How to start working as a freelancer
This is a step by step plan to help you start working as a freelancer online and earning a living out of it.
First, you have to define your skill
For some freelancing is an easy job that requires no skills.
For others, it’s hard to find a skill to use as a freelancer.
Step one in the world of online freelance and getting paid online is to define what do you want to do or what you can do.
This can be classified into categories
Technical skills
Includes any kind of skill that requires education.
Programmers, coders, marketing, accounting are some examples of freelance work that require some education online or offline and the skill of this work is required before starting to get freelance work.
Non-technical skills
Non-technical freelance work requires no former education or certification. However, having some personal skills will make your work easier and enables you to earn more.
Data entry, virtual assistant, and customer service are some of the freelance work that you can do without technical skills
After you decide what freelance work you want to do you need to build your portfolio.
Ethier, you will work with your technical or non-technical skills you need to build a portfolio of your previous work.
If you are in the media creative industry (photography, design, video editing) you know the power of Behance and how important is it to have a solid portfolio that you can send its link to clients.
The same case is with marketers you need to keep all your marketing campaigns and clients in one place, one link that you can send to any prospective client to validate your experience and earn the trust of any prospective clients.
Now that you have set what kind of work you are looking for and built your portfolio!
Start creating accounts on freelance websites. Upwork and Freelancers are two of the biggest websites currently in the online freelance world. New Jobs are being posted literally every sec. And for that same reason, they are the most competitive market places for new freelancers.
Try to find local online freelance platforms so there will be less competition and jibs posted are more suitable for you.
This comes with fewer jobs being posted daily and maybe payments are less, but this is a good start for your online freelancing.
After being on your local freelance platform for a while and build a good portfolio for your work then it’s time to compete in the bigger platforms.
Build your proposal
Being a freelancer requires you to send proposals to prospective clients often. Instead of writing this proposal from scratch every time, build a template proposal for your self that includes the important information that you provide each client with.
This doesn’t mean that it will be a one size fits all proposal that you just copy for each client.
Build a template that acts as a framework for your proposal only and keep editing it and improving it by time.
Your proposal should include
- Short intro about yourself
- What are you bringing to the table for this job
- Any comments or further info required.
- Samples of your previous work or portfolio.
Now you can start applying for freelance gigs
Applying for freelance gigs is an exhausting process that takes a lot of time and effort.
You can be overwhelmed by the amounts of gigs available online.
Have a structure for your search process
First, apply only for gigs that you are familiar with and know how to do it.
Filter your search by the newest, old posts may have been already taken or the client found another solution
Every platform works on a certain speed, for some like Upwork, it takes less than a day from the job post till confirmation with a freelancer.
Research the job and provide constructive insights in your proposal so the client will know that you really know what you are applying for.
Keep job searching on a schedule, the first 2 hours of every day is mine because you don’t want to sit all day looking for gigs. And you don’t want to search and submit proposals while you are tired.
Scoring a gig is tough, especially in your first days, but never give up and never lose interest. You never know where your first job will come from.
Freelancing isn’t not only found online, so keep networking and spread the word among your friends maybe someone needs help and you are willing to do it.
This article is part of my series of articles documenting my journey to become a digital nomad.
I will follow with other articles about what to do when you get your first freelance gig and how to keep your freelancing jobs on a roll.
If you want to know about how to become a digital nomad follow my publication.
