How to Become a Successful Freelancer.

By Maxime Michauville, Author of “The Call of Alchemy”

For many of us, self-employment is interesting, but what happens when we look out through the window and into the street? We don’t even know where to start.

Despite this confusion, most of us who can afford to work remotely can easily find work as freelancers. The question is: How easy is it?

Luckily, the answer is short. Finding work as a freelancer is easy, but not simple. In fact, many who want to start freelancing may find themselves struggling during the first few months. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t panic. It is normal.

What is Freelancing?

If you ask me, I have a taste for literature, but living off my hobby is quite tedious and I have to be a thinker to be successful. When you find yourself new interests, you should find a way to earn money with them. In fact, freelancing requires that you do what you like to make a living.

If you are a digital artist, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make samples of company logos? Of course, your stuff won’t sell immediately, but that’s the point; when you start freelancing, your customers want to buy your skills. You sell your talent instead of selling a book or a program.

So, if you want an idea of my own experience, I started as a novelist. Given the fact that I don’t want to invest my regular revenue on marketing books, I had to find some more work to finance my little business.

What you want isn’t to become a millionaire the next day, but to make a name for yourself. Money will come eventually, as a result of your success.

To make it clear, freelancing is all about grabbing your career by the horns and putting it on the next level. It’s not a job, it’s your name on the stage and your skills are what will pay off eventually.

It doesn’t matter if you do bad at first, the point is to improve and show others what you do constantly. Customers love improvement.

How to Kickstart Your Career

In my opinion, the best way to make yourself visible is by using professional social media like LinkedIn. If you still can’t make a name for yourself there, you need to attract people’s attention on your skills a bit more.

This point is particularly important, being a writer isn’t about getting the attention on you. This is probably relief for most of you to hear. The thing is to showcase your writing abilities. There is nothing such as becoming a celebrity as a writer, what you want is for people to remember your name and your works, not your pretty face.

How to Start Earning?

When you become more prolific at what you do, be it writing or anything else, you need to get in touch with a few customers. The best method I found so far was to apply on job boards like ProBlogger or Guru Jobs. These platforms help you find a customer easily, the trick is to be patient.

To be honest, applying on job boards is the right way to go for beginners. Of course, your clients treat you as a business, so it is a good idea to start one as soon as you apply for your first batch of customers.

Luckily, starting a small business as the sole proprietor and employee is much easier than making a “real” business. The government may insist that you start an actual business, but it will be treated symbolically for practical reasons. You will be considered as a self-employed worker instead, so you just have to take responsibility of yourself.

What’s the downside?

One thing to mention is the hard time you’ll have at first. Clients look for experienced writers, so you’ll need to make it look like you are one. Fortunately, you can write articles or newsletter as a guest on some blogging websites.

This experience will make you noticeable as a writer. You won’t be a noob anymore and customers will take a closer look at you when you apply to them. Every experience is valuable when freelancing.

If you follow these simple tricks, you should be able to land your first client within a month of starting out. The point is to get that first client which will motivate you. When you’ll receive the first payment, you’ll start believing in your project and things will slowly become less stressful for you.

Working on a Regular Basis

Looking for prospective customers isn’t hard. You just have to keep applying properly and write a few short articles weekly (~800 words) to demonstrate your capabilities. If you have good writing skills and a lot of determination, you can easily become a successful freelancer.

As you work on your sample works and post them where they belong, interested people will notice you. Your customers will be sent by your links to those samples. The more samples you create, the more your skills get noticed. What’s more, its cheap!

Indeed, demonstrating your skills won’t cost you that much. Depending on the software you use to make your samples, you’ll be able to finance that stuff with a part-time job. Besides, your samples will pay off fast, clients love to get proof of your works. Especially in this networking era.

Time to Work!

To summarize, one must understand that despite being easy, freelancing is an entirely new reality of work. Many folks think of it as a new haven of peace and plenty, but that money and happiness must be earned somehow.

It is not the destination which matters, it’s the work you can put in. In my case, I don’t see writing as a job. It’s a way of escaping the boredom of everyday bullsh*t, yet I must organize myself to earn from it.

When you realize that you can make money out of a hobby, you often become ecstatic, but you need to remember that this is a business you’re about to start. You’ll do what you like, but there is still much to learn and improve.

Now, all you need to do is to take your laptop and work!