How to be a freelancer in 2019?

#webdev #design #codenewbie #discuss

In 2019 freelancing is different than old years. There are so many people are trying to be freelancer and competition is super high. To be a good freelancer first, anyone should focus on their skills. If you're a total beginner and don't have any idea about freelancing or anything then my suggestion will find some skills that you can be better also you liked them as well. So how to do this research?

I'll first look into the best field to freelance now a day. I'll research on some google blogs to do that and I'll try to merge with it with my current career. For me, I've completed my undergrad degree in Computer Science. I know the programming well so I started my career in programming stuff, but if you do something which doesn't close to a good skill, then learn some new skills to be a freelancer. Some popular fields are –

Content Writing
Digital Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Graphics Design
Mobile & Web Design
Web Development
Mobile App Development

And many more. Choose any of them or research on your interest, if you're good about it you can start your freelancing career.

I started my freelancing career with web development. So I'll tell you about my journey so you can understand how I started and how you can start your journey too. I'll leave tips in every section. I've broken down my journey into 5 main parts. They are

Gaining the skills

This section is pre-requirements before starting any journey with freelancing. I was lucky to have the same field of study where I currently work. Well none of my university courses helped me to be a web developer, yeap some of them work partially(coding courses) but most of it I learn it alone. So I am a self-learner and you can be a self-learner too. If you can research on google & youtube then you can learn a lot of things here and there.
When I was new in web development I started with zero, though I knew some programming language like - C & Java a bit. Then I learn about HTML at first. Html seems super easy to me and then I learn about a CSS a bit. I switch myself into a backend developer after it. If you don't know what is backend development, it is a way to connect database for loading data in the front pages which build by HTML, CSS and Javascript. The backend was fun for me cause I knew to program well and at first, I didn't feel I need to learn front end well, because I thought I can use free templates for whole life and I don't need to learn it properly. But after some days I understand nobody gives value who known half part of a thing. So I learn about the front end then. I started to love it more and started to see it's potential. If you never go to deep of something you'll never know the potential of it. I learned about deploying into server also. In my old days, I helped my father with his business design, so I knew about design also. I turn myself into a designer & developer finally by using all the experiences and dummy project I made for showcasing to clients.
So how you can learn more about your skills?

Google is always your friend, search each & everything
Continuously follow some blogs which are related to your skills
Try to earn some certificates too (this helps to widen your community)
Try some competitions (this also helps to widen your community)
Try sharing what you've learned through blog/videos or any other way
Make new social media profiles to be updated with the persons of your desire professional
Take some courses from different platforms. Like - udemy, coursera, udacity etc There are also many other things you can do to upgrade your skills but remember never stop learning. If you ever think that you know everything about it, then believe my friend, you know nothing. The deeper you'll go you'll understand there are lots of things to learn and the list will keep growing regularly. Finally practice everyday.

Creating the freelancing profiles

After achieving the skills now look into creating the freelancing profiles. There are many platforms you can start your freelancing career. Like

Upwork
Fiverr
Toptal
People Per Hour And many more. Choosing the platform is totally on your interest. I am working on Upwork & Fiverr. Creating profile is really important because it represent your skills and your client will hire you on this information. Choosing a professional photo is really important, don't upload any selfies please. I hate it when I look it. I only work for Upwork & Fiverr so I'll tell you about it. You can try other if you want to.

Freelancing In Upwork

Upwork is where you'll send a proposal to clients and clients will hire you after watching your proposal and profile (most of the time). Clients look at the proposal first before your profile, so you should make the proposal right. There are a lot of ways you can improve your proposal. But keep it short and professional it will bring you the lead you want. Your profile should represent your works properly and skills well. This will help to get an invite from clients. In upwork clients takes a short interview when we connected with you. You need to perfect in a good way here or else they will hire someone else. In this time you should provide the details how you work, how much time you'll take to do this. Tell them about your all question and if possible help them to make something better than their expectations. One of my client wrote –
"This is the first project with Muhammad and he went above and beyond to help me with what needed to be done. Although this was a small project, each step performed was always completed to 100% satisfaction and without any delays. Exceptional work and I look forward to working with Muhammad again."
When you help your client properly they will rehire you. In upwork this is so fun because you can just one for 2–3 clients and earn a lot of money.

Freelancing In Fiverr

Fiverr is a bit different then upwork. In this platform, clients come to you. You need to open some gigs and clients will come to you and hire you. But competition is super high here to stay in number page. Because when client search on Fiverr they mostly try to hire someone from page 1 and if your gig is not on page 1 then it will be hard to get the order from Fiverr. Fiverr is mostly about small works, here most of the client comes with a short problem. Most of the problem you can solve it in a week. This platform doesn't have long time work like upwork. Upwork has worked on hourly and project-based. Fiverr also have same but people hire by the project here most and there are 3 levels on Fiverr. They are - NO Seller, LEVEL 1 Seller & LEVEL 2 Seller. If you can convert your account to LEVEL 1/ LEVEL 2 by working hard for sometimes then you'll get lots of client from here and you can earn a good amount. You should open good gigs and try to describe it properly with appropriate images.
So to make a noise in freelancing platform you need to build a good profile that can generate your leads.

Communication with client

Suppose we have created some awesome profiles and finally we are getting some good response from client but believe me if you are poor at communicating with clients then after some days you'll not even get any client because if some clients rate you badly then it will hurt your profile and your profile will not be shown to other clients. Everyone needs to learn how to handle a customer, how to talk professionally. If you can show your professionalism then you're gone. You can't survive nowadays. You need to super responsive in messages because this is the only way they can talk with you. Keep updating about their work progress in some hours, show them the prototype or a live view that you're currently making. This is how you can get communication with a client which will help you to a long-time client which can even change your whole life. Even sometimes client hires for per month. So you can get a fixed salary even from the freelancing work.

Final work for delivery

So you got a client, also good a communication but if you're good at delivery the product then this is also going to hurt your career. Because if the client doesn't get what he wants then this thing is not going to work. You need to know about what type of files he wants and give him the proper way. For me, I mostly work on web development. I sent them files in a zip, sometimes I created shared GitHub/bitbucket/Gitlab project form them and share there. Sometimes I directly up the codes into their server. So I do it the way they want. If you help them and make their works easy then they will make your life easy. This is a simple rule. But always check are you giving them the right files? Is there any change to improve? Is this is complete? If possible add a drive link also, this will help them to download the whole into an easier way. In depends on client of course but you can always make better for them.

How to improve more?

This is always a question. After working for some time if you working for particular skills then there will be many thing common right? Like the way, a project start, how many sections, how you divide your time for the project. So there will be many common questions and you can help the client to understand a thing easily. So how you can make this awesome? For me, I made some trello boards for my clients where I show them what needs to start a website. I also made a Behance project to make this easier for them. You can also check it out from behance . There are a lot of extra things you can do, but this is up to you and every client is different remember that too. You can't write a generic proposal/generic way to make super easy. But you can write down some fundamental which will help you to get your work done easily than before. So this is all about improving. Find your weaknesses and improve them too.

So this my way to be a freelancer in 2019. There are many tips on online, keep researching about it. Keep learning more will help you to get more works but remember there will be more competitions in the near future but if you can provide something unique or some good skills then you got chance to show off. People are doing great freelancing jobs and you can do it too. Just believe on yourself and start. Keep your researching with aligning with your proper goal.