How To Freelance For Extra Cash

Paga
Making Life Possible
4 min readMay 11, 2018

With the rise of the digital age, it has been made even easier and more convenient to freelance and work remotely. Having the freedom and independence to make money from anywhere in the world has opened the gateway to financial opportunities for those who are able to leverage their competitive skills for extra or full time income. More people are being seduced by the idea of becoming your own boss and adjusting your workload as you see fit. But what does it take to successfully freelance?

1. Pick the right career:

In order to make the most out of the opportunities available you have to make sure that the skills you are bringing to the table are competitive and highly transferable. Therefore, you should aim to work in a field that is in high demand that will have many jobs available worldwide. Some of the most in demand digital freelance jobs include: social media management, SEO specialists, content creation,editing, copy writing, web development, graphic design, digital marketing, instagram marketing & influencers, and virtual assistants.

2. Tap into online educational resources:

With access to the internet, you can now learn anything you want to in a matter of hours, days or weeks. There are many online learning channels, both free and paid to help you brush up on your skills, depending on what you want to learn. If you dedicate a certain amount of hours in a day, you’d be surprised at how much you can learn. Practice makes perfect, so the best way to put those skills to test is to execute a personal project. Some great online learning sources are: Youtube, Lynda.com, Treehouse, Coursera, and Edx and universities like Harvard and University of Pennsylvania offer free online courses. Pick a topic and start learning today!

3. Make Yourself Visible; Market Yourself

Having the online sources to find jobs is great, but you must also market yourself and your skills so you can get even more jobs. Set up a visual portfolio, showing off your skills or examples of your work. It is always a good idea to have your own website, and client testimonials as it makes you more legitimate. There are many sites that allow creatives set up portfolios for free. Olx, and gg are good sites to market your services. Social media is also a great tool for meeting potential clients. With the right positioning, you can retain clients which means you do not have to go out looking for new clients every time a project is over.

4. Sign up on freelance websites

You have chosen a field, and you have the skills, now you have to source the jobs. There are many websites dedicating to connecting freelancers with clients. Create an account on freelancer.com and fiverr and begin sourcing and bidding for jobs.

5. Create your work hours

Even though you are freelancing and it comes with all this amazing flexibility, you must still be disciplined in order to meet client deadlines. Therefore it is advisable to create your work schedule, according to your workload, and according to what days and times work best for you to produce maximum output. The great thing about being your own boss is that you can set long grueling hours if you wish and take longer breaks. Impress your clients so they keep coming back and also so they rate you highly and recommend you to others.

6. You can work all over the world

The great thing about doing work from your computer is that you can be sitting in a coffee shop in Lekki or cross legged on your living room floor in Ikeja, and be working for a client in San Francisco or Japan. You can get lots of great international experience and work for your dream company without having to go through the hassle of work permits or visas.

However,

7. All Freelance Doesn’t Have To Be Online

This list has mainly focused on web and digital services, but there are ways to make extra cash freelancing in any field that requires personal skills, such as make up artistry, photography, catering, even accounting and marketing. As long as you have a skill or knowledge database that can be useful to others, you can set yourself up to make extra cash on the side of your main job, or freelance full time.

If you are trying to test out a new career path, looking to earn extra income, or just love working on your passion, give freelancing a try. It is flexible and character building and it has a lot of growth potential to turn into a very rewarding career!

Happy freelancing! Share with a friend who might need this!

Making Life Possible is our ethos at paga, and it is what keeps us committed to our mission of providing inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. With over 15,000 agent outlets and 8 million+ customers, we are inspired by the stories of the community we are building and the people we are empowering by making life possible every single day.

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Paga
Making Life Possible

Paga is Nigeria’s leading mobile money company. We are enabling people to digitally send and receive money, and creating simple financial access for everyone.