How to Build a Career in Freelancing
How to Build a Career in Freelancing
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, How to Start Freelancing (Even When Working Full-Time)
More than 80% of traditional U.S. workers choose to work freelance alongside their full-time jobs to supplement their income. And, the number of top U.S. companies open to hiring freelancers is growing rapidly.
So, how do you get into the freelance gig industry and participate in this business trend?
How to Start Freelancing (Even While Working Full-Time) - Cover
How to Start Freelancing (or Moonlighting)
To become a freelancer while working a full-time job, you need to consider the following steps:
Define Your Business Goals
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, Before you start freelancing, you need to be honest with yourself and answer one important question:
Is freelancing just a side gig? Or do you plan to expand it into a full-time business?
The answer to this question will determine your next steps, considering whether you aim to balance your full-time and freelance work, or whether you aim to quit your current job and become a full-time freelancer.
The answer to this question is your long-term goal. To achieve this, you need to set some short-term goals and answer questions like:
What niche will you specialize in?
What services will you provide?
How much money do you want to make per month (if applicable) before you decide to quit your full-time job?
Here are some important questions and short-term goals to help you get your freelancing career off the ground.
Specialize in a niche (and stick to it)
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, Whether you’re a graphic designer, copywriter, developer, or any of these professions, it’s best if you specialize in a specific area:
For example, if you’re a content writer, don’t aim to write about anything under the sun, from the top 3 ways to get your garden ready for spring to explaining the tax laws of the 50 United States.
Sure, you can start by writing about your ideal niche, but ultimately, you should pick one and stick to it.
But, cryptocurrency or technical content writers always sound much better on your CV than general content writers. Plus, they build trust in you with clients who are always looking for specific topics, not general topics.
The same applies if you’re a graphic designer:
Consider your level of experience
Your current pool of connections
Your natural inclination towards a specific design niche
Then, make your choice – providing interface design for apps, creating new custom logos, creating layouts for books, or focusing on some other specific design work.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should outright refuse to work on anything else. However, you will build your experience, skills, and reputation in a specific job, which will increase your chances of being hired for a side gig by reputable companies looking for experts in a specific field.*
*You should check with your employer to see what their side gig policy is. It’s likely that your contract prohibits you from accepting freelance work outside of your company’s established niche.
Identify your target clients
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, Just as you shouldn’t aim to cover every niche in your industry, you shouldn’t aim to meet the needs of the entire industry market.
Small businesses, teams, remote workers, and even other freelancers may need the services you offer. However, you should target one or two types of clients in particular.
Let’s say you want to start a blog about everything related to working remotely. There are freelancers, teams, but also entire businesses who work remotely, and they can serve as your starting point.
But, when it comes to choosing a niche, a specific niche is always a good place to start.
Identify your target audience
Think about the age of your target audience. Maybe you’re a millennial, so could you write a blog about working remotely for millennials?
Think about location. Maybe you want to cover the US market primarily?
Think about education level. Maybe you want to cover new freelance remote workers who are just starting their careers?
Think about income. Maybe you’re writing for people on a tight budget, but who wants to travel to a country that has a digital nomad visa?
Think about gender. Maybe you want to target mainly female freelancers?
These are just a few questions you should ask yourself, but they reveal a lot. For example, you could be writing for female millennials fresh out of college in the US who want to start and build a career in social media while traveling abroad on a limited budget.
This is specific enough to attract the right crowd, but not general enough to alienate other digital nomads. After all, you’ll still mostly be writing about the challenges, tips, and hacks of working from any lifestyle, which will likely interest all remote workers.
But, you’ll also get a more specific idea of where and how to market your blog, and what kind of copy you should write for your landing pages and follow-up pages.
Determine Your Freelance Rates
Determining your freelance rates always seems like a challenge, but it becomes much easier when you list the necessary parameters that will help you determine your ideal (and realistic) pricing:
Experience (if any)
Education level
Supply and demand for your services
Price in your industry
Average freelance hourly rate in your niche
Your location
Determine your hourly rate
Once you have all this information, you need to calculate your hourly rate based on it — higher education, experience, and demand for your niche mean you can charge a higher rate. If you live in the US, you will likely be able to earn a higher rate than if you lived in the Philippines. Of course, your standard of living and expenses will be higher, so you will need to earn a higher rate as well.
If you want to become a freelancer, and want to calculate your ideal hourly rate and convert your hours into earnings, check out the following solutions:
Freelance Time Tracking Apps
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, In any case, you shouldn’t price yourself too high compared to the listed parameters – because you’ll end up being too expensive for clients compared to your competitors.
But, more importantly, you shouldn’t undersell yourself either. Above all, you should think about covering your freelance costs and making a profit. However, once you price your work too low, it will be difficult to increase your prices later, even if you feel you need to.
Create a Website (and Portfolio)
Once you’ve defined your business goals, found a niche, identified your target clients, and set your prices, you’ll want to create an online presence. And, the best way to do this is to create your own website with a portfolio that showcases your previous work, skills, and expertise.
It’s okay to create a website for free with a website builder like Wix, but it’s better to buy a domain name from a hosting website. You’ll get a unique name and a customized email address for your online presence, which will make you more credible to potential clients and look more professional overall.
Regardless of your industry, it’s probably best to choose your own name for the domain, especially if you’re going to be showcasing your portfolio most of the time. You’ll stand out better, and it’ll be easier to switch to a different industry (or niche) later if you want to.
Once you’ve chosen a host and domain name, you can install WordPress on your website and choose a theme for the website. Then, you can add a landing page describing your services and pricing, or even a separate page for a blog where you write about industry-related topics.
Don’t forget to optimize your website for search engines. Include the most common industry-related keywords in your copy, so Google can rank you better and clients can find you more easily.
Most importantly, create a separate page for your portfolio — depending on your industry, this could be:
A video reel (if you’re a video producer, 3D, or 2D animator…)
A selection of your best photographs (if you’re a photographer)
A summary of your best articles (if you’re a writer)
Find your first clients
How to Build a Career in Freelancing, Your personal website portfolio may be where your first clients will contact you, but you should actively pursue your first gig, keeping in mind what employers are looking for. There are several ways to do this:
Get involved in your industry community
Start by joining a forum for your industry, providing input on important topics and questions, and participating in discussions.
Reddit Forum
Also, don't be afraid to ask yourself questions. If you see a mural, app, logo design, or other art-related work that you like, reach out to the person who created it and ask what they want from the person who did the work.
Ask how they hired the freelancer and why they hired them. After all, clients are the best people to tell you what they want from the professionals they hire.
Learn How to Pitch via Email
Knowing how to pitch your skills and expertise is just as important as the skills and expertise themselves. And, it's a good way to start sending cold emails to potential clients. So, identify potential clients in your industry (a simple Google search or browsing social media can be enough), and start crafting your emails:
Personalize your emails. Make sure you address the person in your email (avoid the popular "To Whom It May Concern" phrase).
Make sure you are pitching the email to the right person. If you are writing for an online magazine, make sure you are pitching to the magazine’s editor, not the magazine’s art director or someone unrelated to the writing field.
Create a well-thought-out proposal. Do your research, understand what the company or website you are pitching is looking for, and how your services relate to it.
Email pitching will probably take some practice, but you will soon realize how effective your emails are. If no one is answering your questions, then you are probably doing something wrong and need to rethink your approach.
Finding your first client is the hardest, especially if you have not yet made a name for yourself in your industry/niche. However, your first client (if he or she is satisfied with your work) can give you a referral that will help you get started as it will act as your credibility with future clients.
Check out freelance job platforms/websites
You can check out general freelance job platforms, but also for developers, designers, virtual assistants, writers, translators, etc.
Specifically, you can start with:
Easily Hired, CareerBuilder, and FlexJobs (general)
Github Jobs (development)
If you can get a job (design)
ProBlogger job board (writing)
Then, go from there.
Easily Hired
Expand your network
Once you get your first client, you’ll need to work on finding repeat clients. Chances are, your first client will become a repeat client. And, chances are, the referrals you get from that first client will inspire others to contact you and provide you with a steady stream of work.
Regardless, it’s best to expand your network – and this is where the famous Pareto Principle comes into play. According to this, building a good relationship with 20% of your clients will help you find 80% of new work through their referrals. Moreover, every 20 new referrals increases your chances of getting a new project by 80%.
Here are some things to do to expand your network:
Attend to industry webinars
Attend to events
Join Facebook groups and communities
Streamline your social media network
Send invitations to professionals in your field (or an area where your services are often needed)
LinkedIn
Also, don’t hesitate to introduce people you know (not just existing clients, but also your friends and family) to new people. After all, you never know where you’ll find your next gig, and it might even be at the local pub where the people from the neighboring marketing agency like to hang out.
Balance Your Part-Time Freelancing Side Gig with Your Full-Time Job
All this talk about freelancing almost made you forget about your full-time job, didn't it?
Well, it shouldn't.
If you work both full-time and part-time, your full-time job usually covers your taxes, healthcare, retirement funds, and other after-tax expenses, and possibly your bills. Therefore, it should be a priority over a part-time job.
Keep in mind your deadlines for both your full-time job and your freelance projects - set your priorities and create a schedule that you can stick to. If a fun freelance project overlaps with an important and urgent deadline at the office, you might want to pass up the opportunity.
Keep in mind that a survey on how freelancers spend their time found that 28.60% of freelancers spend more than 30 hours per week on their freelance work. So, when you work full-time and take on a part-time job, you could be working 80+ hours per week.
In such cases, always make sure that you take care of your health and leave enough time for food, sleep, exercise, and spending time with friends and family.
On the other hand, if you want to be a full-time freelancer, you should answer the question mentioned earlier:
How much money do you need to make per month to make the decision to quit your full-time job?
The best option for you is to choose a number that covers your current bills and the equipment you need to do the job, but leaves enough money to cover self-employment taxes and other expenses.
How to Start Freelancing Without Experience
The previous part of this post discussed what steps you should take if you already work in an industry in which you are interested in building a career. But, what if you are an economics graduate working in the finance department for a local newspaper to pay the bills and don't want to build a long-term career in financing yourself?
If so, you will need to do some soul-searching to find your real (freelance) career - and of course, deal with the fact that you are probably a novice and have no formal experience competing with many experienced professionals.
But, there are ways to tackle the problem:
Choose a topic that interests you
First, identify your interests and passions. For example, if it’s a programming language, you’re off to a great start. However, there are many other lucrative industries that you can explore besides programming.
Then, make a list of 10-15 of your interests and passions – after all, if you work in an industry that you love, you’ll be less likely to give it up when times get tough.
Next, identify the most searched problems and topics within each listed industry/specialty. You can do this by using a simple keyword analysis tool that tells you how many times a particular term is searched each month.
Now, check out industry-related forums to read what problems and concerns real people in a particular industry are facing. Can you solve their problems and answer their questions? Then you’ll have a way to fill a gap in the market.
The last (and perhaps most important) thing you should consider before becoming a freelancer is the competition - has the industry problem you want to solve already been solved? If so, has it been solved satisfactorily, in a quality way? If not, then maybe you've found your true purpose.
You can take on a second job without experience.
It's good to have an interest, but maybe you're looking for a side gig where you can start working immediately without any formal experience?
If so, you'll have plenty of opportunities, so take your pick:
If you're a good typist, you could do data entry work in your spare time.
If you're a skilled researcher, you could help ease the burden on a team working on a project by conducting their internet research.
If you're proficient in one or two languages, you could apply to transcribe audio to text (note that you'll still need a transcription certification to work as a medical transcriptionist).
If you're looking for a quick part-time job, these positions are great - but they can be hard to find due to high competition.
Don't work for exposure
This is a common problem for most new freelancers without experience - you'll be tempted to do pro bono work to gain exposure and experience that you can later list on your CV.
However, you should be very careful when working for free.
On the one hand, not having a full-fledged project to showcase your talents usually means you're less likely to get hired - it's easier to get free work (as you'd expect), and you can build a portfolio through it.
But the problem here is, people might hear that you work for free, and it will be hard for you to get a paid job later — “You worked for company X for free, why can’t you work for me for free?”
So, don’t work for free to get famous — remember, if your work is good enough to help you get famous, then getting paid is good enough for you.
The nail in the coffin for working for free is that you are more likely to lose what you want to get — respect and recognition — if you work for free.
People won’t value your work or respect you as a credible professional if you work for free because people usually assume that there is something wrong with the work they get for free — even if there isn’t.
And, if you work for free, potential clients won’t take you as seriously as they do professionals who value their work from the start — these professionals show that they always value their work and time, which entices clients to do the same.
Ultimately, you should always look for paid gigs – you just need to build your skills, expertise, and whatever else you lack through online or in-person classes.
Which brings us to our next point.
If you’re at the beginning of your freelance career and you’re determined to start getting paid from your clients, but don’t know how to make it work, check out the following blog posts:
Master Your Freelance Skills
When you have no formal experience, but also lack the skills needed to produce full-quality work, the only viable solution is to learn, learn, learn, and practice, practice, practice.
Now, this may not be practical when you’re working full-time, but if this particular industry/specialty is your passion, you’ll probably have no problem swapping free time for some learning time. Just make sure you always leave room for sleep, rest, and other necessities.
You can also enroll in a class in your city to learn more about the most popular programming languages or cutting-edge practices in graphic design.
Or, you can try Lynda Online Classes in design, web development, software development, photography, or one of 600+ other courses.
Lynda Online Classes
If you want to expand your skills online, Udemy is another option.
You can gain practical knowledge by frequenting various niche-based websites that talk about theory. Then, you can practice on your own by coding, drawing, writing, researching, or expanding your skills in your free time.
Acquire additional skills
In addition to your core, industry-related freelance skills (i.e., your hard skills), you will need to work on some additional skills - your soft skills.
Soft skills are more personality-related: communication and critical thinking are probably the most important traits, but you also need to be persistent, able to handle pressure, a good scheduler, and good at time management.
You need to be confident enough to convince your potential clients that you have the skills and experience they are looking for.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to be disciplined and practice. Above all, you need to balance your full-time job and freelancing side projects (even if you don’t have any personal work), and this requires some practice in planning.
*Some of the guidelines in the previous sections of this post are essential, even if you don’t have experience — defining your business goals, choosing a niche, creating a personal website, and identifying your target clientele are always mandatory, so consider these things.
How to Start Freelancing in a Specific Niche
The previous sections of this post discussed how to start freelancing in general (whether or not you have experience, and regardless of industry). However, there are some guidelines you should keep in mind when looking for work in specific industries, such as programming, design, or writing.
How to Start Freelancing Programming
Your best chance to start a career in programming is to:
Find an experienced programmer to partner with you.
Block time in your calendar to code every day (remember, you won’t get very far if you don’t constantly practice your skills).
Build apps, tools, and code before showcasing your work on Github and similar places to market your skills to potential clients.
Work on open source projects.
Reach out to startups and local companies to see if they need software development services (they probably do).
Create a business e-card and send it to all your email contacts to announce what services you offer.
Apply to write technical guest posts about coding, or start a YouTube channel where you talk about different programming languages.
Check out job boards and websites for freelance developers, such as Scalable Path.
Scalable Path
How to Start a Freelance Graphic Design
Your best chance to start a career in graphic design is to:
Pay special attention to the design of your personal website. Make it look like a brand and include an eye-catching logo, so you can stand out from the competition.
Create new, innovative graphics and showcase them in an attractive way in your online portfolio.
Join a community of freelance designers and participate in community discussions and events, establishing yourself as a knowledgeable designer.
Work to build a partner network. Find freelancers whose skills complement your own, and build relationships with them. Eventually, you can start working as a team on jobs or refer each other to clients.
Have regular consultations (either face-to-face or online) with the client, discussing pricing, requirements, and the final product (if you don’t initiate such consultations, the client may start to set these terms for you).
Create an intro design package of the services you will offer as a paid trial period. This is a great solution if you’re not sure how to price your services and want to offer free work for exposure.
Gather the tools and software you need, and always create mockups before fully participating in the final design solution.
Check out job boards and websites for freelance designers like Dribbble.
How to Start Freelance Writing
Your best chance to start a career in writing is to:
Write every day. Work on your writing every day to expand your skills and keep them sharp (try the Seinfeld Productivity Method to help you with this).
Run a blog. A personal blog is a must if you want to make a name for yourself as a writer.
Aim to guest post on reputable blogs in your field.
Stay up to date with trends, innovations, and news in your niche. You’ll likely find ideas for your next writing pitch this way.
Learn the basics of editing and managing images. Images break up text (making it easier to scan), and clients may ask you to include images in posts you write for them.
Be extra careful when crafting your cold email pitch. These pitches are usually the first glimpse of your writing skills to a potential client. If your pitch is unreliable and full of grammatical errors, the recipient will likely assume that your content won’t be good and will reject your offer.
Check out job boards and websites for freelance writers, such as the ProBlogger job board.
Keep Your 9-to-5 Job with Freelancers and Clockify
If you have a day job and want to become a freelancer, expect to walk a tightrope between office responsibilities and client deadlines.
And you probably knew that.
But all this work doesn’t have to be a blur of chaos.
In fact, there are so many hours in the day that there’s always more than enough time to complete difficult projects.
Enter Clockify, a time-tracking software that lets you identify hidden gaps and wasted hours in your schedule.
To improve your time management skills, you can use Clockify to divide the time you spend on different activities.
With this app, you can see exactly how long each activity took and how much money you earned while performing it. This way, you’ll be more aware of how you use your time in your day job and your freelancing career.
Custom breakdown of your work hours in Clockify
Amazing, right?
Finally, you might want to use Clockify to create freelancing goals as projects. Once you do that, you can:
Set estimates for each project,
Compare billable and non-billable hours, and
Track and divide projects by task.
See below what creating projects in Clockify looks like:
Setting estimates and tracking progress on projects in Clockify
What’s more, Clockify offers you more advanced features like invoicing, billing clients, expenses, and more. Take a look at Clockify’s features and plans and choose the one that suits your needs:
- Clockify Pricing
- Clockify Pricing and Plans
Also, don’t forget to check out the new bundle plan, which Clockify is offering with two other apps at a special price.
Many people hold back because of the fear of time mismanagement. This type of mindset prevents them from jumping into the freelance suite.
Still, you’d be surprised at how far you can go with time tracking software.
Turn your day job and freelancing career into a symphony of productivity.
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