How to become a freelancer (For Beginners)

By Parasolla | Updated on May 19, 2022

How to become a freelancer (For Beginners)

How to start freelancing with no experience?

This is the first question that most beginners ask themselves when they want to start freelancing.

But, can you really make money from freelancing without experience?

The answer is NO. Imagine that someone pays you money for nothing!

It’s impossible!

However, you can start without experience but you can’t make money until you get enough skill and experience to get customers online. After that, you can offer your services for money.

In this article, we are going to teach you how to become a freelancer step by step.

1. Specify your service

Freelancing is a selling process. So, to start this process you need to identify a valuable service to offer. After that, you can get customers and earn money.

Now!

What are your skills?

And, what kind of services can you offer for money?

Here are some common services that you can offer as a freelancer:

Data Entry
Websites Designs
Marketing
Translation & Languages
Health & Medicine
Jobs
Education

Also, there are a lot of other services you can choose to start freelancing, but those were the most popular.

Choosing one of the previous services doesn’t mean you can earn more money because freelancing depends on two major factors:

Your valuable service & Your clients

As a result, if you could find the right clients for your service, you can earn as much money as you want.

So, to choose a service, you should ask yourself the following three questions:

The first: What kind of skills do I have?

The second: How can I use those skills to offer a valuable service?

The Third: Who are my customers?

Depending on the previous questions, you will find a valuable service and target customers.

2. Prepare your equipment

After you chose your service, you should prepare the required equipment to offer a high-quality service.

Also, you need to allocate an appropriate place to manage your work properly.

For example, I am a freelancer, and I offer a data entry service. What type of equipment do I need to offer a high-quality service?

I need a fast computer to finish the work quickly.

Also, I need a desk for my computer and a chair to keep my back safe when I work for long hours.

That was a simple example. The equipment can be different from one service to another.

Choosing good equipment is a very important point because it lets you offer a better service in a shorter time.

Also, offering a perfect service will bring you more customers and build you a good reputation.

3. Enhance your skills

It’s not enough to be good, you must be perfect!

Because the market is full of freelancers, you need to prove yourself and keep enhancing your skills to offer a perfect service to your clients.

For example, if you needed to hire a data entry and you had two choices:

The first one can write 75 words per minute, and the second one can write 125 words per minute.

Which one would you hire?

Of course, the second one, because he is more skillful and can finish your work fast.

As a result, the customers are always looking for a freelancer who can offer a high-quality service.

So, you need to consider this point carefully and keep up with the market requirements and clients.

4. Choose a freelance platform

After you identified your services and prepared your equipment, it’s time to choose an appropriate freelancing platform to start your freelancing project.

There are too many freelancing platforms in the market and you can start with any one of them.

It’s recommended to start with one of the popular freelancing platforms because they usually have more tools and options to help you develop your project as a beginner quickly.

Another point you need to consider when you choose a freelancing platform. You should check "withdrawing money methods" and make sure the site is safe.

Some popular freelancing platforms:

1. Freelancer

2. Upwork

3. Flexjobs

4. Toptal

5. Fiverr

Tip: It is recommended to have a look at all freelancing platforms and assess them depending on your services and potential clients.

So, make sure you choose the most appropriate freelancing website for your business because it takes a long time to build a good reputation on anyone of them.

5. Create a professional portfolio

After you chose a freelance platform, you must build a professional portfolio. The most important thing you need to consider is to build trust between you and your customers.

So, you should add all the required information to your portfolio to attract as many customers as possible.

The first thing you need to do is to add an appropriate personal picture. After that, you should add a summary about you.

For example:

I'm an IT Engineer and I have seven years of experience.

I offer the following services: Web Designing, Graphic Designing, and Video services.

That was a simple example, you can write whatever you want but make sure your summery is attractive and talks about your services well.

Subsequently, you should add some items of your work to your portfolio because most clients assess the appropriate freelancer depending on his work.

So, you need to add some professional samples of your work to get more projects.

The last thing you need to do is to make sure that your profile is verified and doesn’t have any problems to be able to work and withdraw your profits easily.

6. Promote yourself

This is one of the essential steps to starting freelancing.

How to market yourself as a freelancer?

Making a professional portfolio is not enough to get customers and start earning money.

The first thing you should do after building your portfolio is to promote yourself to get the first few projects.

To do that, you can market yourself for the people around you. For example, your first project can be from one of your friends, family, or neighbors.

The most difficult stage in freelancing is the first few projects. So, you need to work carefully and accurately to build a good reputation which is one of the major factors to get more clients.