How to Become a Freelancer?: Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

Based on a survey by LendingTree, as of December 2022, approximately 44% of US adults have a side hustle. If you are also someone looking to start your freelance journey, you are at the right place.

For beginners, it is important to learn how to start and where to start! Here, in this blog, I have explained step-by-step how you can start freelancing. This is beginner friendly guide and you can follow the steps explained below.

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#1. Find Your skills

Here is a list of skills that you can decide from:

• Graphic Designing: This is one of the most desirable skills that you can learn and make a good income through freelancing. There are certain software meant for graphic designing; for example, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Canva, Figma, and others. You can either of these software to start working.

• Market research: This is one of the skills that I used when I started my freelance journey. You can also learn market research skills either primary research or secondary research or both. If you get a hold of it, this can pay you well in the long run.

• Content writing: Content writing can include website content, blogs, articles, short stories, and others. Focus on one of the writing styles and you need to be an expert in at least one of the languages; eg. English, Hindi, French, and more.

• Web Development: Website or app development is also one of the most in-demand skills that clients used to search on freelancing platforms. If you have this skill, you can start working to get paid.

• Video Editing: Take software for video editing that you can use to edit videos. Video editing is getting popular these days as businesses are using more social media platforms for marketing their products through video ads or reels.

• Social Media Marketing: You need to be aware of at least 1 to 2 of the social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more to provide your services.

#2. Already Have A Skill or Starting A Fresh?

Some Skills are in-built or you already have experience working with that skill such as you have been a teacher and so, you can start tutoring online right away. In my case, I was already doing a lot of market research when I was in my corporate job, and in my MBA course too, market research was one of the subjects and I had done a few projects at that time. So, it wasn't new for me and so, I could start right away, though I learned several new things besides my work.

Likewise, it can be any of the skills mentioned above. So, if you are already an expert in any of the skills, you can start working as a freelancer right away. Otherwise, take some time to learn and get some experience with a new skill that you wish to work with.

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#3. Where Can You Learn These Skills?

In case you are a fresher or experienced but want to learn a specific skill to start working in a particular niche, you can do a paid online course in that skill available on many platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, and others. If you don’t want to spend your money or want to learn through free resources, you can do this by watching YouTube channels that provide free information. There are many YouTube channels that have in detail content and you can choose any of them as per your desired skill.

#4. Create a Sample Portfolio Using Your Skill

After deciding on your skills and learning till you are perfect, you need to create a portfolio of your work. A portfolio is a sample showing your skills or the actual work you can do. This shows how expert you are in your work.

Now, create samples of your work to showcase your skills to people so that you can start getting clients. This portfolio will help you showcase your capability of completing a task for your potential client. Your sample portfolio plays a crucial role to help you achieve clients who would hire you and pay for your work.

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#5. Where to Sell Your Skill

Cold Emailing: Find emails of your potential clients from their websites or social media platforms and send them an email explaining that you want to work with them and show how you will help them and send your portfolio.

LinkedIn Profile: Create your LinkedIn profile and put your sample work and portfolio showcasing your work. LinkedIn is a great platform for freelancers and clients or businesses to connect. You can create posts in a timely manner to attract your clients. Clients can directly contact you on this platform.

Recruiters are quite actively searching for talents on LinkedIn. So, you can also expect HRs to ask you for a vacancy to hire you after looking at your portfolio and posts that you create on LinkedIn.

Social Media Platforms: You can create your social media platform and start posting content related to the work that you do. You can make Instagram reels, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and more related to your work. This will help you attract the right people to your profile and potential clients can connect with you through these platforms. You can also send DMs (direct messages) to your potential clients explaining how can you help them.

Freelancing platforms: There are many freelancing sites where you can create a profile and start selling your services. You can choose any of them that you find suitable for yourself.

For example, Fiverr asks you to create a profile on their platform for free and you can then sell your gig to interested clients.

Likewise, at Upwork, you need to create your portfolio, post samples of your work, and start bidding on the available projects. Depending on your work experience, bid rate, and other details, a client can decide either to work or not work with you.

If you are interested to start a side hustle, follow me and subscribe to The Healthy Hustle Life https://youtube.com/@thehealthyhustlelife/videos

#6. How To Receive Payments?

Indian clients usually pay through A/c transfer in INR whereas, international clients usually pay in dollars. Freelance platforms use PayPal or Payoneer, or Wire Transfer, and depending on the platform that you use, you need to create your account on PayPal or Payoneer. Then you need to share these account details on these platforms to start receiving payments. For example, to receive payment through PayPal, they ask you to provide your email ID.

This is important to know that these platforms take a conversion fee (from dollar to INR or other currency) every time you receive a payment.

If you are interested to start a side hustle, follow me and subscribe to The Healthy Hustle Life https://youtube.com/@thehealthyhustlelife/videos

#7. Keep Patience and Stay Motivated

This is important to know that there are millions of freelancers on each platform available for hire and so, the competition is high. So, it is important to fine-tune your skills and keep improving your portfolio from time to time. Also, other freelancer’s portfolio and their work to know where you stand and improve accordingly.

Start building a network on social media and other platforms and stay updated in terms of what are the new tools available in the market, ways to improve or upskill, learn a new skill, and where is the opportunity for you to work.

If you are interested to start a side hustle or a work from home job, follow me and subscribe to The Healthy Hustle Life https://youtube.com/@thehealthyhustlelife/videos