How to Become a Freelancer (Best Strategies For Designers)
This post will show you how to become a freelancer, but not just any freelancer, a highly successful one. With awesome tips for beginner and intermediate freelancers, I will show you what it takes to totally crush it on freelance platforms.
I’m speaking from the role of graphic designer, but of course these tips can be applied to anyone who wants to get active on places like Fiverr, UpWork, PeoplePerHour and so on. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to make sense of this post and the tips on how to become a freelancer.
Freelancing is a lot about status and appearance. Your profile on places like Upwork needs to be up to scratch and above par. We talk about the badges and tier systems, proposals and a lot more. If you apply everything in today’s post and actively put the time and effort in, you will surely become a profitable freelancer who makes a lot of money.
As of 2021 there are over 163 million registered accounts across all freelancing platforms. Crazy numbers I know, but how do we actually compete on freelance platforms? Today I have tried and perfected strategies to actually make serious money on freelance platforms. So let’s get right into it today.
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The important thing to competing these days on freelance platforms is to stand out easier said than done right. But let’s take a look at what actually means and what it looks like in real life.
Now we’re looking at Fiverr and we’re browsing the logo design freelancers. Notice here how this person is advertising a modern and minimal logo. That’s quite a niche type of logo.
Then moving down even further somebody is selling a logo aimed at DJs logo. You can’t really get more niche than that to be honest. And look at the number of sales they have over 1k.
The trick is to find a niche within a niche. Then kind of market your skills in a very unique way within that kind of new sector. It’s one thing being an illustrator that’s a skill. But being a top manga or anime star illustrator is a mastery that is highly niche.
Also, consider the thumbnail of your projects. That they should stand out to the profile picture on your accounts. And the title of your projects especially. They all need to be niche and they all need to stand out.
Here’s a quick bonus tip about your profile. Wherever possible on these freelancers and platforms attach a short video about yourself and your work. This adds that kind of human element that makes you more relatable to potential clients. Try and style this video to your profile and your branding too. Okay so you need to be niche and you need to stand out great.
But what about some of the more technical tips? That few people actually know about and implement into their freelancing strategy. Now into your strategy, you need to work on custom proposals. If your proposal is a template and it’s cold. Then it’s easily gonna just be seen as that, cold and unoriginal. The potential clients will probably most likely be able to detect what it is right from the right style. When reading a job posting see what the client wants and what phrases the potential client uses. You then use this information to create a custom proposal. Something tailored to the customer’s needs and the problems they need solving.
They’re going to be 100% more effective than your cold kind of standard template. Now you might notice that on some freelance websites. It shows you how long it typically takes for a freelancer to respond to a message. This is one very crucial a bit of data. I’m somebody who hires people on freelance platforms on a regular basis. I often use this to gauge whether or not a person is even worth contacting in the first place.
- Firstly my time is precious.
- Secondly, it shows how professional and available they actually are.
There are two main choices when it comes to actually finding work on freelance platforms as a graphic designer.
- Your contact via job posts. Your reply to potential clients posting their jobs.
- Client contacts you via a specific project. They contact you via specific projects that you have ready to go.
I actually suggest you do both, but looking at the second choice for a moment. How can we actually leverage this into our strategy on PeoplePerHour? They used to call these hourlies. But they’re now called offers. On Upwork they’re called projects.
The thing with these is that they appeal to the type of client, who just wants to look around people’s profile. Then just buy a service right away. But here’s the key secret to gaining money and those clients when it comes to using these.
Make sure the title is appealing that it stands out. That it appeals to the niche skill where you seem like a master at that thing. Looking back at this dude right here he’s doing things right.
Check out these titles I mean an unmatched project. The attention-worthy project, achieves project designing heights. He’s really selling and marketing his offers to potential clients knowing what they want to read and also what to buy.
The next crucial thing that I actually look at is their star rating. Like I said I personally hire people on freelance platforms every single week. And that’s for video editing, coding and other things.
The first thing I look at is their star rating. You should always aim to do your best job and if you do finish a project ask the client for a review. It is one of the most important things on a freelance platform. Actually it gives potential clients a very quick way to digest how reliable and how skillful you actually are. Also if you do supply a great service then you will be likely hired by that person over and over again. Probably one of the most important things about freelance platforms.
So the next thing on your list of goals when it comes to freelancing should be gaining those badges. Each freelance website has a different badge system. But whatever the system is read up on how to get the badges and then work towards it like your life depends on it. Having those badges next to your account will install so much confidence in potential clients. Let me present to you a very important choice.
Now you can either be like 99% of other freelancers. And see saturation and competition as a way to become even more isolated. Or you can choose to become more social. Make friends with the enemy it sounds pretty crazy i know, but just hear me out. The hard truth that very few people understand. Is that the more you work with or interact with the people who you see as competition the more you will win. Networking opens up doors and opportunities that not only were closed beforehand. But which you didn’t even know existed in the first place.
Some people have access to sectors of the business industry. That you could only dream of and trust me on this is really important. So try and get busy on the social side of these freelancing platforms and make real connections.
So with everything you’ve spoken about in mind, you need to set up various different freelance accounts across multiple different platforms. Then market them on social media. Remember to make your bio and account look and feel unique. It should also look professional and appealing to specific client types. Use buzzwords that they will want to hear and use a style of branding they want to see.
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