Are you thinking about becoming a freelancer? As the number of freelancers is increasing and peeking especially post Covid19 as many lost their full time jobs and seriously taking freelancing as the main source of income.

You might have already started your freelancing platform search or tried reaching out for clients but seeing that you are left with not enough projects, none or on the complete opposite side you’re asked to something with a very close deadline (because nobody else agreed to do this miracle work).

The waiting game in this field is quite unpleasant but you need to know where to seek projects in this field, and when you do it will work fantastic for you as you will be providing what you do best, then projects will come one after another! 

Where to start? Where should I head for offering my work?

Here are our best freelancing tips for 2021:

Put yourself out there!

Choose your online freelancing platform.

What is a freelancing platform? It’s an online marketplace that connects businesses with freelancers. You can create a profile on that specific platform that includes your skills, projects, portfolio, work experience and other things that might be important for the business/client.

Most of these freelancing platforms have ratings, page positioning and profile ranking that gets you on top and more in demand with the more work you do for their clients.

The client posts a job and you apply where they see your offer along with your portfolio so they will contact you and ask you to do the job if they were impressed with your work and happy with your pricing per hour.

Here are the top freelance websites and platforms according to other freelancers:

1. Upwork
2. Fiverr
3. PeoplePerHour
4. Ureed
5. Freelancer.com
6. Designhill 
7. Toptal
8. We work remotely
9. Behance
10. Dribbble
11. DesignCrowd
12. 99designs
13. Webflow

Hold on! Freelancer tip: 

When your researching the best fit platform for your skill & work, get more specialized so for example if you’re a graphic designer/ designer go for behance or dribbble.

So DON’T go all over the place, try to focus on a specific small set of services  to become a specialist in your field and gain good ratings on a couple of platforms.

Build your own brand as a professional in your field:

By going solo your main focus should be building your own identity as a professional in field X. 

Here are the steps you need to take to be a freelancer with your own brand:

Know your target market:

Create customer personas. Who is your perfect client for you, focus more on the age group, gender and interests so you don’t target the wrong people. 

Market yourself everywhere:

Social Media Marketing 

Attract your audience using the platform they use daily, it’s the cheapest easiest way to market your skills and target your audience. So create your page on Facebook, instagram and Linkedin where you write what you do, maybe share some tips or upload your work, projects and designs. You might focus on one social platform more than another depending on your field.

Build A Website:

Owning a website provides a great opportunity for people to trust you, it’s a place where they only see one option and that is you, so create a website that would convince people to work with you and trust you as a supplier/professional.

You don’t have to hire a developer or be a code genius, try using simple free templates from WordPress or Wix.

-Email Marketing

To whom should I email? Well, for you to have the ability to send monthly newsletter to remind people with your work, you’d need an email list of potential or previous clients, you can collect them from business cards, forms on social media, subscribers to your website, create a discount pop up for your website visitors where they have to enter an email or from your LinkedIn connections.

When you already have that list of potential customers try sending them useful catchy emails; advice, tips, partial info about that specific topic they might be interested in, news and seasonal offers.

Great Email marketing tools are: HubSpot , Sender, mailchimp and mailerLite.