How to get started with Sisu Talents

Welcome to Sisu Talents – the marketplace where companies and freelancers find each other and build real working relationships. This guide walks you through everything you need to do after signing up: creating your account, finding your account settings, filling in the basic details that make you trustworthy on the platform, and understanding the one extra verification step that unlocks buying or selling.

1. Creating your Sisu Talents account

Who can register: Sisu Talents Talent accounts are currently limited to freelancers based in the European Economic Area (EEA). Sisu Talents welcomes clients from anywhere in the world, so if you want to hire freelancers, you can sign up from any country, but the pricing you see reflects fair European rates and we urge you to not low ball our talents with unreasonably low rates. This is a deliberate choice: one of the core values of Sisu Talents is that rates on the platform reflect the cost of living in Europe, so freelancers can build a real career here without being undercut by global race-to-the-bottom pricing.

1. Go to the Sisu Talents homepage and click the Sign up button in the top right corner of the header.
2. Fill in your first name and last name. These are used on invoices and on the details visible to the people you work with, so use your real name.
3. Choose a username. This is visible to all other Sisu Talents users, so pick something you’re happy to be known by: your own name, your business name, or a professional handle you already use elsewhere.
4. Enter a valid email address. Use an inbox you check regularly, because order updates, messages from the other party, and important account notifications all arrive there.
5. Create a password. For security reasons the password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character (for example ! ? @ # € ).
6. Choose whether to subscribe to the Sisu Talents newsletter. Picking “No” simply means you won’t receive marketing emails – you will still get all the transactional notifications for your orders and messages.
7. Select whether you are joining as a talent or a client in the “Are you a talent or a client?” dropdown. Talents can offer services and receive orders; clients can hire freelancers and place orders. Remember: talent registration is only available for people based in the EEA (European Economical Area).
8. Tell us how you heard about us. This is a small dropdown that helps us understand which channels bring people to Sisu Talents so we can invest in them.
9. Read and accept the terms and conditions, then click Register.
10. Open the confirmation email we send you and click the verification link. This proves the email is yours and activates the account.

Tip: If the confirmation email does not arrive within a couple of minutes, check your spam or promotions folder. The sender is noreply@sisutalents.com, and adding that address to your contacts helps future notifications to find their way to your main inbox.

2. Finding your account details

Once you are logged in, every personal setting lives behind a single menu so there is nothing to hunt for. The way you reach it is the same on desktop and mobile, although the menu collapses into an icon on smaller screens.

1. Click your My account button in the top right corner of the header. On mobile this appears as a small profile icon instead of a labelled button.
2. You will land on your account dashboard, which acts as the starting point for everything you do on Sisu Talents: your orders, your listings, your messages, your earnings or spendings, and your personal details.
3. From the dashboard sidebar, choose Profile to update your personal information, or Settings for things like password changes, language preferences, and email notification choices.

If you signed up as a client and are based in the EEA, you can add the talent side to the same account later, no second registration is needed. Clients based outside the EEA cannot switch to a talent account, since talent registration is currently limited to freelancers based in the European Economic Area.

3. Adding your basic info and avatar

A complete profile is the single biggest factor that decides whether other Sisu Talents members trust you enough to message you or accept your offer. Empty profiles look abandoned, and most people will scroll straight past them. The good news is that filling in the basics takes only a few minutes.

Upload a clear profile picture

Open the Profile page from your dashboard and click the circular avatar placeholder. The recommended size is at least 400 × 400 pixels, and square images crop most cleanly. Click the avatar circle on your Profile page to upload or replace your photo.

Fill in your headline

Your headline is a short one-liner that appears under your name everywhere on the site, so make it specific. Something like “Brand designer for sustainable Nordic startups” works much better than a generic “Freelance designer”, because it tells people in one glance whether you are the right match for them.

Write a short bio

Spend three or four sentences describing what you do, who you usually work with, and what makes working with you easy. You do not need to write a wall of text, just do it how you feel comfortable and write something that shows your character.

Add your language and location

Language settings are used by our search and matching tools, so adding every language you can comfortably work in widens the range of jobs or talents you will be matched with. Your country and timezone help the other party plan calls and delivery times realistically.

Why this matters: Profiles with a photo, a clear headline, and a few lines of bio receive significantly more messages and offers than empty profiles.

4. One last step before you can buy or sell

Sisu Talents handles every payment through Stripe, our payment partner, so that money moves safely between the two sides of a trade. Before you can fully use the platform you need to verify your account. The how-to is slightly different depending on whether you are coming in as a client or as a talent.

If you are a client

Before you can place your first order, you need to complete a quick verification with Stripe. This is a standard identity and payment method check that protects both sides of the trade — it confirms that you are a real person or company, and that the card or bank details you use to pay are genuine. The verification takes a few minutes and is reached from your account settings; once it is done, you can hire any talent on the platform without any extra steps.

If you are a talent

Before your listings can become visible in search and on the marketplace, you need to do two things in your account. First, connect a Stripe account from the Stripe connection page in your dashboard — this is what allows Sisu Talents to send your earnings directly to your bank account after each completed order. Second, add your tax information on the Tax details page, including your country, your tax identifier where required, and whether you are registered for VAT. Both fields are required because Sisu Talents has to report marketplace earnings correctly under European DAC7 rules, and your invoices to clients cannot be issued without them.

As soon as both your Stripe connection is active and your tax details are saved, your listings will appear on the marketplace and clients will be able to find and order from you.

You are ready to go

That is everything you need for a complete a Sisu Talents account. The next natural step depends on which side of the marketplace you are on: clients can start browsing talents and posting their first job, while talents can publish their first listing and start receiving enquiries.

If something does not look the way this guide describes, or you get stuck on any of the steps, our support team is one message away.

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