How to Write a Zinn Listing That Actually Sells

Video walkthrough

Walkthrough by Neil Lock — Zinn Hub CEO & Co-Founder.

Why your listing matters more than you think

Your profile says who you are. Your listing says what you sell. Two different jobs — and most sellers blur the two and lose orders because of it.

A buyer searching Zinn Hub doesn’t want to know your life story. They want to know: can this specific Zinn solve my specific problem at a price I’m willing to pay, and can I trust the seller to deliver? Your listing has to answer all four of those questions in the time it takes them to scroll past it.

Sellers who treat their listings as a sales page — not a profile page — consistently outperform those who don’t. The difference between a converting Zinn and a quiet one usually isn’t the work itself. It’s the listing.

Where to set up your Zinn

Everything happens in the Zinn Wizard:

• Log in to your account
• Open the Zinner Dashboard
• Click Zinn Wizard

The Zinn Wizard is the same tool whether you’re creating a new Zinn or editing one that’s already published. Edits go through review where they affect public details, but you can save progress at any point and come back later.

Category, subcategory and tags

This is the boring bit that decides whether anyone ever sees your Zinn. Get it wrong and the right buyers never find you; get it right and the platform does half your marketing for you.

Pick the most specific category match

If your service could fit in two categories, pick the more specific one. A buyer searching for “backlink outreach” finds Zinns in SEO → Link Building faster than ones buried in the more generic SEO root category. Specific listings rank higher within their category, too — you’re competing against fewer Zinns.

Use every tag slot

Tags are your shot at the search box. Use all the slots Zinn Hub gives you, and use them strategically — mix broad terms (the obvious keywords) with long-tail ones (the specific phrases buyers actually type). A Zinn for technical SEO audits should have tags like “technical seo”, but also “site speed audit”, “crawl errors fix”, “core web vitals”, “ecommerce seo audit”.

Tags aren’t just for the search engine on Zinn Hub — Google indexes them too. Treat them as keyword research, not an afterthought.

AI Assisted or Human Only

Every Zinn on Zinn Hub is tagged as either AI Assisted or Human Only. This is one of the choices buyers filter by, and choosing it honestly is one of the best things you can do for your reviews.

If your workflow involves AI in any meaningful way — using ChatGPT to draft, Midjourney for variations, AI-powered editing tools — pick AI Assisted. There’s nothing wrong with this. Plenty of buyers actively prefer AI-Assisted services because the output is faster and cheaper.

If your work is genuinely fully manual — you’re writing every word yourself, designing every pixel yourself, with no AI tools in the loop — then Human Only is for you, and you should mean it.

What kills reviews is choosing Human Only and then quietly using AI anyway. Buyers who specifically pay for human work and discover otherwise leave one-star reviews and disputes. Choose honestly. Both flags have a market.

Write a title that earns the click

Your title is the single highest-leverage field in the entire listing. It decides whether a buyer clicks or scrolls past you. The structure that consistently works:

I will [specific action] [specific outcome] for [specific audience]

Compare:

• Bad: “I will help with your SEO”
• Better: “I will do an SEO audit on your website”
• Best: “I will run a full technical SEO audit and fix priority issues for your Shopify store”

The third title tells the buyer what you do (technical SEO audit + fixes), what they get (priority issues addressed), and who you do it for (Shopify store owners) — all in one line. That’s the bar.

Write a description that converts

Buyers don’t read descriptions like blog posts. They scan. Build the description so a scanner gets the message in five seconds and a thorough reader gets the full picture in two minutes.

The structure that converts:

1. Hook — one sentence on the outcome the buyer gets, written for someone who hasn’t read your title.
2. What you deliver — concrete deliverables, in plain language. Not “an SEO strategy” but “a 15-page SEO audit document covering technical issues, on-page gaps and competitor comparison”.
3. Your process — what happens between order placed and delivery. Buyers feel safer when they can picture the path.
4. Why you — specific markers of credibility, in your voice. Tools you use, frameworks you follow, what makes your approach different.
5. What’s included & what’s not — pre-empt scope creep and the most common refund triggers in advance.
6. Soft close — an invitation to message you with questions. Not a hard sell.

Use short paragraphs. Use formatting. Use bullets where they belong. A wall of text reads as effort, not value — the opposite of what you want.

Build your pricing packages

Zinn Hub lets you set up to four pricing tiers per Zinn, and you can name them anything you like. Most sellers stick with generic names like “Basic / Standard / Premium” because that’s the default. Don’t. Custom names tied to what each tier actually delivers convert better, every time.

That’s an example for SEO services — the same logic applies to anything. A copywriter could go “Single Page” / “Full Site” / “Site + Email” / “Full Funnel”. A designer could go “Logo Only” / “Brand Kit” / “Brand + Web Assets” / “Full Identity”.

Anchoring

Most buyers pick the middle option. That’s a feature, not a bug. Price your tiers so the middle one is the offer you actually want to sell, with the bottom tier serving as a low-friction entry point and the top tier anchoring the perceived value of the middle one.

What kills package conversion

Tiny price differences (the buyer can’t justify the upgrade), unclear deliverables (the buyer doesn’t know what they’re paying more for), and vague phrases like “Premium support” (what does that actually mean?). Be specific in every tier description.

Delivery time and revisions

Delivery time

Pad your honest estimate by 20%. If you can deliver in 5 days, list it as 6–7. Early delivery is a small joy buyers remember and write reviews about; late delivery is a wound that never heals, no matter how good the work is.

Aspirational delivery times are the single fastest way to a one-star review. Be realistic.

Revisions

Two or three revisions is the sweet spot. One signals inflexibility and scares buyers off. Unlimited signals you don’t value your time and attracts buyers who’ll exploit it. Two or three is enough for any reasonable project.

Be explicit in your description about what counts as a revision (tweaks within the original scope) versus a new request (something you’d charge for separately). The boundary needs to be in writing or it gets crossed every time.

Cover image and gallery

Your cover image is the second thing buyers see (after the title). It either earns the click or doesn’t. The same way an ugly book cover loses sales no matter how good the writing inside is.

Cover image essentials

• Show the work or the outcome — not your face, not stock photography, not a fancy graphic that says nothing.
• High resolution — pixelated covers signal lazy.
• Readable on mobile — most buyers see your Zinn at thumbnail size first. If your cover only works at 1200px, it’s the wrong cover.
• Consistent style across all your Zinns — recognisable branding compounds trust over time.

Gallery

Use every gallery slot. Buyers who scroll the gallery convert better than those who don’t — engagement signals interest, and gallery scrolls are the strongest engagement signal a Zinn has. Mix screenshots, deliverable previews, before/after pairs, results graphs, anything that makes the work concrete.

Portfolio items — show related work

Every Zinn has its own portfolio section, separate from your profile-level portfolio. Use it. A Zinn claiming to provide a top-tier service with no portfolio items isn’t making a credible claim — and buyers know it.

The work you add here should be specifically related to this Zinn. If it’s a logo design Zinn, put your strongest logo work in. If it’s an SEO audit Zinn, put redacted audit pages, traffic graphs from past clients, search ranking screenshots. The point is to remove the buyer’s last excuse for not ordering.

Example links — cut buyer friction

This is one of the most underused features on Zinn Hub. Example links let you point to live samples of your work outside the platform — YouTube videos, Google Drive folders, hosted PDFs, live websites you’ve built, recorded walkthroughs — anything that lets a buyer see the quality before they order.

Why this matters: every buyer has the same unspoken question before they hit order, which is “is this seller actually as good as their listing claims?”. A portfolio image goes some way to answering it. A live example goes the whole way.

What works well as example links:

• YouTube videos — recorded walkthroughs of past work, before-and-after, screen recordings of your process
• Google Drive files — sample reports, redacted deliverables, full audit documents from past projects
• Live URLs — websites you built, articles you wrote (with permission), live campaigns
• Loom recordings — quick walkthrough explaining what they’d get from this exact Zinn

If you take one thing from this section, take this: a 90-second Loom showing what a buyer actually receives from your Zinn will out-convert a flawless written description nine times out of ten.

Extras, listing FAQ and buyer requirements

Extras

Extras (sometimes called add-ons) are the optional upgrades buyers can stack on top of any package. Used well, they raise your average order value by 20–40% without you doing more sales work. The ones that earn their place: faster delivery, additional revisions, additional deliverables, source files, commercial rights. Skip extras that nobody asks for — clutter dilutes the offer.

Listing FAQ

Your listing has its own FAQ section, separate from any page-level FAQ. Treat it as your customer-service shield. Every question a buyer might ask in pre-sale chat is a question you can answer once, in the FAQ, and stop answering forever. The five questions to always include:

• How quickly do you respond to messages?
• What information do you need from me to get started?
• What if I’m not satisfied with the delivery?
• Do you offer rush delivery?
• Can you handle [common edge case in your category]?

Buyer requirements

Buyer requirements is the structured form a buyer fills in after they place an order. Set this up properly and you’ll never start a project without the assets you need to do good work. Skip it and you’ll spend the first two days of every project chasing logins, brand guidelines and the basic info you should have had on day one. Make it specific to this Zinn, ask for everything you need up front, and the work itself becomes faster.

CEO advice

Honesty above all

This is the section most sellers want to skip. Don’t. Buyers on this platform are not stupid — they spend real money on freelancers and they’re looking for reasons not to. Every sentence in your listing either earns or loses trust. Get this part right and the rest of the work is easier; get it wrong and even a great listing won’t convert.

Don’t fake the receipts

Nothing kills credibility faster than a brand-new seller claiming “100+ happy clients” with zero sales and zero reviews on the platform. Smart buyers spot this in a heartbeat — and the moment one claim feels off, every other claim becomes suspect.

If you’re new to Zinn Hub but experienced elsewhere, just say so: “12 years freelancing, new to Zinn Hub — bringing the same standards.” That’s honest, and it earns more trust than inflated numbers ever will. If you’re new everywhere, lean into it: “I’m building my profile — first orders get my full attention and a price that reflects it.” Honest scarcity beats fake credibility every time.

Don’t promise what you can’t deliver

Inflated capability claims always come out. The buyer asks a question that requires the skill you said you have, and the answer doesn’t hold up. They cancel the order, leave a review, and another buyer reads the review next week. Promising less than you can deliver and over-delivering is a strategy. Promising more is a slow career-ender.

Real samples only, with permission

Your work, with permission. Showcase work you built for yourself where you don’t have permission. Open-source work where you contributed. Spec work where you mocked up a redesign for practice. All legitimate. Anyone else’s work, ever, even with credit, is not. Buyers reverse-image-search portfolios, and getting caught using someone else’s work ends careers across every platform, not just Zinn Hub.

No portfolio = no claim of being top-tier

Listings that claim to deliver elite-tier work with no portfolio items, no example links and no live samples are not credible, and they don’t convert. If you’re going to claim quality, show it — in the gallery, in the portfolio section, and especially in your example links. Claims you can’t back are claims that lose orders.

No competitor mentions in your listing

Don’t name Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer.com, SEOClerks or any other marketplace anywhere in your listing — not in the title, description, FAQ, or any custom field. It’s a platform rule, but more importantly it’s good business sense. Buyers comparing Zinn Hub to competitors aren’t comparing in your individual listing; they’ve already chosen to be here. Naming the competition just plants doubt.

Don’t bash AI

Zinn Hub supports AI Assisted and Human Only services equally — both have legitimate markets. Listings that lead with “AI is bad” alienate the half of the buyer pool that actively wants AI-assisted work, and they don’t make Human Only listings any more credible. Lead on what makes your work great instead: your craft, your voice, your process, your specialism. Let the work speak.

Pricing transparency, no surprises

List exactly what’s included in each tier and exactly what isn’t. Hidden caveats in the small print are how you end up with chargebacks and one-star reviews. The seller who tells the buyer “source files are not included in this tier” loses one upsell and gains a long-term reputation; the seller who hides it loses the order, the review, and any future work from that buyer’s referrals.

Common mistakes that kill listings

• A vague title like “I will help with your business”
• A wall-of-text description with no formatting
• Three near-identical packages with $5 differences between them
• Aspirational delivery times that get missed in week one
• Empty or unrelated portfolio items in a listing claiming top-tier work
• Stock photos passed off as portfolio
• Inflated experience claims (“100+ happy clients”) with no track record on the platform
• Choosing “Human Only” while quietly using AI tools in delivery
• Naming competitors anywhere in the listing
• No example links anywhere — nothing for the buyer to verify
• Cover image that’s unreadable at thumbnail size
• Generic tier names (Basic / Standard / Premium) instead of names that signal what each tier actually is

Step-by-step setup

Once you’ve gathered your gallery images, drafted your description, and figured out your packages and tiers, the actual setup in the Zinn Wizard takes about thirty minutes:

1. Open the Zinn Wizard from your Zinner Dashboard

   Sign in, open the Zinner Dashboard, click Zinn Wizard. The same wizard works for both new Zinns and edits to existing ones.

2. Pick category, subcategory and tags

   Choose the most specific category and subcategory match. Use every tag slot, mixing broad terms with long-tail phrases buyers actually search for.

3. Choose AI Assisted or Human Only

   Pick honestly. AI Assisted if your workflow uses AI tools meaningfully; Human Only if it’s genuinely all manual work. Misrepresenting this is the fastest route to disputes.

4. Write your title

   Use the “I will [action] [outcome] for [audience]” format. Specific beats generic in every category.

5. Write your description

   Hook, deliverables, process, why-you, what’s-included-and-not, soft close. Short paragraphs. Bullets where they belong. Built for scanners.

6. Build your packages with custom names

   Up to four tiers. Custom names tied to what each tier delivers. Anchor pricing so the middle tier is the one you actually want to sell.

7. Set delivery time and revisions

   Pad your honest estimate by 20%. Two or three revisions is the sweet spot. Define what counts as a revision in your description.

8. Upload your cover image and gallery

   Cover image readable at thumbnail size. Use every gallery slot — screenshots, deliverables, before/after, results.

9. Add portfolio items and example links

   Real, related portfolio work with captions. Example links to live samples on YouTube, Google Drive, Loom, your own sites — whatever lets buyers verify the quality before ordering.

10. Set up extras, listing FAQ and buyer requirements

    Add the upgrades that actually raise order value. Pre-empt the five most common pre-sale questions in the listing FAQ. Set buyer requirements so you never start a project missing the assets you need.

11. Review everything and publish

    Read the whole listing as if you were a buyer who’d never heard of you. Anything that feels off, fix or remove. Then click publish.

Frequently asked questions