A beginner's guide to freelancing

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

— Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker

It was one fine day, I was scrolling YouTube and came across a video: “How to earn 1 lakh per month as a student ”. It triggered my mind, I was shocked! I immediately logged into some freelancing websites and realized that I knew nothing. So, the words spoken by that person weren’t wrong but they were incomplete.

What to conclude from these?

Freelancing can be done by anyone. But it’s not as easy as some YouTuber’s tell. Definitely, some will provide you with some valuable content that I’ve mentioned later on the blog. In this blog, I’ve listed what all things I came across during my initial days of learning about freelancing. So, let’s start with the basic definition of freelancing.

Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash

What is freelancing?

A simple definition of freelancing is “Self-employment”. A person who doesn't depend upon a company or an organization but instead works with multiple clients is called a freelancer. They work from any part of the world. What is needed is a workplace, stable internet connection, and devices as per your work.

Freelancing may also be termed as “micro-entrepreneurship”. It is a risk involved carrier option and not everyone can pursue this. Before taking any decision analyze your personality traits. If you’re a person who is okay with the risk involved in your life then you are good to go. But if you need stability then it won’t be the right choice for you.

Freelancers are the students for life. In a freelancing carrier, you need to learn a lot. After completion of one task, you’ll realize you need some other skill sets to be better at your work. If you don’t learn the other thing you may get stuck at the same point.

How to get started?

Fiverr, Upwork, and freelancer are the most common websites used by most of the freelancers. Here you will get native clients who will pay you the heavy amount. But is that so easy?

Getting your first client on these websites is a big achievement. You need to be fully prepared before you get into finding your clients here. The basic requirement is to understand how things work. You may find some genuine YouTubers who have explained how these websites work. Go and check them out!

You will have to take the time to understand these websites. At the same time work upon your skills. Get in contact with some freelancers who’ve achieved something in the niche you want to work upon. You will find a lot of freelancers on Instagram giving you paid guidance. You may go for it. But there’s also another way which I’ve tried out. Approach the freelancers on LinkedIn. Dm them telling them that you are interested in working for them for free. You may get rejected here. But have patience and send at least 5 messages to different freelancers a day and make sure that you attach your sample along with. Once you get the opportunity give your best and learn from it.

The next process is creating your own portfolio. Now don’t think about creating a file and attaching all your works there. But you need to create a website consisting of your work, achievements, review from clients, and any authentic information relevant to your work.

After you are done with all these struggles. You may go and approach clients on any website. Make sure that you have a better understanding of the website that you’re working in.

Now you’ve reached a point where you know to work. This isn’t the stop. The next step that comes here is upgrading yourself. You need to learn about negotiation skills, digital marketing, and even better communication skills. You can’t survive just working for $5. Learn the skill of being better after every single achievement. Your journey begins here, don’t look back!

What skills to learn?

Freelancing is a very wide field. But mostly the niche generally comes under designing, development, and marketing. Along with it we also have websites for writing. These are the macro topics which I’ve talked about. Under it, there are many subtopics.

Talking about designing you will find the graphic design which is again a big topic, under it comes a logo designing, flyer designing, poster making, book covers, etc. There’s also the work of video editing, photography, Instagram post creation, editing photos.

Coming to the development section, web development is the most preferred niche today. Then come app developments, iOS development, WordPress development, and angular JS development. These are the wider topics and there are many more subtopics under it.

Now taking about marketing- this has the most opportunities today because of the things getting digitalized. You may be a social media manager, virtual assistant, SEO expert, etc.

These might be a little confusing because these are domains that haven’t been explored much in India. And it’s okay if you don’t know whatever that is written here because even I sometimes come across a lot of new things very frequently.

Freelancing the right way:

There some phases of freelancing which need to be followed by everyone in order to earn the highest:

1. Client sourcing: Being the first stage so it’s quite tricky. Here you need to focus more on learning than on earning. So, you have to polish your skills as per market standards and get started with approaching your first client. This may be a demotivating task because clients generally don’t prefer beginners. But if you follow the right strategy then you’ll surely land a client.
2. Creating value: This stage is for creating your own personal brand. Adding some extra value to the work provided by your clients may help you gain more reviews. You need to create a great portfolio now by adding a lot more experience which you’ve gained. Creating an online presence may also be helpful. Leverage LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Can college students try freelancing?

It’s highly recommended for college students to get into freelancing. This is the goldmine for college students and if they work hard for this then there’s a very high probability for them to get successful early.

Now, there might be lots of questions: Do this work needs a degree? Is this work easy to learn? No, there’s not any requirement for a degree. To do the video editing, designing book covers, proofreading no one cares for the degree. You just need to build a great portfolio showcasing your work and get started. But if you want to work in fields that are a little bit tricky to learn like web development then you need some experience.

Advantages and disadvantages of freelancing:

1. You can work anywhere in the world. You don’t need to be worried about your office time as you’ll be your own boss.
2. You are independent to choose your own clients and team. Also if you don’t wish to work with a client you may leave him without any hesitation.
3. Infinite earning opportunities are there. You can go as high as you wish to, there’s no upper cap to it.
4. The only disadvantage that freelancing has is that you don’t have any job security. Also, you need to upgrade yourself along with the industry demand. Better the skills you’ve, better you’ll be paid.

This is all that I’ve learned in my 2 years journey as a beginner and a naive freelancer. I haven’t achieved a lot in this industry as I’m still learning. But yes I’ve achieved some phases and yet to conquer other ones. Hope you’re clear with this information. If you face any difficulties further let me know in the comments down below!