test

Instagram has been testing different variations of this for about a year now
We don’t have any news on when this will come to fruition, but it’s confirmed by Instagram that it’s on the way.

📸 TikTok adds photo mode for still images

Photo Mode looks exactly like Instagram, with users able to post carousels of still images that users can scroll through in the app.
“Photo Mode allows you to share carousel posts of still images that automatically display one after another. You can add music to soundtrack the images, which viewers can swipe through at their own pace.”

💬 Instagram is working on the ability to comment with GIFs