How to become a freelancer

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How to become a freelancer

www.Freelancergate.com

 

  • The world now with remote work on the rise, more people than ever want to become a freelancer and start freelancing. With the desire for remote and location-independent work on the rise, starting a freelance business has become an attractive prospect for making a living.

 

  • Thankfully, it’s easier to become a freelancer than ever before. More than 77 million freelanced, and the trend continues to grow with more than 50% of Gen Z opting to start freelancing.
  • Not only is it more popular to become a freelancer than ever before, but companies are getting more and more comfortable hiring freelancers rather than full-time employees.
  • A lot of jobs can be done remotely, and companies don’t need to provide the same financial or healthcare benefits to freelancers as they do full time employees.
  • So maybe it’s time for YOU to become self-employed and start a freelancing business.
  • Let’s talk about how you can start a freelance businessyourself very quickly with very little money up front.
  • Start with why you want to start freelancing
  • Every day, you’ll need to motivate yourself to find clients and do exceptional work for them – and the first step is understanding your own “why.”

 

  • Why do you want to become a freelancer in the first place?
  • To create some income on the side?
  • To replace your full time income?
  • How much do you want to earn while freelancing?
  • The reason why you want to become a freelancer will be your north star for whether or not you are successful.
  • Choose which skills you’ll start freelancing with
  • Whether you’re set to become a freelancer full time or on the side, your business will be built around the unique skills you have to offer. Those skills are your greatest asset.
  • So step one is identifying the different skillsyou’ve built over the years that other people may not have and want to pay YOU to use.
  • Start with a simple spreadsheet. In the first column, start listing each individual skill you can think of.

·     Start freelancing with skills from previous jobs

  • It’ll be easiest to start with all of the skills that you’ve already been paid to leverage. It doesn’t matter if the job was full time or part time, as long as you were being paid.
  • If an employer was willing to pay you to do that work, chances are that you’re pretty good at it! That’s a skill you can likely leverage to start a freelance business.
  • Think about your last several jobs: what were you being paid to do for those companies?
  • Don’t hold back – it may be customer service, graphic design, photography, or financial modeling.
  • If those roles required creativityor use of a specific software, it’s even more likely that someone would be willing to pay YOU rather than take the time to learn that skill themselves.
  • Some common software examples would be Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Sketch, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, and so on.

·     Start freelancing with skills outside your job description

  • When you’re thinking about your previous jobs, don’t limit yourself to the job description or main responsibilities.
  • In most full time jobs, employees find themselves doing things that weren’t originally in their job description.
  • For example, if you were responsible for running a company’s social media accounts, you probably picked up some writing skills too.
  • So instead of only thinking about your social media skills, you may also be suited for copywriting or marketing work.
  • Add every specific skill to the list – the more skills you can name, the better.

·     Start freelancing using your hobbies and self-taught skills

  • Your skills aren’t limited to just what you’ve been paid to do. Go beyond the things you’ve already gotten paid for to things you’ve taught yourself, or even your hobbies.
  • What do you spend time doing just because you like doing it? Think about everything.
  • For example, if you collect stamps, you’re probably a strong researcher, organized, and you may even be good at negotiating!
  • If you’ve taught yourself how to design graphics in Canva, that counts too.
  • Again, at this stage, the more skills you can list, the better.

·      Narrow down your list of skills

  • Once you have a list of all the skills you’ve been paid to use, taught yourself, and use as a hobby, now we can start to narrow down that list.
  • First, prioritize the list by which skills you WANT to get paid for the most.
  • You can create a new column in your spreadsheet and rank them in order, starting with number one.