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Some of you may already know that I've been working towards building my own freelance business here on Steem and the Bitcointalk forum. I've been thinking a lot about writing a post about how I've managed to secure a decent income doing all of this, since it could possible help other people do the same. 

Let me preface this by telling you that it's impossible for me to earn enough, just from my post rewards here on Steem. I wouldn't be able to cover all of my expenses, even if I wrote 5 posts per day. Additional forms of income are needed to keep myself afloat, meaning that I regularly secure deals with companies to write posts for them in exchange for additional payment. 

A second way for me to get a nice chunk of additional income, is by writing posts for @oracle-d. While that alone wouldn't support me either, it does add up if I participate with a lot of tasks. Keep in mind that the rewards you'd get from Oracle-D, might actually be enough to support someone living in a country where the overall cost-of-living is significantly less than here in Belgium. 

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## Getting new clients

Most of my clients have actually reached out to me via the [Bitcointalk forum](https://bitcointalk.org). There I have an old and trustworthy account which provides me with a lot of exposure for my writing services. Companies generally contact me to either do promotional work on Steem or Bitcointalk. 

I've met one person on there who secures a lot of additional gigs for me as well, the creator of the [Coinbound website](https://media.coinscribble.com/marketplace/), which is a marketplace for influencers. I'm currently the only Steem content creator on there and I've received quite a lot of work from them. If you look up my profile on there, you'll get an idea on how much I make for writing a single post, it's more than you'd earn from your post rewards... 

## Oracle-D

The guys over at Oracle-D, especially @starkerz, have been the biggest contributors of my success on Steem. Especially with regards to increasing my overall post rewards. Thanks to them, I've had months where I earned around $500, just from my post rewards alone. 

Anyone can join their open tasks and the rewards for them are definitely worth it! By writing content for Oracle-D, I also improve my writing skills in a way that's suitable to promote blockchain businesses. Their general guidelines are set up in such a way that your writing automatically improves when you adhere to them. Heck, I've seen a clear improvement of the Google search results of my posts, meaning that they generally rank higher than they did before. 

## Bitcointalk

This is where it all started for me, I wouldn't even have joined Steem if I hadn't been a member of Bitcointalk first. This is also the place where I made my first earnings online. It's still an important part of my business, the amount of money I earn there basically covers my food cost for the entire month. 

I've recently pushed my buddy @bozz to join Bitcointalk as well and I'm glad to see that he's slowly building up his account there. I constantly try to advertise Steem on Bitcointalk and vice versa. 

The amount of people you meet there who have contacts in some of the biggest blockchain businesses, is just staggering. For me, it has come to a point where I can be quite picky with the jobs I want to do, which is always a great feeling. 

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## Advice for freelancers

The single most important piece of advice I can give to people who want to start their own freelance business, is to build a network of potential customers. Put yourself out there and offer companies deals to promote their services. You'd be surprised when you see that there are companies that really value Steem as a content platform. 

Definitely join Oracle-D and participate with their open tasks. As I've mentioned before, this is an amazing way to get better at writing good content to promote/review businesses or services in the blockchain industry. You'd be surprised how valuable honest & personal reviews really are! 

Do build your Steem account as well in the meantime, I've noticed that having a decent sized account is extremely important. I'd really urge anyone to not power down and just keep turning your Steem rewards into SP as much as possible. 

## Let me know if you've found succesful ways to get additional monetization!