How Much Are The Potential Earnings For Freelancing Beginners?

 Today’s competitive world allows individuals to find suitable jobs and provide significant rates. Some would stay in a company with an 8-hour workweek, while others prefer a freelance career to be self-employed and attain a healthier work-life balance. 

If you’re one of the freelancing beginners, it might be overwhelming and confusing at first. But don’t worry; we’re here to help and guide you to start your online career.

What is freelancing?

Many workers have switched to freelancing because it is more flexible and allows them more control over their time. 

But what exactly is freelancing? Simply put, it is where you work as an independent contractor rather than being hired by employers as a full-time employee. 

Sometimes, companies hire them for part-time jobs, but they don’t fully commit to the company like other full-time employees. They earn their wages per-project basis, so they don’t have fixed pay either. The good thing about this is they mostly make more than regular workers; thus, the freelancing career has become a go-to job for the masses.

How to start freelancing?

As freelancing beginners, you must acquire skills, including hard work and perseverance, because starting this path is more challenging than you think. Though that might be the case, this kind of career is worth it because aside from earning significantly, it also contributes to career growth and encourages you to do what you love. But since only some succeed in freelancing, you must learn how to get started correctly.

Identify your goals

In freelancing, the first thing you need to consider is to measure your goals. Think about these questions: 

• Why did you start freelancing? What made you choose this path instead of staying at your previous job?

• Do you want to earn extra income or make his a full-time job?

• Do you want to be a freelancer for life or use it as a stepping stone to attain a different goal in the future? 

Spend time to think and ensure you have identified your goals clearly and precisely. A freelance business can make or break you, so be sure if this is the career you want to take. 

Assess your skills and capabilities

Many great freelancers are in the market, and if you don’t evaluate your skillset properly, your competitors might outrank you. To help you, here are lists of how you could determine your skills. 

• Write down all your marketable skills and interests.

• Enumerate the valuable skills in a remote role, as you will most likely be working in a work-from-home setup.

• Identify the things that you want to explore.

• Find out what skills you are lacking and equip yourself with relevant knowledge.

• If you have a passion for marketing, you can start researching the skills needed in that field and train yourself with it.

Find niches the market wants

As freelancing beginners, you can meet with many niches to explore. However, it would help if you find those that apply to your skills and you’re sure would lead you to the right way. To find out your niche, you need to figure out who and why you want to help in the market.

If you are into writing, you could choose travel, finance, education, and ghostwriting as your niches. If you want to be a graphic designer, you could also look into 3D animation, branding, and creative lettering niches. 

Get to know your potential clients

Not everyone in the market is your ideal client. Even though you have attained diverse skills, you must still segment which clients are right for you. Think of answering these questions to guide you. 

• Which types of businesses accept the skills and services that you possess?

• What is the background of these businesses? Are they adequate to work with? 

Freelancing beginners can start contacting a few clients who require no work experience and work with them. After some time, you can figure out if you want to be with similar clients and continue offering your services. 

Build your portfolio

Creating a portfolio can be a website where you can publish all your work. Here are some integral parts to include in your folio.

• Provide your contact information.

• Showcase your personality and how it is helpful to your target clients.

• Display your sample works and briefly explain how you came up with those.

• Present your relevant skills and accomplishments to attract clients.

One important thing to note is that you only showcase your best work as freelancing is getting more competitive, and clients only accept those they know can satisfy them.

Practice pitching yourself

There needs to be more than a good portfolio to be successful in freelancing. It would help if you learned how to market yourself, as clients want to know you more as part of their hiring process. Here are some basics that you could follow:

• Impress the clients by selling and communicating your strengths.

• Get ready with the questions thrown at you and come up with the best answers.

• Focus on explaining your work samples to let them know you’re an expert in what you do. If you can sell yourself successfully, you are more likely to get accepted by clients who compensate for high salaries.

Highly-sought freelancing jobs for beginners and rates

As a beginner, you don’t need to worry about not getting a job, for there are many options. However, you must consider what fits you and is appropriate for your anticipated income. Following are various freelancing jobs and their potential salaries.

Writing

Those who have excellent writing skills can become content or creative writers. Different businesses look for content writers as it is one of the effective ways to promote their products and services. In this work, you will write product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, and other types of content. The barriers to this are low, so it is ideal for freelance beginners.

The average rate is $0.05-$0.10 per word and $20-$22 per hour. 

Graphic Design

A highly creative graphic designer powers most successful brands. It also contributes to building credibility and optimizing marketing efforts for businesses, and thus, clients are constantly looking for individuals that acquire this skill. 

If you have a keen eye for details and are into aesthetics, this job might be the one for you. Depending on the client, freelance beginners can get paid $10-$20 per hour or by project.

Content Editing/Proofreading

This job requires meticulousness and high grammatical skills to review, proof, and edit content. The beginner’s average rate for this is the same with writing, which is $0.05-$0.10 per word. 

Website Development

Website development helps businesses create visual content and attracts consumers to search for their products and services. As a result, their online presence improves and increases their sales. 

If you’re new to this field, you can earn $30+ per hour. 

Virtual Assistant

If you have excellent organizational skills and know how to follow administrative tasks, you can land a job as a virtual assistant. Clients tend to be busy, so they hire VA freelancers to assist them with tasks such as managing social media accounts, replying to emails, etc.

New virtual assistants can earn $8-$10 per hour, depending on the tasks to do. 

Customer Service 

One needs to have excellent multitasking skills and extreme patience as this work deals with answering phone calls and attending to customer’s needs and concerns. Here, you can expect to deal with irate and frustrated customers. Nevertheless, it is still a lucrative career for those who love interacting with people daily.

The average rate for this is usually around $5-$15 per hour.

Data Entry

This is one of the easiest jobs for freelancing beginners as it doesn’t require any technical knowledge. All you need to do is extract information from one medium, an Excel format, and transfer it to another. 

The introductory rate for this job starts from $5 per hour.

Transcription

If you love listening to podcasts, transcribing would be an easy job for you. You will extract audio or video content and converting it into text.

Freelance transcribers earn $1 per audio minute. 

Appointment Setting

Different industries, such as real estate brokers, agencies, law firms, and financing, require scheduling appointments with clients, including real estate brokers, agencies, etc. Your job as an appointment setter is to make cold calls or emails to potential clients and get them to agree to set an appointment.

Your potential salary for this is $8-$20 per hour, with the possibility of commissions, depending on the agreement.

Just a reminder

When starting a freelancing career, make sure you engage with clients who align with your skills and services. 

If you want to offer premium rates, cultivate and develop your work, and prove that you are worth the opportunity and every penny spent.