Leaving your full-time office job and transitioning as a freelancer is an exciting time, thinking you could finally ditch waking up early and endure the traffic jams while commuting to work and have the freedom and flexibility of being your own boss. Plus your safety of possibly getting infected with the COVID virus in public. However, no matter how good it may sound, it can also be a nerve-wracking and stress-filled journey. Your mind will be flooded with questions and doubts as to your financing, your strategies to find new clients, and deciding on your services and rates.
Among so many complexities that you will encounter in your freelancing life, here are a few freelancing tips you can follow in order to streamline your transition and make the most of your efforts along the way.
1. Map a plan of action
Some people think they could switch to freelancing overnight but in reality that is not the case. You should never just randomly quit your office job without a concrete plan unless you were laid off or retrenched due to company needs. You should map a concrete plan and identify your goals. Prepare the right equipment and set up a conducive working space. Build first your personal brand and online presence and update your resumes. You make sure all of your online platforms are set up and running. One of the best ways to get accustomed and comfortable during the transition from full-time employee to freelancer is to speak with others who have done the same. You can do this by joining freelancing communities on Facebook. Having a public presence on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the likes, will also help heighten your visibility when potential clients are searching to hire people like you.
2. Make sure you have a financial cushion
As a full-time office employee, you enjoy all the perks of health, social benefits, bonuses, and 13th-month pay. So this is the time to start thinking about those perks before you quit. You will rarely get clients who provide these benefits and if you get one, you are one lucky freelancer. Your future freelancing pay will need to cover everything, in addition to your livelihood expenses. Freelancing can be an immensely financially rewarding career, at least when your business is going well. When business is slow, it’s easy for days, weeks, or months to slip by with little or no regular income. Well, this is one of the cons of freelancing so you better prepare and save up. Having a financial cushion not only reduces your stress level but can also prevent you from having to take on low-paying jobs out of necessity. Know your worth.
3. Never burn your bridges
We all run in circles. Some big, and some rather small but the only sure thing regardless of the size of the circles you run in is that we are bound to meet people we used to work for and it wouldn’t work to our advantage if we left them on bad terms. You never know when you might need these contacts again, not to mention references from your employer. Some freelancers even continue to work on an ad-hoc basis for their previous employer on leaving as this can be a great way to start getting experience and building your profile as a freelancer. Even if you don’t continue to work for your old boss, the world is a very small place so it’s better to play it safe and do your best job right up until your last day, get your reference, and leave with dignity and good reputation.
4. Find a marketable niche.
The most important tip is to find your marketable niche. Know the relevant freelancing skills that you can offer as a service being a freelancer. Everyone has different skills and different areas in which they can claim expertise. These skills can start as hobbies or you can apply your skillset from your previous corporate job. This can be something as simple as admin works or something you enjoy like designing and illustrating, or a more advanced one like developing an app or program. Whatever it is, the key to winning in freelancing is to find a skill that you’re good at and has enough demand in the marketplace.
5. Polish and invest in your skill
Now you already know your skill and found a marketable niche, you should make sure you can offer it as a service. Simply to say, you need to be really good at what you do to be able to get paid for it. Continuing education and skills development is important as a freelancer, which is something to be considered in our rapidly changing world. The skills you learned yesterday might not be applicable today. You can try checking free tutorials on Youtube and free freelancing courses online. If you are someone who doesn't know where to start and is easily overwhelmed with loads of information and has a budget, you can also try to enroll in paid freelancing courses that have a more detailed course guide. One example that offers a variety of freelancing courses is FVA Business Consultancy. You can also apply to them for an apprenticeship which will further help you build your profile as a freelancer and be introduced to potential clients.
6. Build up your portfolio
You are now all set with your skills and now it's time to start building your reputation and profile. You can do this by creating a portfolio. A portfolio can be a website or a PDF format where you showcase all your work. That way, when you’re reaching out to a client, you can simply give them the link to your portfolio or send a PDF attachment to check out your skills. Make sure to only include your best work in the portfolio.
7. Finding the right freelancing platforms
The key to getting more work and winning clients is to find the “right” market to sell your services. It is important for a freelance beginner to find the right market and sell their services to start a successful freelance career. When it comes to freelancing sites, you can’t point out a platform as “the best site” to find work. It all boils down to the type of service you are selling. Some sites are best for writers, some are more suitable for programmers, and some are great for designers. Whichever platform you end up choosing, it’s always best to avoid the most popular ones like UpWork, Fiverr, and Freelance.com. As those are the sites with the highest competition and you'll have to go into bidding wars with more experienced freelancers with established profiles to land the job. You can still use these platforms though and just make sure to send outstanding proposals to be noticed even as a beginner.
So the best approach is to pick a marketplace that’s fairly new and join it. It’ll have fewer freelancers so you’ll have low competition. And it will increase your chances of landing jobs. You can also try joining the freelancing communities and groups on Facebook as some other freelancers and even direct clients are posting job openings on these social media platforms.
8. Know your worth. Charge the right rates for your service.
Last but not least is finding out how to charge your services right. As a beginner, the best way to figure out the right rates is to go look at popular freelance marketplaces and see what other freelancers in your niche or industry are charging. Since you are just new, it's ridiculous to charge your service the same rates as those with established freelancers in your niche. Instead, you should try to check out a middle-ground where you can offer a competitive price than those experienced freelancers without making yourself seem cheap. When the time you will gain more experience with excellent feedback, your service rates increase will follow.