The best formula to become a successful freelancer | 2022 updated guide
Freelancing sounds super interesting but it takes a lot more than that if you are thinking to take freelancing part-time or even full-time.
There are many other strategies one can follow to earn a decent amount, but the tips I give you here are so simple and anybody can follow, even if you are just a beginner.
1. Niche
Your niche is your interests in a particular area and this is the area you are going to work on for the rest of your freelancing life, from upskilling yourself to building a portfolio, resume, cover letters to approaching clients. Everything will and should be related to your niche to stand out.
For instance, let’s take content 'writing' as your skill and let your niche be traveling. So, you will work on building your expertise in writing about traveling.
(You can also build multiple skills if you want to work on the other areas too)
2. Check the market in your niche
Research the market in your niche, check whether the niche you chose has a place in the current world or not so that you do not run out of opportunities and earn well.
Since you chose traveling as your niche, you will research accordingly. If you see reports three years back, all was good but during 2020 and 2021, the whole traveling system was downhill. All traveling bloggers and all sorts of travel writers had lost the craze they had three years ago.
So, doing a little bit of research about your niche can help you a lot going further.
3. Build experience
This is an essential step to get high-paying clients. The more experienced you are, the more pay you get.
Start your blog or try your hands at guest blogging/ posting, internships, working with beta clients, etc.
4. Create the best portfolio
Your portfolio is what will get you sales or will sell you to high-paying clients. Make sure it is attractive and the information you provide is true to yourself.
What should a portfolio contain:
Page 1- About you
Page 2- Your primary services
Page 3- Samples of your work
Page 4- Results of your previous works
Page 5- Testimonials (do not worry if you are just a beginner)
Page 6- Services you are providing to that particular person
Page 7- How to contact you
There is no specified format to create a portfolio. You can present it in either a pdf form or a google doc or make a portfolio website (optional)
5. Optimize two of your social media accounts
Optimizing your social media accounts helps you to establish yourself as a freelancer. People can find you in search results whenever they are searching for a certain category.
Since you are a travel writer, with your optimized accounts you appear in search results when someone searches for 'freelance travel writer/ content writer’ or 'travel writer'. This is another way of getting clients.
6. Join Facebook groups
Facebook groups are the best ways to get both beta and international clients, all you have to do is to approach the right people in the right way. However, I do not recommend you to go for some freelancing platforms like freelancers.com or fiver.com. They are a total waste of time and effort.
7. Post valuable content
Do you want clients to approach you instead of you going on a client hunt? Then this is the only step you should implement in your strategy.
You have to post valuable content on the Facebook groups you've joined as well as on your optimized social handles (do check out @freelance_writer_mohith on Instagram to understand it better)
8. Engage with people and comments
Try to network with as many people as you can and maintain a successful relationship, this can help you get inbound leads. Also, reply to every single comment you get for your valuable posts, this shows how active, loyal, and responsible you are towards your audience.
9. Get clients
There you go. If you follow the above steps as they are instructed, I assure you that you'd get clients within a month.
All the best for your new adventure!
