How To Start A Freelance Business In 2021

How To Start A Freelance Business In 2021. Did you know?

54 million people all across the globe are looking forward to starting their own freelancing career in the coming years. Freelancing gives more flexibility, freedom, and opportunity to work from anywhere in the world. In the coming years, more and more people would opt for the freelancing gig career. 

So, if you want to kick-start your own freelancing journey in 2021, then we have got you covered. In this blog post, you’ll come across 10 easy steps by which you can start your freelancing business at ease.

Hiring freelancers is not only becoming acceptable for business, but also profitable. This has created tons of opportunities for the people like niche-specific skills in the domains of SEO, blogging, content writing, editing, and a lot more. 

Fewer taxes, lower employee-related expenses, fewer office expenses, and the list goes on. These are the few reasons why many companies are seeking freelance writers, designers, marketers, and developers to help grow their businesses.

Plus, for freelancers, there are so many jobs available on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and a lot more.

So, if you want to start a freelance business in 2021, then watch out for these 10 steps. 

1. Define your goals

Without having your goals defined clearly, you cannot think of starting a profitable freelancing business. That’s why it is of utmost importance for you to define your goals first and then work around them. 

• Is freelancing a job or just a side hustle?
• Do you want to make a full-time career in freelancing?
• Or, are you looking for freelancing as a stepping stone to build your career?

Whatever your goal is, you need to be very clear about it. This is something that even top freelancers of the world agree on. Take time and understand why you want to start a freelance business.

Make sure that this decision is the right step in your progression towards building a successful freelance business.

Only when you have a clearly defined goal, can you think of moving ahead in your freelancing career. 

2. Find a niche

The next step in starting a freelancing business in 2021 is to decide your niche. Let us say that you have a good grasp on SEO and you can rank any set of keywords quickly. This clearly shows that you should offer SEO services. 

Today, most companies all across the globe are looking for talented and qualified SEO professionals who can rank their websites. Also, SEO is a freelancing niche highly profitable as compared to others in the market. 

As a freelance SEO provider, you can make anywhere between $10/$20 per hour as a newbie SEO expert. 

As you gain experience and build your portfolio, you can even make $100/$200 per hour. The only thing that matters is the quality of your work and some reviews and testimonials. 

3. Identify your clients

Just as finding your potential niche, identifying your clients is also very important. 

If you’re just starting your freelance business, we would suggest you take more of a shotgun approach to landing a few clients. You can start by making a few assumptions about your clients, whom you want to work with. Attract those clients, work for them for a month or two, and then decide whether you want to continue with those clients or not. 

You should also narrow down your targeted audience so that you can be very clear about what type of clients you want to work with. This will not only help you in getting good clients but also reduce your effort. 

Once you have identified who your targeted clients are, you can then pitch to them. 

4. Set a price

Now here comes the most important part of your freelancing business, which is setting a price. If you are a total newbie into the freelancing business area, we would recommend you to use this freelance rate calculator which will help you know how much you should charge for your niche, skill, or industry.

You can use this tool to check whether your rates meet your income goals or not. 

There are tons of other great tools out there for double-checking that you’re charging a good amount of money to fulfill your daily needs. We would also recommend you to determine your pricing strategy with a very different progression in mind.

Remember, change your price based on the value that you are providing to your clients. More value = more money and vice versa. 

Also, your prices may be too high or low for the clients you’re targeting, but if you do your homework in deciding who to pitch your services to, you’ll be selling exactly what your clients need even for a high price. 

5. Build a portfolio

Whether you agree or not, without having a portfolio, you cannot think of starting a successful freelance business in 2021. The portfolio is something that will help you in winning the trust of your potential clients and more projects. It will show your credibility and authority regarding the work you have done. 

Apart from this, having a portfolio website would also help you in building your online presence. Since freelancing is all about working online from anywhere, a portfolio website is a must-have for every freelancer. 

If not a portfolio website, then you can also think of starting a blog. In our opinion, you should start a blog first, then think of getting some clients on board. You can start to create content around your niche and showcase your expertise. This will help you in increasing your credibility and trust in the market.

Your blog can also open up new and additional earning sources for you such as affiliate marketing, Google AdSense, paid posts, and a lot more. 

So, make sure that you either start a blog or build a portfolio website. 

6. Create examples of what you can serve

If you want to get more clients, then you need to showcase or demonstrate your expertise. With that in mind, one of the best ways to show your expertise is showcasing your knowledge by creating content such as text, video, blog, and so on. 

Before you create any kind of content, you need to understand the needs and wants of your targeted audience first. Without understanding what kind of content your audience likes, you won’t be able to establish your authority. 

There is no better way to sell your freelancing services than by showcasing to your client what they want. Also, it will help you in taking projects much easier when you have a library of your work to show.

We would suggest you publish a long 4000+ words content on your blog at least once a week. In this way, you can share your knowledge and gain the trust of your clients. 

If you’re a SEO expert, you should carefully curate your portfolio site, since everything about it is a representation of what you’ll be able to build for your clients. If you’re a content marketer, then your blog posts need to speak to the quality of work you’ll create for everyone you work with.

7. Choose few clients first

As a freelancer, you’ll be having a very limited amount of time to deal with and manage clients. So, you need to hunt for your clients wisely in order to generate maximum income from them. Many freelancers end up taking tons of clients on board and cannot give value to them. 

This is something that you should be avoiding.

At the beginning of your freelancing career, you should take a few clients and try to give them maximum value first. If they find your services valuable, they’ll surely opt for more of your services.

We would suggest you retain 2 clients for your freelance business at a time. This will help you allocate your limited amount of freelance time to these two clients that are most aligned with the future clients you want to work with as well.

Apart from this, it will also give you free flexibility, freedom, and time to work. And most importantly, you’ll be able to give the maximum value to all your clients. 

8. Mention Potential Clients in Your Content

Looking for freelancing jobs on the internet can be quite difficult at times. How To Start A Freelance Business In 2021. And you are going to have a harder time if nobody is aware of your existence. That’s why in every piece of content you create, you need to mention the clients that you have worked for. This will help you in building your goodwill and reputation in front of your blog readers.

You need to look ahead to the content you are planning to publish in the coming weeks. And create a list of your clients to mention on your blog. Once you have mentioned your clients on your blog posts, reach out to them and ask them to share your content. 

This will further increase your reach, visibility and brand awareness. People will come to know about you and they’ll start visiting your blog often. Some of them might also think of hiring you. 

9. Learn pitching skills

The next in this list to start a freelance business is to learn some pitching skills. If you seriously want to start a freelancing business, then you need to learn how to pitch to clients. No matter how well you are into your freelancing services, if you want to make business via it, you need to learn the art of communicating with clients. 

It will surely help you in getting more clients at ease. Always remember that pitching is an art and you’ll learn this art by constantly learning on a daily basis. When it comes to pitching, then you should know how to find, convince, and convert new clients for your freelance business.

Here are some pitching tips that will help you a lot.

• Make storage statements in your pitch.
• Sell your services.
• Highlight your key strengths.
• Showcase your proven work.
• Use visuals if possible.

10. Create profiles

The last on this list of how to start a freelance business in 2021 is to create your profiles. No, we are not talking about social profiles. You need to focus on creating a freelance profile on websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and many others where your targeted clients are. 

Build a strong profile so that you can get a few clients in the first go. We would recommend you to check out the profiles of a few top freelancers in your niche and go through them. 

Don’t copy it, but take some inspiration from their profile. Check out how they have structured and crafted their profile. Once you are done with this, you can start creating your profile. 

Make sure that you fill in all the required information from top to bottom. Please avoid giving fake information, as you may end up losing your profile for life. Keep it short but genuine.

If possible, include your previously done work, certificates, your work experience and other relevant things asked. This will help you in creating the best freelance profile and the most authoritative one. 

Conclusion:

Starting and building a freelance business takes a lot of trial and error if you are a newbie in it. However, if you follow the 10 tips mentioned in this blog, you’ll surely be able to create a freelance business quickly. 

But remember one thing, it requires a lot of blood, sweat, and effort to build a freelance business from scratch. So, make sure that you are ready to put in all the hard work and effort. 

Make sure to follow these 10 steps religiously, and you’ll surely see great success. Initially, you won’t get results, but as you keep on putting in the effort, you will surely get your first client within weeks.