How to Start Freelancing as a Beginner? Full Guide
To start freelancing as a beginner, you need to learn skills which has demand in marketplaces, practice on demo projects to gain experience and build a portfolio on any specific subject.
When you will have the knowledge, skills, and experience in a chosen subject – you have to join Freelance Marketplaces – such as Fiverr, Upwork, etc. to find job posts, apply for them, and get hired by clients.
The process is as simple as it is described above, but it takes a lot of patience to learn, lots of experimentation – implementation, and lots of practice to become job ready!
You might be going to get success faster than others, but important information you need to keep in mind – even if you have learned any skill so well, you might have to wait a long time to get your first order in reality and that is okay!
In my connections – I have seen many people who got their first job after trying for over 6 months, and I know many people who got their first job as freelancers in the very first month of joining freelance marketplaces.
So, to be considered for a job, you must try and the important aspect is consistency and patience.
How to Start Freelancing as a Beginner:
There are many job categories in freelancing you can choose and move with. First of all, you have to learn the basic requirements and potential opportunities for some of them.
You can choose and start freelancing as a Web Developer, Graphic Designer, Video Editor, Digital Marketer, or Software Engineer, and there are many other options to choose from.
Here is a list of job categories available on Upwork for your reference. After learning the skills, you can provide freelance services to clients on Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com, Guru.com, Peopleperhour, and many other freelancing marketplaces.
To help you get started, I would love to share information about Skillshare. You can learn any chosen skill for free on Skillshare for the first month.
Star freelancing as a Virtual Assistant:
I used to provide virtual assistant services to clients for more than 7 years. I helped clients with admin support, data entry, web research, lead generation, and social media management tasks through Upwork, Fiverr, and private contracts.
So, I am going to write my experience being a data entry operator, and you can utilize the steps to become a freelancer in any other job field.
To get started as a freelance data entry service provider, at the very first stage- you need to gather ideas about data entry project types available on freelance marketplaces. What I mean by this is, learning about what kind of jobs are being posted on freelance marketplaces, what are the requirements clients looking for, what are the skills needed to complete the projects, etc.
Not only for data entry jobs, get information and ideas about any other job categories you’re interested in.
You can visit Upwork’s job post section and find relevant job posts to learn – what clients are looking for and what skills have demand in the market. Simply visit Upwork, chose “Jobs” in the search filter, type data entry or other job category name, and hit the enter button on your keyboard!
The following quick video has the demonstration:
Not only on Upwork, but you can also follow the same process on Fiverr and Freelancer.com to get a good idea of job postings and gather information.
Please check out the short video added below, you will learn the process to find – what data entry works people are providing as freelancers on Fiverr and making money!
Take note of the types of jobs clients are posting often on the marketplaces, what are the required skills, etc.
Now, compare your ability, if you find jobs you can do right away, that is fantastic. But, if you see job posts that need some additional skills that you can learn in a short time period, go for them and learn.
After learning about the job types, you can start working on demo projects. For example, check out the data entry project examples, you can work on them to practice and build your portfolio as a data entry operator.
Same way, take note of relevant demo project details of your chosen working field and start working on them to gain experience and build your portfolio to share on social media, and with clients in the future.
If you are interested specifically to become a data entry operator, I would love to invite you to enroll in my pre-recorded, 4 hours long best-seller Data Entry Course for Beginners on Udemy It will help you learn the required skills from real jobs which I completed for my clients over the years.
I have added a discount code for my blog readers, simply click here to get up to 70% off on the course enrollment.
To learn other skills, you can join Skillshare for free to proceed with and you can learn WordPress Basic to Advanced, Elementor Website Builder, Email Marketing with MailChimp, Data Entry, Lead Generation, and Web Scrapping from my free courses on YouTube.
Let’s assume you already learned some sellable skills, now what?
After learning and practicing the required skills, you have to start learning about freelance marketplaces. Consider learning how the marketplace works, the rules, community guidelines, how to become a seller and the process to get paid, etc.
The Forum of any marketplace is a great resource to learn more about the marketplace, connect with other freelancers on the platform, and learn from their experiences.
To progress, set up your profile on chosen marketplaces by adding a professional-looking profile picture, a short and concise job title, outstanding optimized overview, and complete it accordingly.
Find relevant jobs, then either apply for the jobs or create gigs to showcase your skills and experience, and the services you are going to offer to clients.
This way, clients will start noticing and responding to your proposals on Upwork, or clients will reach out to you with their needs through gigs on Fiverr – if all goes well with mutual agreement, they will hire you or place an order for you to complete the work.
This is how Freelancing works basically.
The hardest and most important part is to learn the process, build your skills, gain experience, build a portfolio to add to your profile and share with your potential clients while applying for jobs.
When you will have the required skills to start freelancing as a beginner, you keep consistency and patience – you will become successful.
Why should you join the Data Entry Course for Beginners?
This is a step-by-step, real project-focused course, created for beginners and I myself am the course instructor. If you didn’t know about my professional background – I was a Top Rated freelance Data Entry service provider on Upwork and a successful seller on Fiverr.
I have recorded the lessons, step by step from my real-life experience being a data entry operator, for aspiring data entry operators!
I would recommend you join the course and start learning from the video lessons if you are interested to become a data entry operator and start your freelance career.
When I am writing this post, the course has over 4000 5 STAR REVIEWS on UDEMY!
Here I have got a few for your to take an instant look at:
Anyway, let me answer a frequently asked question below:
What is the best marketplace for beginners to start their freelancing journey?
Fiverr – the shortest and complete answer!
After learning data entry or any other job skills, you can start learning about the Fiverr marketplace, how it works, how to make a freelance seller profile on Fiverr, and how to set up a gig and make money on Fiverr.
How to Make a Profile on Fiverr | Step-by-Step Guide
From the video above, you will be able to learn – how to create and set up a freelance seller account on Fiverr for free. You will get a clear overview, and tips on setting up your Fiverr freelance seller account from the scratch.
After creating your seller profile on Fiverr, you have to create gigs to showcase your professional expertise or the services you want to provide as a freelancer!
To start creating a gig, you need an image to use as a gig thumbnail, so potential clients could have some idea of the services you provide by just even looking at the thumbnail at a glance!
So… how can you create a beautiful, attractive thumbnail image for your gig?
If you don’t have graphic design skills, in common sense – it is a pain to create a thumbnail image for your gig!
But, in our case – we are going to use a free Graphic Design platform named Canva, where we can set up an account for free, and then we will be able to design beautiful images for our gig thumbnails.
From the video tutorial above, you will be able to learn the step-by-step process to use the free tool to design beautiful images and how to download the images to use for your purpose.
Now, we have got a gig/service idea, we have got the images to use and it’s time to set up a GIG on Fiverr properly – so that clients are going to find us on the platform.
From the video above, you will get a step-by-step lesson to organize a complete GIG, you will learn what to consider, and how to make it SEO-friendly – so that your clients are going to find you easily on Fiverr.
After publishing your gig on Fiverr by following the live example demonstrated in the video above, you have to stay active on Fiverr.
Stay online as long as possible every day, learn more about Fiverr and when you receive any message from your potential client – try to respond as fast as possible.
Clients love fast responses and professional communication skills – when they choose a Freelancer for their project.
Now, let’s learn –
- How to send effective buyer requests to get orders on Fiverr?
- How Can you Get an Order on Fiverr Faster?
- How to Deliver a Completed Project to Your Client on Fiverr? and
- How does the Fiverr Review process work?
from the Step by Step Fiverr Tutorials available on my YouTube channel!
Check them out, be attentive, and learn valuable lessons to become successful.
So, here you have got complete instructions, information, resource, and guideline to follow and learn from.
It is the time for you to take action, learn, implement, and get results.
Many of my students are already successful, many of them are TOP RATED freelancers on Upwork and doing great on Fiverr. 😊😍
If you are determined and dedicated – why shouldn’t you become a successful freelancer when you have all the resources available?
And, in the end – I have got two questions to ask you.
- Did you get some good information from this blog post? – please let me know by commenting below.
- Do you think you found a resource you can follow to make it happen?
- Do you have any questions for me? – please ask me by commenting below.
- Are you taking action to get success?
- Are you trying your best to get success?
- Are you doing the best, again are you doing your best?
So, this was it from my side now, please don’t forget to SHARE this post if you have found it helpful and TAKE ACTION!
Bests,
Azharul
Contact me on Instagram