The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Freelancing

Everything you need to know to launch and grow your business.

Freelancing is an interesting option to break away from the usual 9 to 5 job and can grant you unprecedented freedom in what you do, who you work for, and how much you earn.

Another advantage is the low bar to get started. For a regular job, you often need higher education or prior experience in the field you’d like to dive into. Often you will have to prove yourself in the face of many competitors who also try to land the job.

For freelancing, there are no job interviews in rented suits, no resume writing, and no calls telling you that the company has chosen another applicant over you. But freelancing comes with its own difficulties and problems, particularly the logistics that your company took care of for you.

How do you price your service?

How do you properly advertise yourself to clients?

How do you write an invoice?

Where do you find work?

In this absolute beginner’s guide to freelancing, we’ll consider these questions and offer strategies to smooth the transition from regular employment to your own freelancing career. Specifically, we’ll focus on launching a freelancing career with an eye toward writing, though the tips are applicable in other fields as well.

Table of content

• Starting out as a freelancer
• Earning your first commission as a freelancer
• Raising your freelancing fees
• Expanding your freelancing business
• Put your writing out into the world
• How to write a proper freelancing invoice
• Five rules for successful freelancing

Starting out as a freelancer

With no portfolio to show and a clean slate, landing your first client is actually the hardest part. Once you have some work under your belt to show, it will become much easier to convince future clients of your skills and qualifications.

A good way to scout that first client is using freelancing platforms.

Upwork and Freelancer are two such platforms. Here you can see various project offers in many different categories. The clients here range from entrepreneurs starting out, to SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) and huge enterprises looking to outsource work.

A client may be seeking someone to write a compelling website, a product listing for Amazon, or a translation for a mobile game. Many clients offer a fixed budget for their project, so you know from the start how much you’ll earn.

The biggest advantage of these platforms is your growing portfolio.

As you finish contracts, these past jobs will be visible in your profile, including the money you earned and personal feedback from your clients. This is the first place new clients check when deciding whether to hire you.

You can reply to a client’s job offer and write a quick application to get the client interested in hiring you. But don’t be alarmed, you often don’t need to write a dry resume like you’re used to from the regular job market.

Many clients have specific questions regarding their project which you can answer through that application. The most important ones are:

• Do you have prior experience with work like this?
• How long will it take for you to finish this project?

But in the end, what matters most for the client is the final product you deliver. Make sure it has perfect grammar and the content he asked for. You can check your grammar for free online using Grammarly.

Earning your first commission as a freelancer

It may take a few attempts until a client hires you. Again, the first client is the hardest to land. But once you got his precious feedback in your portfolio, subsequent contracts will be much easier to achieve.

When it comes to the commission you earn, it depends a lot on the client. Initially, every contract is valuable to you. So if you see a request for a 1000 word article for $10, it may not sound too bad. Depending on the article and the time you have, you can finish within a few hours, tops.

But that’s hardly the right way to get a six-figure income with freelancing, is it? The most important metric for your fee is the price per word ratio.

A 1000 word article for $10 equals a ratio of $0.01 per word. And that’s not nearly enough. If you use Upwork, they also take a flat 20% off your earned money. This leaves you with $8 for writing that 1000 word article.

But since building your portfolio is much more important than your income at this point, it may be worth taking the bullet.

Raising your freelancing fees

Once you have a few projects to show for, you can aim for a higher PPW ratio, a good start is to ask for at least $0.03. Now the same 1000 word article from the start already pays you $30. If you can finish writing it within an hour, this gives you an hourly rate of $30 per hour.

Not too bad, is it?

This also means that a lot of projects you’d have taken earlier are suddenly too cheap for your set goals. Don’t feel bad for turning a client down if the rate is too low.

It’s actually important to stand your ground and don’t take work that doesn’t pay you enough for your effort. Some clients may even try to negotiate you down to as low as $0.005 (yes, that’s not a typo!). Decline these offers, but stay polite when doing so.

Now that you can show off many fulfilled contracts with hopefully stellar feedback, it’s up to you to raise the odds. So stay consistent in your pricing and turn down any client who doesn’t comply.

Bigger clients often consciously skip freelancers that work for too low rates, fearing their quality might be equally low. So while you may find fewer clients in this phase, those that you find will be much more valuable to your future as a successful freelancer.

The more experience you gain, the more your confidence grows with it. And you’ll soon be working exclusively for $0.10 and more per word. Coming from Upwork and the usual price range you find there, this may seem ridiculous. But be assured, it’s not.

Top writers can even earn between $1 and $2 per word. 1000 words for $1 per word? Do the math.

Expanding your freelancing business

To achieve these high rates, Upwork and Freelancer just won’t cut it. Their fees may be acceptable at the beginning for an aspiring freelancer, but once you got the experience and value to rise beyond, their fees are holding you back.

Now you need to find work by other means to be able to work outside of their financial boundaries. You can still use them to scout for contracts if you got spare time, but it will be much more valuable to work on your own now.

How do you do that?

One good way to discover work as a freelancer is via LinkedIn. Set up a LinkedIn profile as a freelancer, share your experience and portfolio in a compelling biography (you can also link to your Upwork profile), and let potential clients know that you’re available for work.

Then, connect with as many potential clients as possible. You’ll also occasionally receive an invitation from a stranger. Don’t turn it down. I’ve received many good contracts in the past from clients who approached me through LinkedIn.

If you’d like, you can also launch your own website. A clear and concise website can lead potential clients directly from Google to your freelancing business. But creating a good-looking website that ranks well in Google takes a lot of effort and resources. It’s not a must-have either. But if you want to go the extra step, hire a website service to create your website for you.

Put your writing out into the world

LinkedIn works in bringing you new valuable clients through one thing: Exposure. And you’ll need to maximize your exposure in order to succeed outside of freelancing platforms. So how can you maximize your exposure?

Look at Medium for example. It’s an online platform that allows you to write content and share it with the world. You can write public articles on Medium and use it as a means to put your name out there. Over time, you’ll gain more and more followers who value your writing and come to you for advice.

Not only is Medium free, but it also allows you to earn money with your writing if you pay for a member account and put your articles behind the Medium Partner Program (MPP).

It works by paying you monthly depending on how much your articles have contributed to the total website traffic. You write an article and publish it, then it will continuously generate revenue depending on how many people read it.

While most Medium members don’t earn more than $100 per month, some live entirely off their Medium revenue. Some of the best articles earned more than $3000 within a single month. It’s not easy, but it is possible.

As a freelancer, Medium should not be your main source of income. But by writing articles for the world to see, it can serve as another portfolio to put your quality as a writer on display.

Joining a publication on Medium can raise the odds of your articles being seen by more people, and also quickly leads to many new acquaintances on LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn recommends new connections based on who you know, this can cause exponential growth of your LinkedIn network, further increasing the chance of meeting a new client.

Writing articles on Medium in between clients is a great way to hone your writing skills while simultaneously growing your portfolio and increasing your visibility. The revenue you get from your articles is a nice little bonus.

How to write a proper freelancing invoice

So you landed your first client outside Upwork and finished the job. Now the client asks for an invoice. How do you do that?

It’s less complicated than it may seem. You can find various templates to use online simply by asking Google for an invoice template. You can also make use of services like free invoice generators.

If you’re willing to pay, you can also get dedicated invoice tools like QuickBooks, FreshBooks, or Wave. These come with additional functionality, like tracking all your clients and their payments, automatic sending of invoices, and much more.

But you don’t need paid tools to write a proper invoice. These tools are mainly helpful to assist you in bookkeeping and managing your invoices for multiple clients.

In order for your freelancing invoice to be legit, you only need to make sure it contains the following information:

• INVOICE, written at the top of the page
• A unique identification number to keep track of all your invoices
• Your full name and address, including phone number and email
• A “Bill To:” section, containing the full information of your client
• The date of issuing the Invoice, along with payment terms and a due date for the payment
• A breakdown of the service you provided, the quantity you delivered, and the amount the client has to pay for it
• The terms and conditions of your service, including how your client can pay you, as well as info such as “no refunds” or “payment due within 14 days”
• Taxes if applicable, as well as a subtotal (pre-tax) and the final amount your client is due to pay

The unique number you stick on your invoice is rather arbitrary, as long as you continue this counter with each new invoice you write, regardless of the recipient. But it can help to leave an impression on your client if your invoice starts for example at #387.

This can help to make up for the countless Upwork jobs you worked on in the past, where you didn’t need to write invoices. Just make sure not to overdo it, as too big of a number will quickly be deduced as a made-up fake number.

The service you provided can be written down as a quick summary, for example:

Copywriting — Website “law firm XY” — $0.14 per word — 2150 words — $301

It’s wise to have a payment period written in your terms. This ensures that clients pay the invoice promptly. The period you set is entirely up to you. You can give your clients a period of 7, 14, 30, or 60 days, or write “due upon receipt” to clarify that your client should pay as soon as possible.

Also, make sure that you include your payment methods in the invoice. Nothing is more embarrassing than forgetting to give your client an actual means of paying you.

Include your bank information or additional options for payment, like your PayPal account.

Save your invoice in PDF-format, so your clients can’t alter the content. Then send it to them via email and use a clear subject header, such as “INVOICE — copywriting service — website “law firm XY”.

The client should then promptly pay you for your hard work and contact you in the future for more projects.

Five rules for successful freelancing

Getting your freelancing business up and running is not easy, but it’s far from impossible.

To help you with the journey from being a new starter to becoming a successful freelancer working for rates of $0.10 and more per word, here are a few important rules to keep in mind.

1. It’s easier to keep an existing client than to find a new one

When it comes to weighing your existing clients versus the process of acquiring new clients, it’s far more difficult to replace lost clients than it is to get new projects through long-lasting business relationships.

Make sure to always deliver high-quality work, so your clients will at no point be dissatisfied with your service. Offer to make smaller changes and revisions for free and help them best you can. This helps to bind the client and building a personal relationship.

The most difficult time for a freelancer is finding a new client after the last one has left. While you may earn triple the amount you’d get working a regular 9 to 5 for one month, this quickly evens out if you have to survive three months without any work at all.

Keep your clients happy and plan ahead to avoid being left in the open.

2. One high-paying client is worth more than twenty low-paying clients

While you’ll be hunting for any and all clients at the beginning of your freelancing career, you’ll soon notice how exhausting it is to keep up with all of them. But you will definitely come across a big company at one point or another during this process.

These clients have no problem paying you higher rates for your work and can often offer a consistent stream of work for you.

Prioritize these clients and drop smaller clients in their favor if you have to. It will pay off in the long run.

3. Always respect your deadlines

Apart from the quality of your work, quick turnaround times are a major selling point. If a client can count on your quick delivery, this makes their life much easier. In return, they will value you more highly.

When a client asks you to name a reasonable deadline, check when you’d definitely be able to deliver and add 1–2 days to compensate for unforeseen problems or the occasional lazy day.

4. Don’t be afraid of new experiences

You may get client requests for work you’ve never done before. Maybe you heard the term SEO (search engine optimization) for the first time in your life and your client asks you to help him out optimizing his web content.

Though new terms and projects may appear intimidating, don’t feel overwhelmed. You can easily learn everything you need to know via Google. In regards to SEO, Google even offers a free beginner course, including certification, for SEO.

If a client offers you something new, say yes first, learn what’s necessary afterward.

A lot of jobs sound more complicated than they really are. You’d miss out on great opportunities if you let your lack of confidence get in the way. Clients will often be able to tell you exactly what they need to be done. Then it’s just a matter of doing it.

Copywriting, creative writing, blog articles, landing pages, product listings, transcriptions, social media marketing… the list goes on. There are many fields where you can use your writing skills.

And while they all differ from each other, none is especially hard to learn. Just try it yourself. On the other hand, you can add each of these to your advertised field of expertise once you’ve done a few projects.

5. Manage your time

The freedom to choose your working hours can cause a big problem and is the main reason for many freelancers to suffer from burnout: Instead of working less, like we anticipated when starting our freelancing career, we end up working more.

A lot of freelancers work 7 days per week, for 10 hours or more a day.

It is therefore important that you set reasonable “office hours” for yourself and let your clients know when you’re not available.

In this regard, freelancing is a job like any other and you deserve to have a few days off now and then to recharge your battery.

Avoid overworking yourself and don’t take on more work than you can deliver. After all, it’s the dream of working less that made you choose to freelance, isn’t it?

Final thoughts

Freelancing can be a very rewarding career path and does not require any higher education, expensive equipment, or other hard to achieve prerequisites. Anyone can become a freelancer. All it takes is some dedication and the overcoming of initial hurdles and low pay-offs.

Once you are past these points, you’re on your way to becoming a successful freelancer at impressive rates.

Now you know how to start, where to start, what to expect, and where to go from there. Keep these tips in mind and stay persistent on your path.

I wish you the best of luck with your freelancing career. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact me on Twitter.