#freelance-talk

That's kind of a tall order for labor-based services, agency or freelancer, since they're generally commodified (and thus non-"unique") by nature. It's why so many agencies have soggy positioning generally or make unverifiable claims at "quality" or being "the best" or whatever.

A life hack I have for starting down the path to a USP is to ask "what do I help them with that gets my buyers promoted?" If you're writing content or doing SEO or writing code or doing graphic design, the initial answer to that question will be "probably nothing," but it's meant to be a starting point for market research and discovery. To answer it, you have to start learning what related to your skill set gets them promoted, and, on the flip side, what gets them fired, which will start getting you in tune with the kinds of emotions that drive a buying process. Your USP then evolves towards, "I know that X keeps you up at night, and I can make that not a problem for you" or "if you commission {my productized service} there's a decent chance you'll be on track to achieve a career goal." When you can credibly make claims like that, you're setting the sales conversation to easy mode.

@Erik Dietrich super insightful, thanks for that!