The Daily Freelancer: April 16, 2020 — How to Get Started as a Freelancer
I’m seven months into my freelance career, and a pandemic hit. With everything going on, including my part time day job ending at the end of April anyway, launching me into full time freelance, I had the initial freakout. Holy s#*^, how am I supposed to ramp up my freelance income when the world has stopped?
Well, no, it hasn’t. The economy continues online, and websites won’t be shut down because of a pandemic. I noticed that people are still strongly looking for freelancers, and having diversified income is actually the best advice for getting through an economic crisis.
So how do you get started freelancing?
When I started researching how to be a freelance writer, I saw a lot of different approaches on how to get clients. While I would love to do it in a different way in the future once I’m scaled, here’s what I’m doing now, and what’s gotten me ramped up quickly.
Figure out what you’re good at. I had the advantage of spending my 9-5 life involved in website copywriting and marketing/communication activities, which I loved. Those aspects of my job were only parts of my job, though. I’ve been writing for a long time, and love creating, writing, and managing websites.
But don’t worry about niching down yet. Lots of freelancers will tell you you need to niche down immediately, or “discover your superpower.” I’m starting to do that seven months in, but I needed experience to do so. I started picking up jobs across my skills area: writing, editing, proofreading, even resume consulting. It gave me the chance to work on different projects, with different clients, but especially it gave me the chance to see what people were paying for each of those.
Have a website. You should have a website already if you’re living in 2020 and doing anything. But if you don’t have a website, set one up. You need something to point people towards to show them who you are. (I wrote a blog post about setting up a personal website on Squarespace, so have a look.)
How to actually get clients. You’re ready to write! But…how? For who? Who do you reach out to? I’ve seen lots of suggestions on how to get clients: Ask your friends and relatives (this resulted in only one person for me), cold email companies (how do you find who to work with, and - yikes, cold emailing?), reach out to people on LinkedIn (same - who, and yikes), build relationships on social media by posting (takes so much time), start an email list to cull clients (again, takes time), and more. I think I will eventually be doing all of these things. But first, I went immediately to Upwork.
Start right now on Upwork. I’ve seen the advice to either never get on Upwork, or get off of Upwork as fast as you can. I, right now, am exclusively building my freelance work on Upwork, and it’s given me great experience, some cool clients, and good momentum, in addition to invoicing services and protection. I’ll write another post on Upwork, probably, but you can literally sign on right now, and have immediate access to thousands of clients. You can be working tonight. New jobs post every minute, and I can look through my listing and spot five jobs I can apply for right now. I hit refresh, and there are five more jobs. There’s so much stuff!
Look for more solid clients. Lots of folks knock Upwork because it’s a race to the bottom. And generally, yes - you’ll see clients wanting blogs posts, but who will only pay $5 for one. And there will be freelancers who will do it for $5. Sail right on by those posts! You want to look for clients willing to pay higher prices per project, or who are willing to pay a higher hourly wage. Those folks are serious, and you’re serious too. You want to think of pricing yourself premium, so look for the premium clients.
Remember when I said niche? You can adjust your settings to see jobs suited to your skills. Again, I started off doing a handful of different projects. But after a few months in I noticed something. I had been going after editing and proofreading jobs, and not getting a ton of them. Upwork will show you how many people pitch, and I noticed it was a good amount. On a whim, because I had website copywriting experience, I applied to a website copywriting job. It was higher pay, and I noticed there were less applicants. And I got the job. And then I got another one. So now I know where to focus my pitches!
So that’s where I am right now. I’ve made almost $5000 freelancing part time in the past six months using Upwork and just two other outside clients. I’m ramping up more projects and gaining more traction every day - and so can you!
Hi! I’m Jessica, and I can write your content. Head to my Writer for Hire page, and work with me today!