Beginner's Guide to Kickstarting Freelance in 2022 & Beyond!
The freelance economy has boomed since the pandemic. The Great Resignation has shown the world the lucrative alternative of switching to freelancing.
With no long commutes, a proper work-life balance, and the choice to shut down their laptops at their own time instead of sticking to normal working hours, have attracted a lot of people.
A recent survey by Upwork states that 20% of current employees — 10 million people are considering doing freelance work.
That’s a 17% increase in the total freelance workforce which already consists of a mammoth 59 million Americans.
But how do you get started with freelancing? Worry not! In this guide, we’ll take you through everything and turn your freelance job into your best job, ever!
Choose a niche
There are millions of freelancers across the world. How do you separate yourself from the rest? How do you gain mastery when there are hundreds of fields?
Unless you’re a superhero that doesn’t require sleep, choosing a niche is your best bet.
Here’s why:
As you have one specific target market, you’ll have the time to dive deep. The result? Better clients, more money, more free time. What else could you want? (we still have a lot of pros though)
You have a better chance of gaining mastery in one field as compared to juggling three or four.
Once you gain expertise in a subject, competition leans down by itself.
Decide your service offerings and rates
Suppose you are an illustrator and have picked B2B as your niche. What kind of service offerings would you be providing? Website illustrations, blog illustrations, or in-app animations?
Once you decide on your offerings, assign rates for all these services. Ensure that you do not underplay or overplay your skills as a beginner. Choose a middle ground.
Build your portfolio
Let’s suppose there are 7 shops in front of you, all selling designer clothes. Which one would you choose to walk into? The one that has the most attractive display, right?
That’s how a portfolio works when it comes to the freelancing world. It showcases the best of your works.
Additionally, you can showcase testimonials, social media accounts, your skills, and the services you offer.
Your portfolio is the first impression a client has of your work. It can very easily be the factor that can help turn a dream lead into a client.
Pro-tip: If you’re not getting quality clients because you have little work to showcase in your portfolio, you can choose to work with beta clients. Beta clients are those that give you a testimonial in exchange for your work.
Make a lead generation strategy
As a freelancer, the one thing that is certain is uncertainty.
One month, you may have your inboxes flooding with work proposals. And the very next month, you may have just one client.
How do you deal with this uncertainty? By having a steady stream of leads. That’s where a lead generation strategy comes into the picture.
Depending on your field, choose a lead generation platform. For example, LinkedIn for writers, Dribbble for designers and creatives, Indie Hackers for developers, and so on.
Regularly post content on this platform, grow your connections, and build relationships with future clients. The more you network, the more the inbound leads.
Tools to turn one-off projects into retainer clients
From making portfolios to sharing invoices with your clients, you can make your job easier and deliver a much more professional experience.
Let’s go through the entire process.
Step 1: Build a Portfolio
Add all the necessary details from the kind of work you do to the best projects you have delivered.
Double-check for typos and grammatical mistakes.
Here’s how Corina Nika uses Canva to include different kinds of projects in her portfolio and make them flow together nicely.
Tools that can help you build a portfolio:
Step 2: Send Proposals
Once you are done building a portfolio, the next step is to send a proposal.
You can pick from ready-made templates and make your proposal more concise and acceptable.
You can even make use of The Proposal Wizard by Prospero which looks like this:
This shows you what information you need to enter for different segments of the proposal and then creates one according to your preferences.
Tools that can help you with creating and sending proposals:
Step 3: Provide clients with the best
If you are a freelance writer, you can use tools to make your writing error-free and readable. For example, Grammarly allows you to choose your audience and the intent behind your content and checks it accordingly.
You can also make use of Hemingway Editor to check the readability of your content.
If you are a freelance brand strategist or an SEO analyst, SEO-audit tools come in handy.
Tools like Buffer and BuzzSumo help you plan and schedule your posts if you’re deciding to opt for the freelance brand strategist role.
No matter what your niche is, you can use plenty of tools to streamline your work and generate better results for your clients.
Step 4: Send an invoice
Now that you have successfully completed all your work, time to reap the rewards.
Instead of just asking your client for payment via an email or a message, sending an invoice is the more professional thing to do.
You can even choose to add your logo to the invoices you send to add a more professional touch to it.
You can use tools to make your invoice generating process as smooth as butter:
Now that you have all the things you require, you can push that accelerator on your freelancing career.
If you ever miss that bustling office feeling as a freelancer, don your favorite attire and head to your nearest co-working space.
Ashley Kemper is an Assistant Editor at Commerce Mentors. She has 5+ years of experience in writing about Marketing, SEO, and Technology. She also helps with the end-to-end execution of content strategy. When not writing, Ashley spends most of her time reading and cooking. As a sports enthusiast, she spends her weekends running and watching badminton tournaments.