The Corona Crisis – Online Options for Freelancers and Small Businesses

Written by Elisa Foltyn

Communication With Clients and Colleagues – Important in Times of Crisis

Depending on your industry, many in-person contacts can easily be replaced by modern media. After all, conversations as well as maintenance work and meetings often no longer require you to be physically present, once you're comfortable with the technology. Usually a headset, a camera, and a laptop are enough to put most of these tools to productive use. Messenger services like WhatsApp, SMS, or Threema keep you in touch with clients and colleagues and let you make quick arrangements. Skype and Skype for Business are also excellent for getting in touch. Sipgate also lets you forward calls.

For video chats and remote support, you have many different tools available – some well known, some less so. Remote support or presentations, for example, can be handled excellently with TeamViewer. More options can be found at the links below, and can be used for free or for a small flat fee.

These tools include:
- Circuit
- Anydesk
- Zoom
- Google Meet
- Webex

Take a look at this selection and decide which one fits your needs and your industry.

To stop the walls from closing in while working from home, you could also take part in forums and chat groups. From my own experience, that does break your focus a little, but it replaces the coffee-break chat with colleagues at the office and helps fight isolation.

You'll find groups like that at, for example, Ringcentral, Slack, and Discord.

Forums dedicated to your exact business topic are easy to find with a quick search. Besides the small talk, you also keep learning from your industry peers.

A Note on Distance-Learning Courses

If you offer a course online, check beforehand whether it needs ZFU certification. If a course falls under the courses that require certification and isn't registered, you risk a formal warning (Abmahnung).

Staatliche Zentralstelle für Fernunterricht (German distance-learning authority)

Online Courses and Learning Platforms – Exploring New Business Opportunities

In many industries, it's possible to deliver your various services online too. Learning platforms and video platforms play an especially important role here. For Joomla websites, there's a range of different solutions that can be integrated very easily into an existing installation as a component.

Possible solutions for implementing this in Joomla include the learning module Shika, which, starting at €469.99 for 6 months, may be too expensive for many freelancers and small business owners. Alternatively, there's OSCampus, available for around €60, which seems relatively affordable. A third option is Guru, which is free in its basic version but costs from €270 a year for the usable feature set.

Another alternative is the free learning platform Moodle, which is, however, enormously complex – too complex to get up to speed with quickly if you're not technically minded. But if you want to lay the groundwork for a high-end solution, it's definitely worth a look.

The provider Udemy could also be interesting, since you can offer online courses through it too. Here, though, your video material should also meet a high standard.

Live-Streaming Fitness and Yoga Classes

I'd like to mention one specific case. Yoga and fitness studios are currently closed too, and are losing customers and revenue as a result. With Fitogram or Coachy, you can stream live fitness classes for your clients, attracting new customers while keeping the existing ones.

These services are so-called "Software as a Service" offerings and give you an instant head start. However, they come with subscription costs, and they also tie you to the provider. Your data isn't held by you, and you become dependent on them. Monthly costs can rise over time too, which can lead to problems of its own. So as a general rule, I always recommend your own solutions.

Recording and Presenting Videos

If you want to show and work with video content in general, platforms like Vimeo and YouTube are a good fit. There, for example, you can also create private or password-protected videos and share the links with clients, or release them for payment. For payment, the service PayPal is a good option, since payments through it can be made quickly and easily.

How You Benefit From the Right Course Structure

The big advantage in this crisis is that it's not just you sitting at home working – many other people are stuck at home too.

That means there's fundamentally a large pool of potential customers you can reach with your online courses and offerings. To reach those customers effectively and convince them, factors beyond just choosing the right platform matter too.

Above all, how you present the content to users needs to be flawless for the customer to be convinced. It's often worthwhile making one or two lessons of a course freely available to spark users' interest. This also lets customers judge in advance whether your style and content are right for them. That not only reduces your bounce rate, but also means you win more customers through open communication.

Optimising Your Business, Website, and Yourself for Success

Of course, you can also use this period of fewer orders to optimise or expand your own website. For instance, you could integrate an online shop into your website and offer your goods and services easily through that platform. This can be a great solution for keeping your business alive in a time when people are wary of contact. You could also simply sell vouchers on your website, to help bridge the gap until things return to normal.

For a Joomla-based website, this solution can actually be implemented relatively easily and without much hassle. That means you can significantly reduce downtime while still benefiting fully from the changed conditions of the current crisis.

The same applies if you offer services, for example. Why not improve that side of things online as well? Simple appointment management on your website doesn't just lead to greater satisfaction, it also makes it noticeably easier for many customers to get in touch.

Here too, Joomla websites have an advantage, since a tool like this for appointment management can be set up very easily.

Now is also your chance to rethink your marketing, and to make time for your business and for personal growth. There might be online courses that interest you, or a book you haven't had time to read yet.

Extra Help for Existing Clients

For my existing clients, I'm also offering an additional service during this time of crisis: if you'd like, I'll of course publish notices and popups free of charge about your current approach to Corona on your website. Just send me the text you'd like, and I'll build it into your website quickly and efficiently.

I wish us all good health and the strength to get through this!

Have questions about the coronavirus? Check out FAQ you Corona