If you are starting out as a freelancer you may think it is very difficult to identify a service to offer that customers will be willing and ready to pay for. Trust me, it is not as difficult as you might think yet it calls for dedication and patience. I will take you through what I did to get to where I am and where I still endeavour to reach.
In this post I will go through a high level entry into this space. First, I will discuss the basis on which you can select your service, then how you learn more about how it works in the freelancing space and how it can work for you too and on a later post how to present it to your market (with special focus on the fiverr freelancing platform).
Skills, knowledge, interests and random opportunities
The starting point is knowing just a little (don’t crack your head thinking) about yourself, that is, your skills, knowledge and interests. You may look further to things you know will make you the kind of money you want that you are willing to endure doing. As long as it is legal and requires resources that you can afford, then there is nothing that can stop you from getting started as a freelancer online.
Next I discuss each of the basis on which you can develop your service to offer as a freelancer.
- Skills
Skills are acquired through experience. Think of the times when you have an audience for what you were doing. This could be when you were an MC for a wedding, a zoom meeting host, a dancer, a musician, helping out in a meeting, finding a solution at critical times, etc. That is what makes you useful to the next person and therefore a potential service to offer for a fee. What you count to be nothing in your sight might be value worth paying for to another person.
- Knowledge
Knowledge is acquired through reading. This could be academically, through seminars, conferences, workshops, etc. Knowledge in application empowers you to apply best practice, which puts you is good position to compete for business. It does not matter the level of knowledge you have because at any stage, you there will be some people that know less, same at your level and those ahead of you. What matters is that your work can be convincing enough to your clients and that you surely can deliver as per your promise.
- Interests
Sometimes you may not have skills and knowledge on the things you want to offer but only have interest in them. In this case, you need to take the challenge to skill up and learn yet you can open up to a potential client that you are interested in making an attempt while you work at acquiring the required skills and knowledge. In such cases, you should be ready to work as an intern and accept low pay.
- Random opportunities
There are low hanging fruits that are open for early birds that you can take advantage off as a freelancer. My example is that of being the first one from your country to sell post cards. I think I was the first one on fiverr and that made me a leading seller from my country and one for consideration from Southern Africa. Surely there are opportunities that are based on your location, language you speak, skin colour, ethnicity, your physic, etc. These are likely sources of what I term random opportunities.
How your chosen gig has worked for other
When you have made your selection, your first stop for easy review of your chosen gig is YouTube. YouTube has an advantage of even revealing steps on how to make yourself standout from the many players that are already in the field. However, I do recommend that you make an effort to learn more on related websites, podcasts, slideshows, etc. Make sure that you visit your preferred freelancing platform, I use fiverr, to check out how others have presented themselves to customers on the same or similar service. You can do this by simply typing the title gig on the search window and do your search. A list will show and you may filter with the most popular, many sales and orders in queue. You are not to copy what they wrote but make your profile very similar to theirs.
Keep coming to this blog for more tips on how to get started with your freelancing career. You are also welcome to check my TikTok and YouTube channels for quick lessons, often with examples on my attempts on the many promises by freelance promoters online. Keep doing something and you will eventually get a share on the success you are looking out for.
