It was a Saturday in November and I was lying in bed with nothing to do. I noticed that with online classes going on, I had a lot of free time and was thinking about how I could maximize that time for something better. That’s when I came up with the idea of getting started with freelancing.
With the pandemic happening all around the world, I decided to focus on the positive side and think about how I could take advantage of this opportunity. It was perfect timing for me to get started with freelancing since I would have more time with online classes.
Setting up my profile
The first step I took was to create an account on OnlineJobsPH and Upwork and fill out the required information. When I was writing my professional summary, it was tough because I didn’t know how to make it stand out from others. After giving it some thought, I decided to use emojis to add personality to my summary. Emojis are great because they add a bit of personality when you choose ones that fit your description. Here’s an example of how I used emojis in my bio to highlight my skillset:
Skills
⭐️ HTML
⭐️ CSS
⭐️ JavaScriptResearch
Now that my profile is all set up the next thing that I had done was to do some research, Mindlessly applying to jobs without doing research will just result in wasting your time and won’t even get yourself to the doorstep of the client. I had made sure that my professional summary is well-written and straight-forward that clients would know straight under the hood my expertise, I had also improved my writing when it comes to writing a proposal and a lot more.
I credited most of the tips that I had learned when applying to Upwork to a YouTuber called Josh Burns Tech
- Grab attention and hook clients fast
- Show examples of work
- Give a reason why they want to hire you
- Call to Action
- Professional closing
note that this template might differ from one client to another so it’s always important that you make it personal to the client that you’re sending it out to.
Execution
Now the last thing that I had done was to apply to jobs, every morning I would go to Upwork and check out for jobs that interest me, Before I sent out a proposal to a job I would first check how many people had already sent out their proposals, as it would be hard to compete with other freelancers if there had a lot already had applied. I always try to personalize my proposal to each of the clients that I’m applying to further stand out.
Mistakes Encountered
One of the things that had stopped me when getting started on freelancing was the self-doubt that I had in myself as I had thought that I had needed first to master this technology or have a solid understanding first of the programming language but this mindset of mind was wrong as this was preventing me to getting started at freelancing. And what I had also realized is that you’ll always never be ready so just go straight and I’m sure things will just go find as you will learn most in the midst of uncertainty.