How to Sell Yourself Online When You Hate Selling Yourself

5 practical strategies you can use *today*

Image generated with Leonardo.ai // This post contains affiliate links.

Let me guess: You're here because you want to make money online, but you hate the idea of selling yourself.

You could throw up thinking of unethical marketing strategies, hate concepts like personal branding, and don't want to come across as a sleazy salesperson.

The bad news is there's no way around selling yourself if you want to:

• make a living by creating online

• be a known expert in your field

• or just promote yourself and your business in the digital world

Even if you're great at what you do, you have to sell yourself to successfully monetize your work. At least until you can rely entirely on word-of-mouth or recurring client relationships.

The good news is, it doesn't have to be hard, ugly, or uncomfortable.

You can sell yourself and your skills with grace, confidence, and joy.

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Start with a reframe

Over the last three years, I worked with thousands of new creators, and at least 90% told me they hated the idea of selling themselves.

This usually stems from deeply rooted fears, anxiety, and imposter syndrome.

When you feel like a fraud, every marketing effort can feel like a sleazy sales technique that makes you even more uncomfortable.

These feelings are normal, but they don't have to hold you back from creating what you're meant to create.

Most of us are so sick of unethical online marketing strategies, marketing bros, and 18-year-olds showing off their rented Lamborghinis in Dubai that we want to avoid belonging to these groups at all costs.

But that's not what "selling yourself" is about.

We're all selling ourselves all the time.

We sell ourselves when making new friends, dating, applying for jobs, and when starting and growing businesses. We all have a "brand" that we're constantly tweaking and sharing.

“Personal branding is about managing your name — even if you don’t own a business — in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. Going on a date? Chances are that your ‘blind’ date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview? Ditto.”

— Tim Ferriss

Selling yourself doesn't make you a sleazy salesman. It helps you achieve your goals.

And if you're reading this, I assume you want to sell yourself. You just don't want to call it that way.

You have a message, skill, or idea that’s worth sharing.

You learned something, and you want to pass it on.

Or you're great at something and want to get paid for doing it.

Maybe you're a creative — a writer, designer, or artist who loves her craft but can't make a living off it yet.

Whatever you do, your goal is to get paid for the value you create. And that's the point: Shift your perspective, so you view selling yourself as sharing your value with the world.

And what's better than creating value for others while doing something you genuinely enjoy?

Instead of making hollow marketing claims, you're focusing on communicating what you bring to the table and why your potential clients and partners should pay attention to you.

You're sharing your skills, passion, experiences, and the unique perspective you have.

You're giving people a reason to care about your work.

Shift your perspective and think of selling as a form of sharing.

Share your progress and thoughts with the world. Share your struggles and ideas.

Instead of trying to convince people of a final outcome or product, take them on a journey by sharing what they wouldn't know otherwise.

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Lead with your story

Most creatives and entrepreneurs fail to sell themselves and their businesses because their marketing is all about technicalities. They're so focused on what they do that they become blind to the pains and desires of their potential customers.

But most people don't care about what exactly you do. They care about what you do for them. Or, as Simon Sinek famously preaches:

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. What you do simply proves what you believe.”

Your job is to show them that you understand their needs.

You want to share your story, so they can relate and feel comfortable investing in you.

This is commonly done by sharing your hero's journey, which is a summary of why you do what you do and how you ended up there.

It includes:

• Why and where you started your journey.

• Which challenges you faced.

• What you learned and how these challenges helped you grow.

• Where you're now.

• And potentially even where you're going (your big vision).

Your hero's journey isn't just a dry summary of your life or a bullet-point list of your skills and qualifications. It's a narrative about your experiences, values, passion, and the unique journey that shaped who you are today, both personally and professionally.

Ideally, your story will be further strengthened by the principles and values that drive you and your business.

When you talk about what's important to you, you'll attract people who think alike and repel those who think differently. That's great because you wouldn't turn someone who fundamentally disagrees with you into a paying customer anyway.

By only attracting the right people, you'll avoid wasting effort. And you do that by talking about the things that matter to you.

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5 Strategies you can try today

Now that you know how to reframe your thoughts on selling yourself, let's dig into five specific ideas you can use right away:

1. Let people *know* what you’re looking for

You have a short bio/profile on any social network and content platform you use. And I'm always surprised by how little attention creators and experts pay to their pages. They include random personal information but don't use it as an opportunity to promote themselves and their businesses.

Think of your bios and profile pages as a funnel: You're trying to encourage visitors to take an action that has a positive effect on your business.

A common use case is promoting a freebie or your newsletter.

That's what I do here:

My email list is the #1 asset in my business, so that's where I want people to go.

If you're a writer looking for clients, put something like "Open for gigs" to your bio and include your email, so prospects can easily contact you if they're interested.

Here's a great example by John Gorman:

If you like John's work and are tempted to contact him, his bio will make it stupidly easy. There’s no barrier.

If someone wants to contact me, they'll first have to figure out how because I don't share an email address in my bios.

My friend Zulie Rane recently made a genius move that I didn't even understand at first. Here's the call to action on one of her recent articles:

When I saw this, I asked why she linked to her Linkedin page instead of promoting her freebie/newsletter. She said it's because she wins many of her writing clients via Linkedin and thought this might help connect with more potential customers — GENIUS!

The key here is knowing what you want, so you can clearly communicate it whenever possible.

I want you to sign up for my newsletter, so that's what you'll see me share.

There's not one right way to use your bios or CTAs, but you have to be intentional, so you don't waste those tiny precious spaces.

2. But also tell them what you're offering

Another great place to subtly promote your work is the footer of your emails.

Here's how Jay Clouse is doing it for his Creator Science newsletter:

Or Justin Welsh for The Saturday Solopreneur:

And here’s what I do for my Personal Growth Letter: