Freelancing is not quite easy and it needs commitment, persistence and professionalism. It is almost full-time self-employment. You are your own boss. Freelancers have international clients. Mr. A just learns a skill, creates an account on Fiverr, Upwork or Guru and he starts bidding on project. He is wasting his time because he has no experience and portfolio. Client will not trust because Mr. A is new.
Mr. A should polish his skill, focus on his LinkedIn profile to get clients, use personal references to obtain work before joining freelancers.
It is better to think and do some homework before starting a freelancing. Here are the simple steps how a beginner can start his career.
Here in this blog post we are presenting 6 simple and easy steps for beginners to start freelancing.
- Meet and find yourself
- Polish your talent and skills
- Analyze successful freelancers
- Create your profile
- Answer the questions before writing gigs, proposal and bids
- Present yourself
We will discuss all these steps one by one. This blog post is based on experience of successful freelancers such as Hisham Sarwar, Subhan Tariq etc.
Meet and find yourself
The first thing you need to meet yourself. You know yourself. You know your God gifted talent. Then look for your skills and find out the skills in which you rate yourself highest points.
Sit down quietly. Listen to your heart. Remember your life achievements and they will tell the reasons behind achievements. Reasons will lead you towards your talent.
Some persons have strong convincing power, some have writing, God blesses some with creative thinking. List of God gifted talent is long. I recommend to pursue your talent and find your niche relating to your talent.
For example, designing is your talent, then learn graphic designing, animation and visual effects. If anyone has capability of creative thinking, he can write great content.
Here is the list of tips that will help you to find your talent and strongest skill.
- It excites you.
- When you start working, it keeps you busy without exhausting.
- You enjoy to work long hours.
- You have excellence in it.
- You have confidence that you can complete the task without continuous guidance. (It must not be over confidence)
- You are willing to invest more on your skills to excel further.
- When you learn more, it increases your interest.
When you have found yourself, then polish it and build your portfolio.
Polish your talent and skills
Once you find your talent, now it is time to you polish it. There are three ways to do this i.e., (1) learn it further, (2) practice it by joining expert, (3) sell your skills.
You can learn skills from Udemy, Coursera, YouTube and training institutions. A lot of agencies are also providing different services, join them and learn skills. You may also use social media to hunt clients. All these activities will help to build portfolio.
Now at this time of competition, portfolio is necessary to stand out. Portfolio comprises of your skills set, certifications, qualification, completed projects, clients’ reviews, LinkedIn profile, endorsements and experience.
Now, professionals and full-time employees are switching towards part-time jobs and side hustles. Therefore, success also depends on your portfolio.
Here are tips to build your portfolio
- Invest in yourself by learning advance skills. Practice new learnt skills by offering free of cost or low-cost services on your social media accounts. It will provide hands-on experiences to polish your skills.
- Hunt clients from internet.
- Create profile on LinkedIn, post regularly, publish articles relating to your niche and skills, engage with audience, help others, build new connections, offer services and ask your clients to leave reviews on your LinkedIn profile.
- Purchase domain and start blogging relating to your niche & skills.
- Participate in different competitions.
Analyze successful freelancers related to your skill set and niche
On freelancing websites, top freelancers and top-level sellers in your niche are available. Analyze their profile, gigs, bids and proposals. Study their profiles, gigs, proposals and completed projects (if available). Most important metrics you should look for while analyzing freelancers.
- Basic parameters like title, description, images, videos, number of projects completed and skills.
- Pricing strategy.
- Services packages which they are offering.
- Client / buyers’ reviews including best and worst ones.
- How they are writing gigs, proposals and bids.
- Qualifications, certifications and experience.
Create your profile on freelancing websites
Fiverr, Toptal, Guru, Upwork, Freelancer and PeoplePerHour are top rated freelancing websites. Each website has its own protocols. On Fiverr, gig ranking and your powerful profile matters a lot. Whereas, positive ratings, portfolio, connects and professionalism stand out a freelancer. Appealing profile is necessary for freelancers to work on Guru and Freelancer. Toptal and People per hour are for professionals.
Here are tips for creating profile as freelancer
- Add basic information to your profile like name, country, education, professional qualification, professional experience.
- Provide details of completed projects and client reviews. To add project details, you can use PDF files, project images and videos.
- Use high quality pictures and videos in your portfolio.
- Connect LinkedIn profile with your account on freelancing website specially Upwork and Toptal.
- Information must be organized for example add projects one by one, add your achievements year wise etc.
- Add main and related keywords in your description so your profile may rank.
- Also mention your website (if any) or blog in your profile.
Answer these questions before writing gigs, proposals and bids
On Fiverr, you sell your gigs, whereas, on Upwork you send proposals. On Guru, People per hour, and Freelancer you make bids on posted projects. Whereas, on Toptal your qualification, experience and portfolio matter a lot.
Before making a gig, writing a proposal, designing your bid and building your portfolio; you need to answer these questions:
- Do I have necessary skills and resources to complete the project?
- Do I have portfolio to stand out?
- Why will client hire me?
- Will I award project to myself if I am client?
- Does my portfolio match with services I am offering?
- Have I included client reviews, endorsements in my portfolio?
- Have I included all main and relevant keywords in my Fiverr gig?
- Is my gig, proposal or bid competitive?
- Is my gig, proposal or bid satisfying all needs of my client?
- What would be the expected time during which you can complete project?
- What are the possible delays in project completion and their reasons?
- How much a project cost you in terms of time, money and resources?
In addition to above questions, you must do some research to ensure that you can get client or project. What if you have a wonderful gig idea or bid or portfolio, but it is not selling? To avoid such situation, you must undertake necessary research to understand what buyers and clients in your niche are looking for.
Present yourself to your client
Here are the tips how to present yourself to your client
- Do not use “dear” or “sir” or “madam” or “mam” for your client (from United States), instead use “Hi + his first name”. Or you may use “Hi friend” for him. Americans mind if a stranger use “dear”.
- But you may use “dear” for clients from United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, Canada or other European countries.
- However, try to remain professional and formal. Don’t be person with your clients and if you call them with their names then use Hi or Hello before them.
- Before meeting with client, make your checklist for all your requirements. Always prepare a pre-meeting agenda. It will help you to sort out all possible matters in very first meeting.
- Client demands professionalism. Send him an effective proposal. Your proposal should contain technical aspects, time lines, possible cost to be incurred, your number of hours to be consumed, basic requisites to be satisfied by your client, information to be provided by your client, questions in your mind, scope of work and your price.
- If you are going to stuck in project, first write down all issues you are facing in project execution, then call your client, arrange a meeting with him and openly discuss. Keep in mind, resolve all the issues in single meeting and client has no time to tell you again and again.
- Never directly ask your client to give you endorsement and review. You should leave this message to him when you complete your project, “Thanks a lot for hiring me, I am looking forward for future venture and stay blessed forever.” “Do not forget to share your feedback.”
Our recommendation
Now you are ready to take off as successful freelancer if you follow above steps. Don’t go straight away on Upwork, People per hour, Toptal, Guru and Freelancer after learning a skill. They are highways where heavy traffic goes on. Whereas to drive on Fiverr is easy as you are driving in streets.
First learn any skill, then learn how to sell services on Fiverr. For this purpose, YouTube is available 24/7 for you. Along with Fiverr also focus on LinkedIn and social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Pinterest) to obtain. Obtain work from LinkedIn, Fiverr and social media to polish your skills. It will build your portfolio, following and in turn build yourself a brand. Then you will be able to drive on highways as we mentioned earlier.
We hope you will be successful in your freelancing. In fact, freelancing is not difficult. It needs a systematic approach. People on Upwork, People per hour, Toptal, Guru and Freelancer will hire you when you have polished skills and portfolio. Your personal brand, Fiverr top rated seller badge, LinkedIn ranking profile, professional experience and social media following is your portfolio.
Stay blessed and thanks a lot for visiting our website. Share this blog post on social media with your friends so they also learn.
