How To Start Freelancing (a step by step guide)

how do I start freelancing in this video I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step guide and don't worry if you don't have a ton of work experience because it can actually be a secret advantage of yours if you know how to use it properly which I'll get into later in the video hi my name is Tina and I've been doing freelancing for the past 7 years and I've also hired over 30 Freelancers and interviewed hundreds at this point I also run a program called Lonely octopus where I teach people Ai and data skills to work on real freelance projects so I've also trained many Freelancers in this video I'm going to cover a step-by-step guide to get started freelancing including resources and some tips and guidelines for how to set up a company how do you price yourself how do you negotiate and how to set up systems to continuously Source projects this is basically everything I learned in the past seven years and I'm going to give it all to you right now I'm honestly pretty jealous because I wish I had a step-by-step guide like this when I was first starting out so all right let's get to it this is Ibrahim hello everyone I am ibraim and we work together in lonely Octopus as well as freelancing and contracting jobs he's had experience in teaching hundreds of students and building all sorts of applications all the way from Mom and Pop shops to huge corporations worth billions of dollars but when I first met him he was still a tiny Ibrahim who had just graduated from his master's degree with absolutely no experience this was back in 2021 where he was part of the study community that I started where I would live stream myself studying and then track my progress on a Google spreadsheet as time went on more and more people joined the community and also started using the Google spreadsheet to track their study progress which was amazing and so much fun but because there was so many more people joining the spreadsheet just got bigger and it also got slower and slower until one day it just crashed completely so Ibrahim noticed this and he created a website to replace the Google spreadsheet it solved the problem website became our official Community website a couple months later I had a contract job which I was trying to hire someone to build a website so I immediately asked Ibrahim if he wanted to do it in which he accepted and the rest was history so the reason why it worked really well in addition to a little bit of luck of course is the fact that he tapped into his unfair Advantage which is a skill or talent that set someone apart for him he had two clear unfair advantages the first one is that he knew the basics of how to code and the second is that he's very fast at figuring out how to do things so because of these unfair advantages he was in a really good position to build that website even though he had no relevant experience he knew enough code to get started but I later found out this is actually the first website he's ever built um but because of his ability to learn things really fast he figured it out and he was able to build it when I gave him feedback he was also really quick to learn how to implement that feedback and that's how the website became a success of course if you already have work experience one of your primary unfair advantages is the work experience that you have but even if you don't have extensive work experience where like Ibrahim you had absolutely zero work experience you still do have unfair advantages these can be personality traits like being very compassionate being very likable patient detail oriented they can also be domain expertise where skills like coding drawing woodworking inherent assets like if you're very beautiful you're tall you have a lot of money these are all different unfair advantages if you're not sure or if you want to dive a little bit deeper into your unfair Advantage I recommend checking out this book called the unfair Advantage it's really helpful and if you really really have no idea I recommend asking your mom seriously I asked my mom this and she was like you've pretty much been good at learning things and talking about s stuff since you were like 2 years old and then she also told me I have commitment problems I don't know if this is like an Asian mom thing but if they say something nice about you they also have to say something not so nice as well anyways using your unfair advantages as a guideline pick a rough area that you want to start freelancing in for example maybe if you know how to code maybe something in data or software you're patient and good at a specific subject maybe tutoring and you're good with your hands maybe a woodworking kind of assistant situation if you're personable and detail oriented maybe an executive assistant or a virtual assistant don't worry about making your domain too specific because the next step is to actually Define things clearly and transform your unfair advantages into a marketable skill and portfolio this video is brought to you by posit whose mission is to create open source software for data science scientific research and Technical communication they build a lot of cool open source SCE free products which I've talked about before like shiny to quickly and easily build an interactive web app Cal which is great for programmatically creating documents showcasing your projects and dashboards and just displaying information in an organized aesthetically pleasing fashion I actually also made an accompaning resource for this video using cordal uh because I'm going to be covering a lot in this video so be useful I guess if you have it all in one place so you can check it out I'll link it in the description it's completely free anyways another product that I want to introduce to you all today is deposit connect for Enterprise a really common challenge especially if you're working with sensitive data tight security or just strict it is that you would build your project right but after building your project you also need to present it to your stakeholders in a way such that the data and analytics is still secure that is where posit connect comes in to help you deploy share and manage all the analytics products that you and your team build allinone secure scalable and easy to manage location with posit connect you can rapidly and securely deploy anything that you build in Python with streamlet Dash bouquet fast API shiny flask quarter reports and other apis it comes with all the bells and whistles to support it and Enterprise requirements you can try a paa connect for free for 3 months using this link over here also linked in description now back to the video let me tell you about the hot dog stand problem if you ever gone to some event at a venue outside a venue there's usually always a line of hot dog stands with people selling hot dogs all of the hot dog stands are essentially the same like they literally look the same the person who's making them has about the same hot dog making skills and the hot dogs themselves are also of the same quality and they're all the same price too you see this is not a good situation to be in because the only determining factor for if someone is going to come to your hot dog stand to buy a hot dog as opposed to someone else's hot dog stand is chance you see this analogy actually extends very well into the free freelancing world too no matter what kind of freelancing you choose to do the majority of people are like these hot dog stand people they are very similar to each other there's nothing really distinct or unique about them to attract clients they're pretty much all interchangeable with each other so that's why the next step of successfully starting freelancing is to refine your freelancing offering so that it maximizes your unfair advantages for example if you're one of those hot dog stand owners another unfair advantage that you might have is maybe you're very attractive so seriously you could lean into that for example literally this street food vendor lady over here went viral for being really hardworking and making good street food but also for being very attractive okay maybe unfortunately you're not very attractive but maybe you know how to dance so while you're making a hot dog you can do a little dance while you're at it and people are going to be attracted to that something that's different than all the other hot dog stands for example if you have work experience as a software engineer you're probably going to choose software engineering freelancing or Consulting maybe you're also really fast at learning new technologies so you go and learn how to do AI product development and distinguish yourself from the pool of unspecialized software consultants if you want to become a freelance video editor and you really like playing games then you can try to specialize in video editing for gamers want to be a virtual assistant and you also have a marketing degree focus on clients who have something to do with marketing I really encourage you to be patient here do some self-reflection think carefully about what you can do that makes you stand out it can save you months if not years of failures because if you're competing your weaknesses against other people's strengths you're just not going to have a good time in addition to reading to unfair Advantage I also highly recommend you check out the book from Cal Newport called so good you they can't ignore you okay great now that you know what your freelancing services should focus on this is when you start building up your portfolio and I'm also going to show you how to kill two birds with one stone by simultaneously also Landing your first job you got this when I was hiring a freelance editor I made this post on Reddit and I got a bunch of different people applying like at least I think it was like 40 people applying the first thing I asked for was their portfolio because a portfolio tells you so much about a person some portfolios were just absolutely terrible like I had secondhand embarrassment seeing some of these portfolios some portfolios were good but just like really General a bunch of different types and styles of videos but none of them really stood out by the way this is exactly why I was stressing earlier about why it is that you need to figure out your unfair advantage and tailor your offerings otherwise you end up in this category the majority of people which is sort of just me but luckily there were two portfolios that really stood out the first one even though at first glance it feels like there's a lot of different types of videos but after I looked carefully I realized that there was this focus on really good pacing and the usage of music and sounds that made the video so much more engaging and was able to invoke certain emotions the other portfolio seems specialized in talking head videos which is the type of video that I do so I interviewed both of them and I ended up going with the first person because that person's skill set with the music and the pacing was something that complemented my own skill set and the second person he was good and I would have chosen to work with him if I was just starting out on my YouTube Journey um but because I've been doing this for a while we had a lot of overlaps in our skill sets anyways my point being here is that really focus on making a good portfolio and while you're making this portfolio put yourself in the shoes of your potential client ask yourself based on a type of work I'm going for what kinds of skill sets and experience would my client want to see so this Probably sounds like a lot of work and yes it kind of is a lot of work um but I do have good news for you don't actually have to just like sit there and work on your personal projects and try to build up your portfolio until you have a bunch of projects in it before starting to look for your first job actually you can build your portfolio while working towards Landing your first job at the same time what when I first wanted to land a freelance job in coding and software I was still in college at that time and I had only taken two introductory to python courses and had no experience so naturally nobody wanted to hire me so I did a lot of things I emailed hundreds of professors asking if I can do a free project for them I asked my department chair which was the department of pharmacology and toxicology if I could give a workshop to teach students how to use Python to analyze pharmacology data honestly I was still a beginner in Python and data analysis myself but I still knew more than the pharmacology people so you know they still agreed to let me do it I also asked the engineering club if I could just come and hang around them and I'll just do whatever it is that they tell me to do so by doing a bunch of these things for free I was able to fill up my portfolio with these projects and actually while working for free for one of the professors he eventually decided that he would actually give me a paid contract job which then turned into a full-time job two birds with one stone at the time there wasn't that many online communities but if there were I would have probably done something similar to Ibrahim um and just go build something for some people or redo someone's thumbnail for their video volunteer to manage someone's Discord Community for operations experience because operations projects are probably one of the hardest to get on your portfolio just by yourself by the way remember at the beginning of the video I said that if you don't actually have a lot of experience you have a secret weapon a secret advantage that you can use to your favor well that is the fact that because you're a newbie people have low expectations for you and more people are willing to give you a chance as long as you're enthusiastic and you show them that you really will try your best on the other hand having a lot of experience obviously is great but it can also be a double-edge sword when it comes to freelancing say for example I wanted to start freelancing now and I've now had 8 years of experience in data and software and content so it's great that I have actual experience and the clout of having different degrees and having worked in certain bigname companies and yes objectively speaking I am able to deliver more value to clients that is true however a very common mistake that I may fall into is thinking that oh wow I already have work experience so that's going to speak for itself yeah no freelancing is like a completely different game just because you have experience working at a company and then having all of that um does not translate into freelancing and not just any freelancing portfolio their expectation is that the freelance projects that you have they need to be equivalently impressive and deliver equivalent value to the positions that you've held at companies to the work experience that you've had like for example right now with 8 years of experience I cannot get away with a project that's like doing preliminary research as a research assistant or like making some social media post and posters for a local fundraiser or something like that so if you're experien you need to make more of an effort and reach out to your network to find something that actually showcases the skill sets that you have and this leads to the second issue that you may have which is what is called golden handcuffs when you're so used to a mid senior level salary that when you have an opportunity to do a contract job you realize that if you convert that to your hourly rate it's like half or even it's like free work right that you're supposed to do so you're kind of just like oh that's like not really worth my time but no get it into your head that you do need to go through this process like if you don't get over this then you are never going to be able to start freelancing like seriously I have so many friends who are really skilled and say they want to start freelancing but they just cannot get over this and they just refuse to take freelance projects that are not at the same salary level as their full-time jobs go to schools and ask if you can deliver a workshop or a lecture related to your specific field you can also try asking your current or previous companies if you can do something for them for free outside of your job description in exchange for having it show up on your portfolio ask around if you have any friends or family that have their own business or have decision-making rights in a company to let you start from there think along these lines by the way treat these portfolio projects like pay jobs be professional and overd deliver there's a chance that if you do a good job afterwards they may ask you to do another job for them um but paid this time or even if they don't hire you immediately they may call you in like 6 months or even a year another scenario that happens quite often is that person who you worked for um one of their friends one of their colleagues may say like oh like do you know anybody that does like XYZ things and then remember you who did a really good job and then refer you don't count on this kind of thing happening but it does happen by the way if this seems that there's just a lot of information that I am I'm throwing at you right now do not worry I got you I'll also Link in the description a little cheat sheet that I made using Corto by posit an open-source publishing system in there I also put some templates and examples of portfolios these will be especially useful for people who are doing technical projects it's what CTO specializes in it's like a much more professional upgraded way of showcasing your projects compared to say just like a GitHub link okay before I talk more about how to manage relationships with your clients as well as how to build systems to sustainably source projects I want to First quickly talk about platforms I think places like fivr where upwork are fine if you just want to get started like get some portfolio projects um as fast as possible or land a couple of clients there's also online communities like Reddit kind of Hit or Miss as well what I would say is like if you want to seriously consider using these platforms as a strategy of getting long-term clients make sure that you have a skill set that is in demand but really rare or you're just able to do something way faster or way cheaper than other people so you basically undercut the market otherwise you don't really have an edge and your margins are really thin oh one thing though if you are someone from a developing country you could consider looking at these platforms and just trying them out because if you want of course you land a deal with a company or somebody who's from like Canada Australia us like more like developed countries they are more likely to pay you more than what you would get in your current country and it would also expand your network and if you do a good job and they rehire you or refer you to somebody else it does expand your network um into some of these other places as well so it's worth considering but generally speaking unless you have a location advantage or a skill Advantage I would focus on the strategies we talk brought earlier um in doing cheaper free labor and then converting them to paid gigs okay so at this point assuming that you've landed your first project even your first paid project um you might be thinking like oh what about how do I price stuff like how do I negotiate how do I make a contract how do I open up a new company like things like that don't worry I will get to all of that in a bit but first I just want to finish off this final section of the step-by-step guide which is Building Systems to continuously Source clients have you ever heard of a story the parable called the Hunter and the farmer in a small village there lived a hunter and a farmer both sought to provide for their families but have very different approaches so the hunter skilled with his bow and arrow would venture into Force each day waiting patiently to catch game some days he would return with a bounty and empty-handed his family meals were unpredictable depending on his daily luck and the availability of animals The Farmer on the other hand spent his time preparing the soil planting seeds and tending to his crop initially it seems like he was working really hard for no immediate reward the hunter would mock the farmer saying why do you waste your time on the land when you could be catching your food directly from the forest so a few months later winter came and the farmer started having trouble getting Bounty from the forest the farmer would smile and he would continue diligently working on his farm and a few months later his crops were ready to harvest that he was able to harvest all the grains and store them just in time for winter and during the winter the hunter realized that most of the animals went into Harbor nation and he was no longer able to catch Bounty while the farmer on the other hand has a huge storage of grains and food that last him this entire winter and when the following year comes the system that he built was able to continuously grow more crops and feed his family what this Parable teaches us is that in the beginning we can be like the hunter like for example you are reaching out to a lot of different people and doing whatever you can in order to secure that first freelance job right but as you start progressing you don't want to rely on just like people hopefully coming to find you or people you worked with um hopefully refers you obviously if it happens that is great but we don't want to depend on that instead what we need to start thinking about is building up systems so that we can start sourcing these projects ourselves so first of all still definitely still manage the relationships that you're having with your current clients because these people are going to be your Champions but you also need to start doing some Outreach the easiest way of doing this is to just attend events like just show up to events where your prospective clients maybe hanging out and just talk to them get their LinkedIn information you know let them know what you do and you know they might hit you up whenever it is that they need someone who has your skill set one of my most recent contract jobs was for a school so I'm very interested in the education space so I attended this education conference and I kind of just was there talked to some people and then just like went like oh you know I do this kind of consulting stuff if you ever need anything and that was it wasn't trying to be pushy um but a few months later they got back to me and went like hey Tina like we are actually interested in designing an AI system for our school and I was like no problem I got you but the best return on investment method that you can do to continuously Source projects is to start posting things online you can have written content you can have video content doesn't really matter as long as you talk about the services that you provide some of the projects that you've done and provide educational material um this is something that does take a significant time to get started not going to lie and you're going to be like that farmer um just spending like a lot of time fostering the system but once you get it up and people start associating you with a certain field with a certain freelancing skill set then the contract jobs are going to start flowing um it took me about 6 months to start Landing contract jobs through social media after consistently posting a video every single week but after I started doing that um I have a lot of different offers coming in now like actually like way more that I can handle so I can now I get to be picky now and choose what it is that I want to do or I don't want to do so I do recommend that you start some sort of content creation so this video is probably really really long um but if you want a guide in terms of how to do content creation specifically say for freelancing um do let me know in the comments and I can make a video like that some books I would recommend is the emth Revisited amazing book about Building Systems the dip is great um because it helps you push through when you are having a lack of motivation and you're not seeing immediate results and just for the Social Media stuff there's a lot of great free resources out there where you can start learning about how to create content okay last section I'm going to give you some specific advice and tips for very common questions should you set up a company and how do so this will vary between country to Country in the US and Canada probably want to go on LLC in the US and a C Corp in Canada um it's super easy literally go online takes you like 30 minutes in order to register a company honestly I personally wouldn't worry about this so much until after I actually land a project you can also like do your first projects and get paid as an individual um it's not the best situation when it comes to like taxes and liability and stuff but those are like future you problems just land the actual project first pricing okay this is something that people also get really hung up on um this is like my little tip is like if you don't know how much you should be charging what you can do is that you can ask the client hey what's your budget like what is it that you're thinking about so that kind of gives you an anchor point in terms of how much it is that you should be charging and again in the beginning I wouldn't worry so much about it like the fact that you're getting paid at all is already wonderful and amazing so it's fine if you start off getting underpaid and as you get more experience and get to be a little bit more picky with your clients then look more into details about how it is that you can be gauging how much to charge related to this is negotiating my favorite book of all time is called Never split the difference read that book read it like three times and you will know how to negotiate setting expectations sometimes when you're so excited we desperate in order to a job you might just end up like agreeing to a bunch of things that you realize afterwards that either you can't deliver or it's just going to like be a ridiculous amount of work so be excited but while you're negotiating and before you sign the contract make sure it's something that you actually can do also a common Pitfall is by not specifying the level of support you will provide after the project especially for technical projects some people may come back to you like over and over again for technical support and that's just like not sustainable so you need to like very clearly say I will provide support for two weeks or like x amount of time or I will provide support for this number of hours with this number of calls and anything beyond that we can talk about maybe like a retainer system where monthly you would pay me a certain amount of money in order to maintain your system something like that always try your best to under promise and overd deliver if you think something is going to take you 2 weeks double that say it's going to take 4 weeks then if you actually get it done in 2 weeks that your client is going to be really happy and be like wow like you know they you were able to get it done even faster it's a lot better of a situation than saying that you're going to get it done two weeks and then taking four weeks to do it remember as a freelancer your reputation is everything protect that at all costs okay what else common pitfalls so say there's a client that you're trying to land the first thing that you should do is do a little bit of research on this client it is so surprising how few people actually do this for example I'm currently trying to hire a marketing freelancer so I interviewed a few people and so many of them when they were giving me their portfolios or telling me about like what it is I should be looking at they were talking about stuff like SEO marketing um talking about like how it is that I should be doing certain things on my website like how it is I should be paying for like Facebook ads or something like that and I'm just like sitting there going like did you even look at what it is that I do because if you did look at what it is I do you would know that I am a Content first business so you were not even talking about how to use content in order to do marketing and you're jumping straight to doing things like SEO and like Facebook ads so that was just like a media red flag for me and you know what like maybe they would have been great people to have on a team but literally just 10 minutes of research would have gotten you all of that information not even 10 minutes like literally Google my name Google the business and you would have immediately known that this is a Content Centric business so you should not be talking about Facebook ads by the way I am still looking for a marketing freelancer for lonely octopus so if you are someone who is interested in this position please email us at contact lonely octopus. it'll be cool if we end up working together through this video all right final piece of advice set your expectations you are going to get rejected over and over again just expect to be rejected and be pleasantly surprised when you actually get something too many people just give up too easily they're like oh I Tred to become a freelancer and I try to like get a client five times and you know like I ended up getting nothing well that's like nothing right keep trying and like follow up with people sometimes like somebody emails me and I'm just like oh like I don't know what that is so I just like don't look at it um but then email me like two times three times four times I'm like okay how persistent of you and then I would look at it and be like oh you know this person is persistent and they seem decent and then I would give that person a chance right really sometimes it's just about sending a couple of follow-ups and just like that little bit of extra effort can take you a long way all right that is all I have for you guys today I hope this is a helpful video leave a comment about what kind of freelancing that you are going to be doing and I will see you in the next video or live stream