Learning on the Job Is How You Get Promoted as a Freelancer
The soft skill you need
I’ve engineered some of my pay raises through working on things I had little knowledge of. And I believe one soft skill necessary to becoming successful in freelancing is learning quickly.
What would you do when an existing client, who trusts your work comes to you with something you don’t know, but’s around your industry. Do you say you don’t know or actually tell her you can do your research and figure it out?
I remember when I wrote my first website copy a long while back. Before then, I was only used to writing blog posts and emails. And the agency I worked for asked if I knew how to write website copy. I hadn’t done it previously, but I said I could learn it and come up with something for them.
And because they trusted in my abilities, they let me take the job. I went on Youtube and looked for everything I could get, and I wrote my first website copy. I was so proud of myself because I didn’t think I could learn and create something good in such a short period. It was a good feeling.
One time, a client wanted me to use their Ahrefs keyword tool to do keyword research and develop topics that could rank for the keywords. Ahrefs has way more capabilities than the Google Keyword planner I was used to. I spent the whole night trying to figure it out. I learned about “keyword difficulty,” “Domain Rating,” and many things associated with keyword planning, which I didn’t know earlier.
It was fun because I could use it to get my next prospective client to pay me higher. After all, It made me seem more knowledgeable.
These are just a few occasions, but there have been many incidents where clients forced me to learn something new that has added to my growth today.
It just shows how you don’t need to know everything to get started in whatever thing you're doing. Instead, all you need is your ability to learn fast and deliver.
This skill will get you farther than trying to learn everything beforehand.
Thank you for reading
