Freelancing is a remote way of earning money without being employed. You can earn money while relaxing on a Thai beach with a laptop, or you can use your home computer to prepare quarterly accounts. Let’s find out how to become a freelancer from scratch: set up work processes, find customers, and pay taxes.
Table of contents
Step 1: Choose a niche
It’s best to write out all your skills that are basically possible to monetize. Think about what you are passionate about. Look at the areas in which other freelancers offer their services. For example, if you focus on freelancing sites, here are the sections that are usually presented there—they quite reflect the structure of supply and demand on the market:
- Specialists in programming, IT services, development of games, websites and applications, and system administration.
- Photographers, videographers.
- Designers, illustrators, artists, architects, and animation movie developers.
- Text specialists—copywriters, journalists, editors, and translators.
- SMM specialists—content managers, group administrators, targeting specialists.
- Marketers, PR managers, SEO specialists, and internal communications specialists.
- Specialists in working with sound—composers, arrangers, editors, and announcers.
- Specialists in online education, from tutors to administrators of online schools and moderators of webinars.
- Hairdressers and beauticians, security guards, “husbands for an hour,” couriers—those who provide household services.
Step 2: Determine your legal status to become a freelancer
Working “in the shadows” and not paying taxes is dangerous, not very responsible, and negatively characterizes you as a professional. Therefore, check with the local authorities where you live to find out what forms of employment can be used in relation to your activities (self-employed, sole proprietorship, etc.).
Do not forget about contributions to the Pension Fund and Social Insurance Fund, if any in your country, as well as accounting and tax reporting. Thankfully, today there are such services as Norman, which solve all issues online remotely and automate many processes (invoicing, calculating income taxes, etc.).
Step 3: Organize your workplace
Time management and self-organization are your everything to become a freelancer. Think about where your desk, professional literature, notebook, and folders with documents (they will definitely be contracts and acts) will be located. I recommend choosing a table with adjustable height and a comfortable chair—maximum ergonomics is extremely important.
Think about lighting. A good modern organizer will help to organize small things. To visually separate your workspace from the rest of the apartment, tell your family that when you are at your desk, you are working.
Alternatively, you can rent a workspace in a co-working space if there is one near your home. This disciplines you and creates the feeling of working in a team. But it is an additional cost.
Step 4: Create a portfolio
Even a beginner needs to have a portfolio. You can put in it your academic work, the results of projects you have done for your friends or colleagues. If you have done an internship, you can also show your work in your portfolio.
If you have nothing, become your own customer. Formulate tasks, perform them to the highest quality, and put the results in your portfolio. 3-5 works at the start are quite enough, then the portfolio will grow naturally.
Think about where you will post your portfolio—the easiest way is to register on one of the freelance sites. There you can also get access to projects and tasks published by customers.
Step 5: Start searching for orders
This stage, once started, never ends—in the search mode, you will have to live for years. Of course, you should strive to find regular customers and stable orders, but even so, customers can leave, which means that you need to periodically monitor offers and vacancies. Where can this be done?
Exchanges are platforms that act as intermediaries between those who place orders and performers. Freelance exchanges actively promote themselves, aiming to boost traffic by requiring performers to create accounts and reply to projects. Most often through the exchange’s internal communication system.
Here is a list of the most famous freelancing exchanges in the world:
- Upwork
- Freelancer.com
- Fiverr
- Guru
- FlexJobs
- Dribbble
- Toptal
- PeoplePerHour
- 99designs
Step 6: Keep going… indefinitely
Freelancing is a variant of work organization, which implies constant improvement and professional development. While an employee may continue doing the same tasks for years, feeling comfortable and at ease, a freelancer must develop in a highly competitive market.
It is important to expand competencies, deepen knowledge, and take on more and more important areas of work. A reputation as a strong specialist is not easy to earn, and you can lose it very quickly if you stop developing.
So you will definitely need:
- Watch and listen to topical webinars;
- Take continuing education courses;
- Possibly learn a related specialty;
- Look up to leaders in the field and learn from their experience.
The more experience, better reputation and deeper knowledge you have, the higher the level of income you can get from freelancing. By the way, to become a freelancer you will also need to pump up soft skills such as time management and effective communication skills.
