How to Set Up a Professional Freelancer Profile on Zinn Hub

Video walkthrough

Coming Soon Video walkthrough on the way We’re recording the full walkthrough now. Check back soon — in the meantime, the guide below covers everything step by step.

Video walkthrough by Neil Lock — Zinn Hub CEO. Coming soon.

Why your profile matters more than your listings

Most new Zinners obsess over their first listing and barely think about their profile. That’s backwards. Every proposal you submit, every directory visit, every time a buyer clicks your name from one of your Zinns — they all end up on your profile. It’s where the buying decision actually happens.

A weak profile undoes the work of a great Zinn. A strong profile compounds: better proposals win, better listings convert, and word of mouth becomes possible because you look like someone worth recommending.

Buyers on Zinn Hub spend an average of 40–90 seconds on a profile before deciding whether to engage. You don’t need a long profile. You need a credible one.

Where to find profile setup

Once you’ve registered as a Zinner:

• Log in to your account
• Open the Zinner Dashboard
• Click Projects in the dashboard menu
• Click Freelancer Profile

It’s a multi-section form. You can save your progress and come back. Nothing goes live until you click publish, so you can take the time to do it right.

Display name — use your real name where possible

Your display name is what buyers see first. Three options most people choose between:

• Your real name. Best choice if you’re selling as an individual freelancer. It signals a real person behind the work.
• Your business or studio name. Use this if you’re branding as an agency or studio with multiple people involved.
• A professional alias. Only if there’s a real reason — for example, you’re known publicly under a pen name. Otherwise, just use your real name.

Whatever you pick, it needs to match the name on your other channels — LinkedIn, X, your website, your portfolio. Buyers Google freelancers before hiring. Inconsistent names raise flags.

Avoid: numbers (Mark1992), underscores (mark_designs), ALLCAPS, and anything that looks like a username. You’re a professional, not a screen name.

Professional headline — the 120-character elevator pitch

Your headline appears under your name everywhere. Specific beats generic. Compare these three:

• Bad: “Web Developer”
• Better: “WordPress Developer with 8 years experience”
• Best: “Senior WooCommerce Developer | E-commerce Migrations & Speed Optimisation”

The third one tells me what you do, who you do it for, and what makes you different — in the same character count. That’s the bar.

Profile photo — this one is non-negotiable

If there’s a single piece of advice in this guide that matters more than the rest, it’s this: use a real photo of yourself. Not an AI-generated face. Not a stock photo. Not your logo where a face should be.

Buyers can spot AI-generated portraits, and they’re getting better at it every month. The moment a buyer suspects your photo isn’t real, trust evaporates — and they’ll never tell you why they didn’t hire you. They’ll just close the tab.

Bio — structure for impact, not length

You have up to 3,000 characters. You don’t need them all. A focused 800-word bio beats a wandering 3,000-character one every time.

The structure that works:

1. Opening hook — one line on who you help and what they get from working with you.
2. Specialties — what you actually do, in concrete terms.
3. Experience markers — years in the field, the kinds of clients you typically work with.
4. Why you — your process, your philosophy, what makes you different from the next ten profiles a buyer will read.
5. Closing — an invitation to message you with their project.

Write it in your own voice. AI-generated bios all sound the same and buyers can tell. If you want help, write a rough version first, then have an editor tighten it — but don’t outsource the voice.

Skills — depth over breadth

Eight skills you can deliver excellently will outperform thirty skills you can sort-of deliver. Buyers don’t want a generalist; they want a specialist for their specific problem.

Match the skills you list to the Zinns you actually have published. If you list “Webflow” and you’ve never built a Webflow site, that’s a problem the moment a buyer messages you about a Webflow project.

Hourly rate and availability

Hourly rate

Your rate becomes the reference point when you submit a proposal on a Zinn Project. If you don’t do hourly work, leave it blank — an empty rate is better than an aspirational one you wouldn’t actually accept.

Need help working out what to charge? Use the Freelancer Income Calculator to compare take-home across platforms, or the Earnings Planner to plan a monthly target backwards into a rate.

Availability

Buyers read this signal more than you’d think. “Available now” says you’re ready. “Limited” says you’re in demand. “Booked” says don’t bother right now. Update it as your situation changes — an inaccurate availability flag costs you trust on the first reply.

Portfolio examples — show, don’t tell

Six to twelve strong pieces beat thirty weak ones. Every piece you add either raises or lowers the average quality the buyer perceives.

• Use high-quality images. Your work deserves a clean export, not a screenshot of a screenshot.
• Caption every piece. What was the project? What did you do? What was the outcome? A caption-less portfolio is a museum without labels — buyers walk past.
• Real client work first. If you have it and you have permission, lead with it.
• Showcase work fills the gaps. Don’t have client work yet? That’s fine — build pieces specifically to show off what you can do. Spec work, redesigns of existing brands, open-source contributions all count.
• Never use other people’s work. Buyers do reverse image searches. Getting caught using another freelancer’s portfolio piece is the fastest way to end your career on any platform.

CEO advice

Building real trust with buyers

This is the part most freelancers skip, and it’s the part that decides whether buyers hire you or the next person they look at. Your profile doesn’t live in isolation. The moment a buyer is genuinely interested, they’ll Google you. What they find — or don’t find — closes the deal or kills it.

Connect real social channels with real content

Linking a LinkedIn account that hasn’t been updated since 2019 is worse than linking nothing. Same goes for an X profile that’s mostly personal ranting. Buyers don’t expect you to be a content machine, but they expect signs of life — real posts, real engagement, content related to what you sell. If your social channels can’t pass that test, build them up before linking them, or leave them off the profile.

Same name and branding everywhere

Your Zinn Hub name, your LinkedIn name, your X handle, your website — they should all match. Same name. Same profile photo. Same logo if you have one. Same colour palette and tone if you can stretch to it. Buyers who see consistency assume professionalism. Buyers who see different names and different photos across channels assume you’re hiding something.

Don’t lie about experience or capability

This sounds obvious. It happens constantly anyway. “10 years experience” when you’ve been freelancing for two. “Worked with Fortune 500 clients” when you sub-contracted a single small task through an agency. “Expert in X” when you’ve done it twice.

Buyers verify. They check LinkedIn for the dates. They ask for client references. They look at your work and notice when it doesn’t match the claim. Lies always come out, and when they do, they don’t just lose you that buyer — they end careers. Be honest. “Three years of focused experience in X” beats “ten years of vague experience in everything” every time.

Attach qualifications — with verification links

If you have certifications — Google Partner, HubSpot, Meta Blueprint, CIM, AWS, anything with a verifiable record — list them with the verification link. Don’t just type “Google Certified” in your bio. Link to the actual cert.

One thing buyers check more than anything else: does the name on the certificate match the name on your profile? If your Zinn Hub display name is “Mark Carter” and the Google Partner certificate says “Mark Anthony Carter Studio Ltd” that’s fine — the relationship is obvious. But if it says a completely different name, you have to explain why, and most buyers won’t bother asking. They’ll just leave.

Portfolio: real work first, your own showcase second, never anyone else’s

Real client work where you have permission. Your own showcase pieces or spec work where you don’t. Open-source contributions, hackathon projects, redesigns of existing brands you did for practice. All legitimate. What’s not legitimate is anyone else’s work, ever — even with credit, even “just to fill the portfolio”. It comes out, and when it does, your account gets banned.

Common mistakes that kill profiles

• A vague headline like “Freelancer for hire” or “Web expert”
• An obviously AI-generated bio with phrases like “In today’s fast-paced digital landscape”
• A stock photo or AI-generated face as the profile picture
• Skills listed that you can’t actually deliver
• An empty or thin portfolio with no captions
• Inconsistent names across Zinn Hub, LinkedIn, X and your website
• Linking to social accounts that are abandoned, private, or full of unrelated content
• Listed certifications with no verification link — or links that go to generic provider pages, not your specific cert
• An “available now” status that’s been there for six months

Step-by-step setup

Once you’ve gathered your photo, written your bio, and prepared your portfolio pieces, the actual setup takes about twenty minutes:

1. Log in to your Zinner Dashboard

   Sign in to your Zinner account and open the dashboard from the top-right menu.

2. Open the Freelancer Profile section

   Click Projects in the dashboard sidebar, then Freelancer Profile.

3. Add your display name and professional headline

   Use your real name where possible. Headline maximum 120 characters — specific beats generic.

4. Upload your real profile photo

   Real face shot, eyes visible, natural lighting, plain background. Use the same photo on LinkedIn, X and your website.

5. Write your bio

   Hook, specialties, experience markers, why you, closing invitation. Up to 3,000 characters but tight beats long.

6. Select your skills

   Eight strong skills are better than thirty weak ones. Match the skills to the Zinns you actually publish.

7. Set your hourly rate and availability

   Leave the rate blank if you don’t do hourly work. Update availability honestly — it’s the first signal buyers act on.

8. Add portfolio examples with captions

   Six to twelve strong pieces. Each one with a caption explaining what it was, what you did and what changed because of it.

9. Connect verified socials and certifications

   Real, active social channels only. Certifications listed with verification links. Make sure the names match.

10. Review everything and publish

    Read it as if you were a buyer who’d never heard of you. Anything weak, fix or remove. Then click publish.

Frequently asked questions