• Get an Account on a freelancing platform

You can also try freelancer. com, guru .com to get work. They are equally good and can provide you with a lot of opportunities.

• Become Presentable

Aha! Here is your chance to look dapper. Time to get dressed in a three-piece suit as if you are heading for a business meeting.

I was joking. Leave the dapper look to the corporate. What is the point of being a freelancer if you cannot work wearing a vest and shorts 😉? Where is the freedom of wearing a suit?

By asking you to become presentable, I meant presenting your credentials in a well-formatted, presentable format.

On freelancing websites, you get to create your profile. Work towards making it presentable. The profile is your brand identity. Spend some time on it.

Likewise, you must have a website to showcase your work. Use a website theme that goes with your work. If you are a photographer, have a website that relies a lot on images and so on….

Remember, you do not work for a company now. You are yourself a product that you are trying to sell. The more presentable you are, the better the chances of you landing a gig.

• Learn to market yourself

What’s marketing, mate? I know geeky guys are scared to shit when you ask them to market themselves.

Dude! If you cannot market yourself, you cannot freelance.

Marketing here does not mean creating ads about you. It very simple means making yourself presentable (something I mentioned earlier) and making good proposals.

And for god’s sake, do not hire marketing people to promote yourself.

There is no one on earth who can market you better than yourself. For some reason, if you cannot make good proposals or do not know what to do with your skillset – go back to “mother internet” and learn the tricks of the trade.

As they say “No Pain. No Gain”.

• Get some discipline in your life

You might be thinking in your mind “Hey! You sound like someone who is giving a piece of generic life advice to everyone. Why is it so specific to becoming a freelancer?”.

I know, everything I have written is so generic that it applies to everyone in life.

Here is the catch. What I have written holds more meaning to freelancers as their inability to bring discipline to their newfound freedom ruins their freelancing careers.

You have no idea, how many freelancers I have ended a contract with because of their lack of commitment to stick to deadlines and go incommunicado without any prior intimation.

I perfectly understand that you are a freelancer who wants to work at your convenience but what does your client tell his client about your unprofessional behavior?

I have had projects tank because of outsourcing mistakes I have done in the past.

From what I have observed, indiscipline is a major issue with freelancers. They earn some bucks and spend it recklessly 😊. (millennial, are you listening?)

Screw the project and forget the client. Since the client is sitting 1000 miles away from you and you are not a company he can sue, you make him work as per your whims and fancies.

Trust me, this is the biggest reason for the failures of freelancers. That’s why I emphasize a lot getting discipline in the work regime of freelancers to build trust with their clients.

You get disciplined by pro-actively working with clients. Simple things like:

• Communicating properly via chat or calls.
• Sending weekly reports.
• Sticking to schedules
• Maintain a proper project plan and stick to it.
• Letting clients know beforehand about any urgent issues.
• Prioritizing work as per deliverable agreed

Will help you succeed.

It’s not easy being a freelancer. You are working from home (most of the time) and family starts taking you for granted. They will expect you to do things, you wouldn’t do if you were working in a job.

Talk to them and explain to them, why your presence at home cannot be confused with you having little or no work to do.

A little discipline and planning are all you need to succeed.

Once the trust develops, there is no dearth of work in the market for freelancers.

• Learn the language of Masses: English

Before you start spitting your patriotic B.S on me, here is a food for thought “Where do think does the majority of freelancing work on the web come from?”

It’s from all the first world countries where the language of communication is English.

How do you expect to interact with clients if you do not know their language?

Please don’t tell me, you plan to use google Translate because it is a horrible tool. A tool where the meaning of language gets lost in translation.

Learn English to succeed as a freelancer.

• Make use of web-based tools to help you with freelancing

Time is money. You as a freelancer will have to make good use of time to earn some good money.

How can you do that?

I recommend you to use tools like skype for calls, task management software like Trello, asana, or teamwork for better project interaction with clients, and a scheduler like a google calendar to take care of your work reminders.

Do not forget to have an account on PayPal, stripe for receiving online payments.

Plainly speaking, since you are on your own. You will need all the help possible to succeed as a freelancer.

Let automation handle some of your workloads.

What is the fun in Freelancing? Well! Let’s learn that in the next section.