$180k/year Freelancer Teaches :: How to Craft the Perfect Thumbnail 🤌

This might be a post for a niche group of people, but I hope it helps someone.

If you're NOT a freelancer, this isn't for you ❌

If you're a freelancer working on a marketplace (i.e. Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, Toptal & others), you need to know how to get people's attention.

There are thousands of services on these marketplaces.

So having a thumbnail that stands out, will make the difference.

A great thumbnail will increase your CTR and thus bring you more sales.

Great thumbnail = more clicks = more sales = more freedom

But why should you even listen to me?

Well...

This is me 👇

I've been freelancing for over 7 years now (exclusively on marketplace platforms).

I've gone through a LOT of different marketplaces and have learned a few things along the way.

Besides learning (and also failing a lot) I managed to grow a multi 6 figure a year business around freelancing.

My latest accomplishment was making $400k on just 1 platform in 4 years (currently ~$180k ARR) - this is NOT a flex, it simply serves as proof so you know I'm not just faking it.

That's just for one marketplace, since 2018. It's currently around a ~180k ARR business.

Now, how did I accomplish this?

I can tell you that it was not just knowing how to craft a thumbnail...that's just 1 piece of the puzzle.

There's a lot you need to know, such as not being entirely dependent on these marketplaces, building a personal brand, copywriting, thumbnail making etc..

My goal is to give YOU all of the puzzle pieces (for free).

But let's focus on this 1 piece first.

So now that that's out of the way and you see me as somewhat qualified to lecture you, let's get back to the main topic at hand:

How to Craft the Perfect Thumbnail on Freelance Marketplaces 📈

The first thing you need to know is, people buy from people.

Note: If you don't like to read, you can just watch this video 👈

In this short video, I go over how to build a very clicky thumbnail.

If you prefer reading...then here we go:

Firstly, why is this important?

The reason is simple: higher CTR on thumbnails = more sales

Here's a visual breakdown:
thumbnail

The main GOAL is to get a higher CTR

How?

People look at other people's faces more than anything else - The human brain is wired/programmed to recognize and see faces everywhere, even when they aren't there (show face = transparency)

Do you see the faces below?
faces

Try to make people so curious that they need to click to know more (YouTube style)

What not to do:

Have too much text
Have logos
Have BIG 50% off letters

all of these make it look spammy and unprofessional*

Do have:

Before and afters (i.e. graphic design, SEO results)
Bold claims
Graphics and diagrams (for SEO services - get people curious because you're showing part of a strategy)
Consistent style (keep in mind this can get old and when you want to change one, you'll need to change all)

This has all the key ingredients that make the buyer CLICK.

It's that simple. I don't know what else to say.

I'll leave here some examples of high CTR thumbnails:

samplethumbnails

My CTA

Making all of this money on marketplaces is one of the reasons why I'm building Vettted.com. It's a marketplace where we put YOU (the freelancer) first.

0% in fees and some other pretty cool perks...!

This is not a pitch though. My goal isn't to get people to register from IndieHackers.

I just like to share my knowledge about freelance marketplaces, which even though is boring at times, was what made me scale a freelance marketplace business to over 6 figures a year.

So I'm sharing it here so that hopefully some of you can benefit from it.

If you want to apply it to Vettted.com great, if not, that's fine too 🙂

Cheers,
Vasco

P.S.: If you're into startup #buildinginpublic, this video might interest you https://youtu.be/oZmk0Gayfnc