How to Become A Freelancer | Get a Lot of Clients

In this post, you’ll learn how to become a freelancer, what’s a freelancing platform, how to get clients, and how to make a living by working online.

what’s a Freelancer?

A freelancer is an independent worker. A self-employed professional that works for, basically, whoever he or she wants.

They have full freedom and control over their activity. They set their own prices, they can fire clients whenever they want and they can choose to work where and whenever they want depending on what service you offer of course.

When you are a freelancer, you are your own boss and you can become one with almost any skill that can be offered independently. This skill might be video making, writing, copywriting, video editing, voice-over, coding, social media management, and much more.

Develop a skill in order to become a freelancer

First, obviously, you need to have your skills in place. So no matter what you want to provide, you must know how to provide that service.

However, if you fake a skill that you don’t actually have, you may find a few clients, but they will give you bad reviews and your new image and reputation as a freelancer will be destroyed and your career will be disappointedly over.

In order to find clients, you need to obsessively work on developing your skills, to the point where you are 100% confident that you can bring value to the marketplace.

As soon as you do you’re ready to start looking for clients, in this article I’m going to show you exactly how to find clients on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, or any other freelancing platform

What’s a freelancing platform?

A freelancing platform is nothing more than a website that Bridges Freelancers with people who need their services.

For a better explanation, I will give you an example:

Robert is a video editor, he’s 18 years old. He has been editing videos and making short films for the past few years, but now he’s ready to start offering his editing skills to the marketplace and make some money.

Robert isn’t really extroverted; in fact, he’s rather introverted, he doesn’t like calling businesses or having stressful face-to-face meetings.

However, that’s not a problem here, because he can find clients in a more effective way. So he starts by creating an account on one of the freelancing websites. Let’s say Upwork for example.

After having registered, he goes to find the work tab. He finds a bunch of posts of people looking for someone like him. It is literally like his Instagram or Facebook. Those all are businesses and individuals looking for someone to help them with their editing.

Robert can send proposals to any of those posts, telling potential clients why he’s a great fit for the job. He can talk about his experience, his past project and basically just sell himself as the best option.

If they think that he’s a good fit for the project they will hire him and pay him through the freelancing platform.

How to get clients?

So now you know how a freelancing platform works and how you’re supposed to find your clients but here’s the thing. You will probably start by sending a large number of proposals to a lot of jobs in the hope that someone will give you an opportunity but before you do that I want you to understand something.

Nobody trusts you and why should they! You have no track record on the freelancing website, you have no positive or negative feedback, you have nothing.

It’s very hard to get a client for this specific reason. You have no credibility.

So the question is how do you build that credibility? In order to become successful on freelancing platforms like Upwork or Fiverr or any other freelancing platform, you need to sacrifice a little especially in the beginning.

Your priority, or let’s call it mission, is simple: get positive reviews.

As soon as you start looking for clients, and hopefully you do land some, your first goal is to get great reviews. These great reviews will be the feedback that will help you find new clients. It’ll be a little credibility point added to your profile and image. You need that in order to find future clients.

here’s how you get a lot of clients as a Freelancer

When you get your first client don’t just do what they ask for. You have to over-deliver and even give them a discount. This client has to love you so much that they have no choice other than to give you a 5-star review with compliments all over it.

In order to make sure that you get that feedback and over-deliver for nothing you literally ask for it.

You could say something like: “Since I’m new to Upwork and I’m looking to get clients here’s a special offer. In exchange for a positive review (if well-deserved) I’m going to give a discount on our first project”.

This way you get a happy client but that’s not the end. In order to craft a decent proposal that grabs their attention, you need to do more than that.

How to write a winning proposal

Put yourself in their position. You are looking for a video editor, you post the job post and immediately dozens of freelancers send proposals to convince you to work with them.

This is overwhelming and they are reading through a bunch of “HI, my name is this and I can do this A, B, C, and D” you get the point.

You see, in a sea of proposals that look the same, you have to somehow stand out. Instead of creating a generic boring introduction, craft something interesting maybe even entertaining, an offer more than why I’m a good editor.

First of all, don’t make it all about you.

If the client described the job properly you’ll get the chance to tell them how you intend to get it done. Tell them what are the best tips and tricks that you’ll use and how your service is better than your competitors.

In the case of the video editor, you might tell them what software you use and what technique you apply in order to achieve high-quality color correction and grading. Tell them why your audio is always crystal clear and how you can make their audio decent too without the need for an expensive microphone.

Secondly, remember to stay relevant.

If you copy paste proposals here and there you will fail. This is because you won’t be listing relevant points that will help them in their specific situation.

So offer as much value as you can. Choose well-described jobs in order to personalize your proposals and tell them what type of person you are.

Craft a winning profile

A winning proposal is still not enough you need that credibility and you can use your profile to enhance it. So the client will read your proposal and they’ll say interesting but let me check their profile. That’s where you need to be Flawless.

Since you have no reviews all the rest needs to be on point, from a profile picture to your bio. The picture needs to be professional but don’t overdo it or you’ll look like a pushy try-hard. Keep it simple. A nice picture of you smiling should be enough.

This is the image the client will have of you and it’s important that they can clearly see your face. This way they won’t only associate you with some words on a screen but an actual human being. That helps build a strong professional relationship.

When talking about yourself use the same philosophy that you use for the proposal. Don’t just talk about yourself and how good you are. Actually, describe your experience and how you can help clients. Keep-alive and entertaining.

Also, make your portfolio so full of content that they will struggle to go over all of it. This will prove that even though you don’t have experience on that website or even with clients in real life you do have the skills to get the job done.

Here’s a mistake I see a lot of people make when they’re just getting started

In order to get more clients, they think that it’s a good idea to tell people that you can offer almost anything. That is wrong.

Instead of appearing as a jack of all trades but master of none; you have to specialize in a very specific field. This may seem counterintuitive but it will give you more clients than if you try to reach everyone.

There’s one principle that’s wildly used in sales. It’s called “Aim narrow, reach wide”

You have to aim for a very specific audience and then reach as many as you can from that category. This will also make you appear as the perfect person for the job.

Let me give you an example:

So you’re a video maker but not just a video maker you create an edit footage specifically for restaurants.

Here’s Josh and he’s the owner of a pretty successful Italian cuisine restaurant. He’s looking for a freelancer to create a b-roll sequence for his business and he’s presented with 2 options.

He can either Choose You, a specialized restaurant filmmaker, or any filmmaker that does any footage. Guess who is he going to choose?

How Upwork works?

So up to now, I’ve talked to you about how generally speaking freelancing works. But in order to give you more perspective on the business model of freelancing websites, I’m going to describe to you the business model of Upwork.

In order to make money, Upwork charges freelancers a 20% fee for every completed project. This means that if you’re given a project for $100 you’re going to actually receive $80 since 20% goes to an Upwork.

This might seem a lot and it is but that’s not the only way Upwork stays profitable.

Upwork also charges a small monthly fee to both clients and freelancers for their Plus Subscription. Which offers a few advantages here and there.

This platform is very well-designed in my opinion. In order to avoid spam and stop people from just copy/ past proposals everywhere, every freelancer has a limit on the number of proposals that you can send.

In fact, you have to use connects which are like credits in order to send a proposal. It might be anything from 2 to 4 or 5 connects per proposal. This isn’t too much, it’s acceptable, but this will be a problem at the beginning since you’re basically going to send proposals to a lot of people.

So in the case you deplete your connects you have to buy more. This is very good for clients since Freelancers are forced to only send proposals to jobs that are really worth it and that they actually have the skills for it.

It stops spam and that’s why Upwork is so powerful. There are many websites that do this but Upwork is particularly good if you want to be protected and find high-quality clients both short and long-term.

Conclusion

To sum things up, if you want to become a freelancer first, you need to learn a skill.
Second, find a freelance platform and build a great profile.
third, craft great and special proposals for each client.
Finally, over-deliver and get those 5-star reviews.

As you can see, it’s not that hard but you do have to work hard to get your first client. From there you can start setting your own prices, get big and more important clients and work on awesome projects.

Until then you’ll have to learn from every mistake. Always aim to improve your proposals, your profile, your portfolio, and more.

Thanks for your time

This was my approach to how to become a freelancer. I hope you liked it and if you did then I recommend you to join my newsletter I post about money management, how to make money online, and how to improve your productivity and mindset.

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