Work on the Internet As a Freelancer

Freelancing offers you the freedom to seek out projects that you are interested in and to work with clients you can build lasting relationships with. The Internet is a great way to identify new clients, let others know that you are open to new projects, and to make professional clients. As a freelancer, you can use online communities and sites to your advantage to grow your business and client base.

Steps

Marketing Yourself as a Freelancer

1. Take continuing education classes. The freelancing world is very competitive, and you need to have strong skills in your chosen industry to be able to compete for projects. Take the time to invest in your skills by participating in continuing education classes, like those for programming or graphic design, and stay up to date on new trends.
   • As a freelancer, your skills need to be as competitive as possible. Before you begin freelancing online, where you get hired based on your experience and past work, you need to make sure your skills are as impressive as possible.
   • You don't have to enroll in a formal class to continue your education. You can look for online lectures, read articles and books by industry leaders, and have meaningful conversations with others who are in your field. The purpose of this process should be to keep your skills up to date, relevant, and as strong as possible.
2. Build your online presence. As an online freelancer, you’ll cultivate your brand through your online presence. Your professional website, portfolio, and networks should reflect the sort of brand you want to be.
   • You are your brand since, as a freelancer, you are selling your skills. How you market yourself will influence what sorts of jobs and clients you will get, so you’ll need to decide what sort of brand you want to be. Do you want to market yourself as a jack-of-all-trades who is comfortable writing on a variety of topics? Do you want to market yourself as a niche professional who focuses in a certain industry?
   • Become comfortable talking about yourself and selling your skills to others. This can be uncomfortable at first, but you won’t become a successful online freelancer if you don’t learn to talk about yourself and market yourself as a brand.
   • This way, you'll market yourself as a freelancer by showcasing your skills and expertise online, while growing your client base and name recognition.
3. Create a website. A website is one of the best ways to showcase your skills, show off your portfolio, and attract new clients. A well designed professional website can help you to generate new leads for clients and make clients more likely to accept your bid for a new project.
   • There are plenty of free domain hosts online that you can build a website with. You can also support the freelance community by hiring a freelance web designer to design a website for you.
   • Link your website on your professional networking page, like LinkedIn, and on any freelancing web platforms that you have a profile with.
4. Use social media wisely. Social media can be both a blessing and a curse for online freelancers. While it’s tempting to update your social media networks that you’re working on new freelance projects and are open to new opportunities, you risk alienating your social networks.
   • You can make profiles on social media sites that cater to your target client demographic. For example, Vimeo is very popular with videographers to highlight their work and to use as a portfolio.
   • Be careful with what you post on your personal social media sites. Keep your profiles private and never post content or material that you wouldn’t want a client to see.
5. Produce samples of your work. This is the first step in building your portfolio. You may already have pieces of work that you’ve used with clients, like articles that have been published on websites or logo designs that a company has used. Some freelancers will offer pro bono work as a way to build a portfolio in the beginning of their freelance careers.
   • You may want to use work that you've already produced for clients in your portfolio. Carefully read over the contract between you and the client for that piece of work. You may or may not own the rights to the content any more. If you do not own the rights to the content, do not use it in your portfolio without their permission.
   • Once you have produced a few high quality samples of your work, you can begin to collect and organize your work into a portfolio.
6. Build a portfolio. While potential clients are interested in your qualifications and your resume, they want to see actual examples of your work. A portfolio will demonstrate your experience in a tangible way and is a sample of your work that you can submit to potential clients. This portfolio is also a set of work that you can showcase on your website and use on freelancing websites.
   • Your portfolio should be tailored to your skills. A travel writer should showcase five or six quality articles about different niche interests. A graphic designer should showcase at least a dozen samples of design work that you’ve done for other projects or on your own.
   • Your portfolio should be digital, since most clients will want to see your portfolio when you submit your bid online.
   • Emphasize quality over quantity in your work. It is better to have a few high quality pieces than dozens of low quality pieces in your portfolio.
7. Update your professional networks. Your professional network is a great way to get referrals, find potential clients, and find work. You should reach out to professionals that you’ve worked with in the past and let them know that you are now freelancing in their industry.
   • Make an account on a professional networking site, like LinkedIn, if you don’t have one already. Update your profile to let others know that you are now freelancing and that you are interested in taking on new projects.

Earning Money and Finding Work Online

1. Network to find work. Building a client base begins with networking. Many of your clients will come through word of mouth, so you will need to get your name out there and let people know that you are open to new projects. Reach out to your friends and family to let them know that you are freelancing, but focus your networking in professional communities.
   • Compile a list of clients that you’d like to work with and cold email them to introduce yourself. Share that you are interested in working with them and ask if they have any projects in the pipeline that they need to outsource work for.
   • Join online communities that relate to your industry and build professional contacts with others. You should expect to spend at least 25% of your time reaching out to potential clients and marketing yourself online.
   • Include links to your website and portfolio whenever you contact potential clients and professional networks.
2. Follow a budget. Like with any career, you will need to set and follow a budget that reflects your average income. As a freelancer, your income can be more variable so it is very important to follow a budget. Begin by keeping careful track of what you are spending, including your rent, bills, and any overhead for your business like computer software.
   • As you begin to start earning projects and making money as a freelancer, track how much money you are earning each month. After a few months, average these earnings to see what your average income is.
   • If you aren’t getting enough work to sustain yourself financially, you’ll need to keep a secondary source of income.
3. Set your prices. As an online freelancer, you have some flexibility with your rates. Your rates should reflect your level of expertise and the type of work that you produce. There are different industry averages for rates so you will need to research the rates that other freelancers charge for similar types of work. In the beginning of your online freelance career, you might not be able to charge an hourly rate. A client might offer you a base rate for a project rather than an hourly rate.
   • Don’t lowball your prices, once you start working with a project you won’t be able to increase your rates
   • Research what other freelancers are charging to get a better idea of what average rates are for the kind of work you want to produce.
4. Set monthly quotas. These quotas will depend upon the financial goals and budget that you have set for yourself. You may have a certain dollar figure in mind that you’d like to earn each month, like $4000. Based on your hourly rate for projects, you can see how many hours you need to work in order to reach this figure. Now you can begin to set quotas for yourself in order to meet this number.
   • Your quota should act as your goal for the month. This goal can help you choose the projects that you want to work on, the hours you set for yourself, and the number of clients you need to contact.
   • Keep in mind that some projects will pay a flat rate per project rather than an hourly rate.
5. Join a freelance website. In joining a freelance website, your first goal is to establish a reputation for quality at a reasonable price. Seek feedback from customers in order to gauge the impression you're making. Don't expect to earn a lot of money at first. That will come as you build a customer base.
   • There are dozens of different freelancing platforms, though some will have different focuses than others. For example, some websites might focus on graphic design while others connect clients looking for marketing portfolios.
   • Talk to other freelancers to see if they have positive reviews for certain freelancing sites. You can also find reputable sites through professional networking groups. Never use a site that requires you to enter your personal financial information, like a bank account, before you have signed a contract.
   • Spend time researching different sites to see what sorts of jobs are posted, and what rates other freelancers can charge. Keep an eye out for illegitimate sites with shady business practices.
   • Carefully fill out your profile and make sure that you link your website and your portfolio to your profile. You should also include a professional headshot on your profile; clients are more likely to select potential candidates when they see the online profile as a person rather than a faceless candidate.
6. Bid for projects. After you’ve identified potential clients and projects that match your skill set, you will need to submit proposals and bids. A client will review all of the bids that they’ve received and contact freelancers that they are interested in working with. Regardless of the industry that you want to freelance in, your bid should be personalized and showcase your skills with examples of your work.
   • Personalize your proposals by referencing the client by name, including details about the project, and referencing any past work you’ve done for other clients that directly relates to this project.
   • You can provide examples of your work by linking your digital portfolio and your website.
   • Once your bid has been accepted and your rates have been negotiated with the client, you can get to work on the project.

Making Online Freelancing Your Career

1. Invest time into your freelance work. Now that you’ve began to build a client base and have been completing more projects, you might want to make the switch from freelancing part-time to making it your full-time career. Or you might want to continue freelancing part-time but work more hours. Either way, you will need to set aside more hours each week to devote to working on projects and contacting new clients.
   • While most people work 40 hour weeks, you have the flexibility to work as many hours as you like on projects.
   • There will be some times when business is slow. This is where careful budgeting comes into play, since you will need to make your earnings last for a longer amount of time.
2. Keep an eye on the market. As an online freelancer, information is your biggest ally. Research the freelance market in your field, keep an eye on strong competitors, and constantly look for ways to market yourself better and to produce higher quality work.
   • Your competition in the freelance market may become your co-collaborator one day when the two of you work on a project together. While you are competing for similar work, never burn bridges with potential colleagues.
3. Raise your prices. Once you have built up a considerable online client base, you can consider raising your prices. Online freelancers who have considerable freelancing work experience and expert level skills can charge more for their work than a new freelancer could.
   • Once you’ve built up a client base of satisfied customers who can vouch for your work, you may want to consider raising your rates. Start with a relatively small increase, like 10% to see if you can still get work with your new rates.
4. Maintain careful financial records. As a freelancer, the burden of maintaining your financial records falls on you. When tax season arrives, you need to have maintained careful financial records all year so you can pay the appropriate taxes. Tax codes vary by country so it can be helpful to hire an accountant or tax professional to help you with the necessary paperwork.
   • You will need to record each new client, their business information, and the amount you bill the client consistently.
   • Some freelancers find it helpful to open a separate bank account for their freelance earnings to keep their business and personal accounts separate.

Tips

• Be honest with yourself about your skills. As a freelancer, you need to have the strongest skill set you can possibly have in order to get selected for jobs. If you aren’t a strong writer, you may need to rethink your goal of becoming a freelance journalist.
• Maintaining careful financial records will be very helpful when you need to pay taxes.
• Carefully track the hours that you are working on freelancing projects.

Warnings

• Never burn bridges with potential clients and colleagues, you never know who you might work with in the future.
• It will take time in order for you to become a successful freelancer. It may take several months in order for your freelancing to become profitable.

Related Articles

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• Become a Freelance Writer
• Start Freelancing

References

See also

• Verify Your Identity on Elance
• Verify Your Credit Card on Freelancer
• Use the oDesk Team App
• Turn Off Chat Sounds on Freelancer
• Survive a Freelance Programmer's Life
• Start a Job on Odesk
• Report a Project on Freelancer
• Request a Service on Redbeacon
• Protect Your Ideas As a Freelancer
• Post a Task on TaskRabbit

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