If you’re looking for additional income or leaving your 9 to 5 job to become a freelancer, you’ve just landed in the right place.
Do you want to begin your freelancing journey but don’t know where to start?
Congratulations! You just landed on the right spot.
In this guide, I’ll break down the step-by-step journey of becoming a really good freelancer.
For those who just came there, I’m Valentin. I’ve been freelancing for the last 8 months and in this short but really productive period, I’ve made $12k+ freelancing, expanded my workflow and network, and learned a bunch of skills that provide me a stable, online income. You can read my story right here.
When I started out, I was determined to make freelancing my full-time occupation. I’ll be cutting corners to make it smooth and easy for you to kick off your brand-new freelancing career.
Freelance is a continuously expanding marketplace. Since the pandemic struck the freelance market doubled. With 50%~ of the US market working remotely and a billion freelancers and even more clients in the world, it’s surely a durable and stable solution for your career.
Without further bla-bla’s, let’s start your journey!
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Basics and Mindset
First of all, freelancing is not easy. That's why a proper mindset is a must. If you plan to make thousands of dollars overnight, you can close this article and try crypto, maybe it’ll work.
Freelancing requires enthusiasm, patience, and deliberate effort to get it rolling. It won't be easy-peasy, especially in the very beginning. So breathe out and do your best. You'll make it!
Well, freelancing is exactly like starting a business. It's actually a business, just a small one. You invest in your assets first and get everything presentable to the client. Then, you outreach to finally make clients pay for your services. That's why you need to tune your mindset on business motives.
But what makes a freelancer successful? I’ve read lots of raging posts blaming the freelance concept, low rates, a cruel market, rude clients, frauds, unstable income, and everything except the freelancer himself. With all my ups and downs throughout my path, I'll say that the only way to become a successful freelancer is to deliver really good work.
So that’s my take there, I want you to start a really good freelance career. The only way to succeed as a freelancer is to overdeliver and hop over clients’ expectations. Always take as much time as you need to get quality work done. What you consider good — will be great for the clients.
Also, you have to ask yourself — “What is the value that I can provide for this client?” If you can't answer this, you shouldn’t even try to get the gig.
That’s the basics and the mindset. If you want to make decent money online you’ll have to deliver great results and think it business-wise.
Get Yourself a Good Laptop/PC
It might be ridiculously obvious but some people really think that since it’s freelancing, you’re free to work from your phone, your tablet, or your microwave.
That’s silly.
You’ll be working with applications and software to create and deliver high-quality work to your clients. Your gear’s performance depends on your results.
Take this seriously. Save some cash and get a good machine to produce a nice outcome.
When I started, I got myself an HP Elitebook 840 for $300~. Still serves me well. MacBook will work there perfectly.
Choose a Marketable Skill
There are endless possibilities in an endless variety of online industries. You can choose whatever you want. It’ll be useful if you already have some skills in the digital world but if you don’t — no worries. I came into freelancing with no experience and learned on the way. Fun stuff!
Here are some of the most paid freelancing skills right now:
- Web design
- Web development
- Graphic Design
- Content writing
- Copywriting
- Ads
- SEO
- Social Media Marketing
- Ecommerce
- Data Analytics
- Data Science
- Cybersecurity
- Video production
- Video editing
- Digital currency development
- Voice-over acting
And this is only the tip of the iceberg as the list is continuously growing.
I strongly believe that everyone has the skill to relate to. Just choose anything you’d love to do or even dreamed of doing. It’ll be fun!
Figure Out Your Niche
Once you decided on your skill, it’s time to decide on your niche. This is the most important step as it’ll define your market and approach.
Briefly, the more you narrow your specialization area, aka niche, the bigger the chances to get your client.
For example, let’s imagine you want to do freelance content writing. But what do you want to write? For whom? For anyone? Well, you can be a content-writing generalist, write everything and position yourself as I-write-about-everything-kind-of. But…
Now, imagine you’re a client. You’re hiring one freelancer for your fashion blog to drive sales and draw attention to your marketplace. You have two choices; freelancer A (you) is a content writing generalist and freelancer B is a content writer with an exact match — he/she specializes in writing about fashion. I guess it’s obvious who’s gonna win the job there.
So be specific. It’s important to position yourself properly when you’re starting out. If you’re a graphic designer — be a logo designer, illustration designer, or banner ads designer. If you’re a web designer — be a mobile app designer, landing page designer, or email newsletter designer.
It’s important to specify and narrow your niche. That’s how you eliminate unnecessary competition and raise your chances to get into contact with clients.
Get Courses
Now that you know what exactly you’re going to deliver to your clients, it’s time to hone your craft.
The most important aspect of really good freelancing is that you have to deliver high-quality results. It’s the only way to grow your freelancing reputation and make clients swoon in delight and come back for more great stuff from you.
Udemy, Coursera, and Domestika are great sources of knowledge for a good price. Dig in!
Chose your platform
There are plenty of freelancing platforms out there:
- Upwork
- Fiver
- Freelancer
- PeoplePerHour
Those are definitely the most popular ones.
Chose one and stick to it. Otherwise, you’ll waste time dabbling on several platforms with no significant result.
At the time, lots of experienced developers told me to not start with Upwork; high competition, lots of annoyingly thorough clients, and a complete intolerance to newbies. Well, instead of choosing an easy way like Fiverr, I persevered.
With my freelancing experience, I can say that Upwork is the best freelancing platform right now. If you want to start your freelancing journey fast and effectively, you should do it on Upwork.
The truth is that Upwork is not the easiest way. But when you’ll get your clients on Upwork, you’ll get high-paying clients anywhere. It’s the best platform to learn the basics, get in the business, start rolling, create your client-winning profile and get real experience with clients.
Create Portfolio and Profile
Your profile is your face. Your portfolio is a showcase of your strongest skills. Those will make the client consider you as the executor.
The portfolio and profile are what you build over time and work for it so it’ll be working for you later on.
So it has to be compelling.
Creating a profile is not so hard. The best advice there is to learn from the best. Look up the most successful freelancers out there — their bios and profiles made them win lots of clients. You can leak some of their best practices into your profile. When I was starting out, I simply copied the bios and adjusted them to my needs.
Your portfolio has to contain your best works. Spend some time to make it presentable and look good.
Send Proposals
Once your profile is set up, it’s time to outreach with job-winning proposals.
The role of the proposal is to showcase your skills and experience.
In the beginning, I recommend sending 10 personalized proposals every day.
Copy + Paste scenario won’t work there. I wasted a lot of time doing this mistake. People can notice if something is copy-pasted to them. The key here is to personalize the message.
The proposal must include the client's name, link to examples of your work, your strongest skills, and also describe your approach to the work.
The key here is to reach your client with a human approach. Damn it, it’s still the internet so you get to show that you’re a real human.
Further read → How to Write a Client-Winning Proposal
Deliver with excellence
The key to successful freelancing is to deliver quality, on-time service. Take it seriously, cause every gig is important for your reputation. Your work is creating opportunities for a further, long-term relationships with your clients.
What’s Next?
Now you’re ready to plunge into the freelancing world. Following these steps, with continuous effort and dedication, you’ll build relationships, get better at your craft and build a stable and high-paying freelancing career.
Good luck!
Feel free to leave comments if you enjoyed the post and found something useful. I'll be happy to respond to your questions.