If you are someone who does want to get into freelancing, there is a specific roadmap that
a lot of the successful freelancers follow in order to have the most success and there's so many
people creating videos on how to make hundreds a day on different side hustles and working from
home and a lot of people think it's easier than it is to just start making money online
start getting freelance clients. But the harsh reality is that it's not easy, if it was easy
everyone that tried it would be doing it but not everyone that tries it is successful,
the ones who are successful are the ones that are able to break it down step by step and they
know where they're at in their journey they know what milestone they're at and they know where the
next one is so they know what to work on. So when you're just starting out as a freelancer
the first thing that you need to do is really just start start to take action start to look at
what you can offer the marketplace what sort of jobs are in demand right now and which ones
align best with what you're good at and with your personality type, so one of my favorite things to
do is suggest people go to the profitable freelancer website take the completely free
quiz to discover what your freelance superpower is. Now this quiz is just going to ask you some
basic questions about what you prefer doing what type of person you are and then at the end
it will give you a report and it will break down what type of jobs are good for you and a lot of
people are finding it very accurate so if you don't know what skill you want to provide you
don't know what you're really passionate about right now take that quiz i think it'll help you
just go in the right direction and from there so that's where you're at you're at milestone one
you're looking at how can I start, how can I gain some knowledge and then maybe you're taking some
affordable online courses nothing in the thousands of dollars or anything like that just even $20-$30
bucks can get you some really good knowledge even some certifications and then from there
what you need to do is commit. So the first one is to start, the second milestone is to commit,
and committing comes at different stages for people some people know just from day one that
they're committed they're not going to let any failures really set them back but other people
need to have a reminder that they're on this roadmap to becoming a successful freelancer
and in that second milestone is when you need to commit when things start to get tough so when you
start to reach out to different jobs and you're a brand new freelancer let's say you have a couple
courses under your belt you're ready to start earning money but no one's responding to your
proposals no one is hiring you yet that's when you need to double down and commit even more and start
to look at what you're doing wrong or maybe you have a misconception so sometimes people will just
send out five or six proposals and then they don't hear back and they just give up on themselves but
that's when you need to commit you need to figure out that you're not going to hear back
from everyone especially in the beginning you need to send out dozens of proposals
and then on the other hand you also need to look at the quality of the proposals that you're
sending out in the type of clients and projects that you're reaching out to so during that phase
when you're committing it's all about making sure you're not getting discouraged with any setback
and remembering that every freelancer every entrepreneur whatever you're doing in the
business world everyone starts at the ground floor everyone starts with no experience
no reviews but it's up to you to start to get those reviews start to get some real projects,
and that leads me to the third milestone on this roadmap the third milestone is getting your first
job as a freelancer. This is huge because it doesn't need to be in a skill set that you're
going to be committed to forever it just needs to be something that is related to what you're
interested in let's say it's digital marketing get a job in any digital marketing area just so you
can start to get some experience and work on real projects all of the online courses in the world
all of the certifications they're not going to help you unless you put it into practice you land
your first project and you start to figure out what you're good at what you're not good at what
you like doing and what you don't like doing and then from there you're at the fourth milestone and
that is where you start to find your talents. So now you may have a couple jobs that you're working
on or that you've worked on in the past but you don't know exactly what direction you want to keep
going in that's when you need to really analyze what did you like in the past projects what have
you tried out that you didn't like and then start to shape where you're going based on that so you
really want to start to find out what you're good at and get more projects that are similar to that
and start building up your portfolio so once you start to see each of these milestones has
a specific purpose it's easier to see the bigger picture of it but when you're just getting started
out, like I was saying, it's so easy to just think you're just going to have success overnight
and start to make money and everything's going to be awesome. It could work like that but a lot
of times it doesn't and you need to understand where you're at in the journey and when you're
in milestone 4 you're trying to figure out what your talents are you're trying to really you're in
the experimental phase of freelancing of figuring out what's good for you double down on that once
you start to find out what you like. So for me this was something on my journey that actually
surprised me I had a misconception that once I started freelancing and doing one thing I had
to stick with that forever so there was one period where i was creating Shopify websites for clients
and for me it honestly just wasn't my favorite thing I was pretty good at it but it took a lot
of time and it didn't turn into a repeat customer all of the time because sometimes they wanted to
do their own thing after their website was built and I didn't want that, I wanted something I can
work with clients on recurring and I started to try out different things like on-site blogging,
SEO and then that's when I stumbled into what I like the most which is running Google Ads and
running Google Ad Campaigns for clients. So if I just did one thing and then I gave up after
I was like okay Shopify websites I did pretty good at that but you know what it's just not
for me freelancing isn't for me I'd never be at where I am now if I didn't keep trying things and
eventually you're gonna find something that you really are good at that you enjoy doing
and that doesn't really take too much of your time to the point where it's not like you're learning a
brand new skill that you have no knowledge in it's something that you're inherently good at that is
when you can start having the most success which brings us to the next milestone so milestone five
is about niching down, and the saying then riches are in the niches is absolutely true no one just
wants to hire a digital marketer they want to hire a specialist they want to hire someone that
is going to help them solve the exact problem they want solved and there are multiple different ways
that you can niche down you can get more specific with the type of tool that you're using. So in my
case I went from just search engine marketing and I went down to Google Ads, I can go one
step further and either say Google Search, Google Shopping, YouTube, or Display Ads. I can get very
specific with it and then on the other hand I can also niche down for specific industries, now I do
want to just say a quick word of caution about niching down too far especially when you're just
getting started and especially if you're niching down for a specific industry remember that you do
want to be a specialist but you don't want to cut off all of the potential work and once you start
to look at it like that where you want to get very specific but you also want to keep it broad enough
to a point where you can get as many clients as you want that is where you're going to find the
sweet spot and it's different for everyone and it really depends on what skill set you're offering
and then what type of jobs are in demand and how many people how many clients how many companies
are hiring for those roles now once you've done those steps you're on the next step in
the roadmap and that's when you really want to go professional what i mean by that is at this
point you should know exactly what you're good at you should have reviews under your belt and
that should put you in a point in a place where you're able to go professional start charging
higher rates start to work with higher end clients who want to pay you more for the value that you
provide and then you can take it even more serious and let's say you do have a job on the side you
can leave that job go full time as a freelancer or let's say you have a really good system worked out
where you work part-time at one job and you want to make freelancing your permanent side hustle
whatever that means for you where you want to go in life where you are at where you were at
in your career use that to look at where you're at and go professional go all in on this because at
this point you're probably going to be able to see that this is a massively valuable thing you can do
for your career is to double down on it a lot of times when people have a couple successes
they kick their feet up they're like awesome i did good i made a thousand dollars freelancing
last month that's awesome but i really encourage you don't celebrate your wins too much use that as
momentum to keep going because then in the future you're gonna look back and be like wow i really
thought i was so far back then but now look where i'm at and that's all about going professional
celebrating every win you have but also putting your head back down getting to work and building
your freelance business and then that brings us to the final milestone on the freelancer roadmap
to success and that is expanding so expanding once again means different things to different people
but there are multiple routes you can go down once you have gone through this entire journey
once you've gone professional you have your niche you have experience you know what you're doing
you know that you're doing well it all comes down to time so once you are fully maximized
out on your time that's when you need to figure out what the next step is are you happy with your
current income do you just keep doing what you're doing or do you look at ways to improve to expand
that may mean hiring an assistant it could be a virtual assistant to help you either go through
client emails help you check different projects help you with different tasks you need done
or that could mean building a team so maybe you do want to go down the agency route hire
some freelancers under you to help you with the different tasks and you can build a little agency
and see how you like that but it's all up to you it really depends what your personality type is
if you just want to work solo all the time and not have to manage a team or if you love collaboration
you do want to build a team you want to build an agency even if it's 100 virtual the world
we live in now it is very acceptable to have a full digital team and using services like zoom
and google me and using screen share services you can stay up to date work as a team collaborate
and expand and build a real business on the other hand like we were saying if you do enjoy
working for yourself you have the clients that you work with you're happy with the income it's all
about just keeping that going making sure you're working on the best projects for you so you keep
your reputation intact you don't want to try to grow too quick expand too quick take on a project
you're not really ready for you're not capable of doing maybe it's a different skill set and then
you get a bad review that can really hurt you on your journey so every time you're going to expand
remember you're not only just trying to make more money and to give more value to the world you're
also making sure you're protecting everything that you've built along the way. So I know that was a
lot, the freelancer roadmap to success, is just meant to give you an idea of where you should go
from where you're at right now so if you're just starting out start at the first milestone and if
you're somewhere in the middle figure out where you're at and then understand what you need to
do next you need to now pick a niche maybe you're focusing too general or maybe you're all the way
at the top still and you haven't truly committed and you know you want to do it but you've written
off a lot of things because you had a couple fall backs or setbacks. So I hope that was helpful, if
you do want to learn more about freelancing I have the complete Guide to Freelancing: Zero to Mastery
it's an online course it's super affordable on the ZTM academy you pay like $30 bucks a month you get
access to their entire catalog they have courses on a lot of things about coding they're moving
into different business topics like freelancing, SEO, web design, and so much more so if you're
encouraged to really just expand what you're doing as a freelancer you want some help but
you also don't want to spend hundreds or thousands on some insanely overpriced course, check out the
ZTM academy. The link is in the description and we also have a discord server so if you are in that
course or you're planning on taking that course join the discord server because that is where
we all support each other we share our different experiences as freelancers and there's different
points of view in there and that's the beautiful thing about freelancing there's no just one right
way to do it. So I hope that was helpful breaking down the freelancer roadmap to success, my name
is Paul Mendes with Profitable Freelancer, and until the next one I look forward to your success.
Do you want to be free? Do you want to have the freedom to be able to work when you want
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