Step 1: Build Clear and Strong Foundation of your Freelancing Career
Welcome to the first post of the 6M Challenge of freelancing edition where you will learn how to give a perfect start to your freelancing career. Hope you are ready to fly in space just like Jeffuu did recently.
Okay, before starting let me tell you a greedy fact on freelancing as the highly paid profession in India. An average freelancer with 2-3 years of experience can earn up to Rs10,00,000+ per annum. A report by PayPal said, 23% of the 500 freelancers surveyed by them earned Rs60,00,000+ per annum on average. I am not exaggerating the amount. I told you the minimum amount. Let’s start…
So before starting into freelancing let me tell you that Freelancing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It requires a lot of hard work and consistency. In fact, it took me around 2 years to earn a steady income as a freelancer. I have worked as a freelancer with big ventures for longer periods.
Remember that CEO of ReadyAssist whom I interviewed on Instagram? I worked with them for 5 months and earned 6.5 lakhs. Yeah, it’s that easy(TBH not easy). You will need to polish your skills regularly and have good convincing power to lock a deal. Don’t worry, I am here to teach you everything from my experience.
Find a skill
The first, and the most important, step is to find a skill that you can offer as a service. Let me help you in deciding one of them:
- Content Writing
- Digital Marketing
- Web Development
- App Development
- Graphic Designing
- Consultation
- Social Media Growth
- Blockchain Development
- Tutoring
- ….and many more
All these skills can be heavily monetized. But deciding a skill is not everything, that’s where most people fail. Decide your sub-skill too. What is sub-skill?
Example: If you choose Digital Marketing, don’t occupy the whole topic, specify it. Like SEO, SEM, social media, etc. In this way, narrow down your skill to a sub-skill. This will help you to target specific clients who particularly need that skill. Got it? Fine, if you have decided on your skill and sub-skill, let’s head on towards polishing your skills…
Polishing your skills
Once you find a marketable skill, you should make sure that you can offer it as a service. Simply put, you need to be really good at what you do to be able to get paid for it.
For example: Let’s say you want to be a freelance writer for health and wellness blogs. This category has good demand. You also have experience writing about it in school or college. However, that doesn’t mean you can write blog posts for online audiences. Blogs and online publications use very differently writing styles and formatting for articles. Mainly to attract general audiences. Simply forget college education, the professional world drives different.
You can read books, watch videos on YouTube channels to polish your skill according to the industry. Also, taking online courses is the most effective way to properly learn and polish up a skill. If you are developing a skill from scratch then it will take time. So be patient. If you just need to polish your skills, it barely takes 3-4 days. Whatever it takes just keep at it. Now you have an idea and skills ready to work. Let’s head up towards the platform…
which freelancing platform to join?
This step plays a crucial part in how easily you’ll get jobs and the quality of the clients you’ll be able to work with. A mistake most beginning freelancers make is search for the most popular freelance marketplace and join to get started. Like UpWork or Freelancer.com. These sites are already filled with millions of freelancers from around the world. And due to the competition, they engage in bidding wars to win jobs. They will constantly lower their prices in order to land the job. And it will get you nowhere.
So the best approach, and the approach that worked wonders for me, is to pick a marketplace that’s not very crowded and not quite new. In new ones, there are trust issues. So I will suggest you 3 platforms to join according to your skills, where you can get a job easily:
All: Fiverr – Join Now
SEO specialist: SEOClerks – Join Now
Graphic Designers: Envato – Join Now
TIP: If you can cop up then sign up on two platforms at least. Like an SEO specialist can signup on Fiverr and SEOClerks both. But don’t signup for more than two. You will have to make a reputation also. So do it according to your caliber.
I have provided these suggestions by researched comparisons among top services. So go for it without thinking.
This is all for today’s post. I expect that for the next post, you will be ready with your skills and platform. Now let’s head up towards the tasks you have to complete for the next post.
Tasks to be completed:
- Deciding of skill and sub-skill
- Polishing your skills
- Sign up on freelancing platforms
This was STEP 1 of your journey in freelancing, check out the next steps too…