How I Made My First $200 Freelancing
Make money as a freelance web developer
I am a front-end web developer and a college student. Started freelancing to earn some money and develop my skills by having an exposure to the industry and build experience. So here’s how I made my first $200 as a freelancer and how you can do the same.
Skill
You should be skilled to offer your services to people and get paid. Freelancing is giving people your services, and they will pay you for the value you provide.
You shouldn’t focus on money at first. You should focus on building a skill that will provide value for people. Keep learning and build some expertise in the field you choose.
I chose front-end web development, as I was very interested in building stuff. I honed my skills by building a lot of projects. Building projects helps you to develop your skills faster and It can be used as a proof of you skills.
Seek Opportunities
Once you are comfortable with your skills, just put yourselves out there. People need to know about you and what you provide, otherwise no one is going to know about you. You should always look for opportunities around you.
You can offer your services by using platforms like fiverr, upwork, freelancer etc…
I created a profile on all of these platforms and started offering my services. I was applying for a lot of jobs in upwork, but the competition is too high and I couldn’t get any work. I didn’t open upwork for some days as I was overwhelmed by all these people offering lot of services for cheaper and cheaper prices.
One day I was going through my gmail and saw a mail from 2 days before. I don’t open gmail that often, so I didn’t notice it at the day it was sent. The mail was a notification from upwork that I received a message from a buyer. I suddenly opened upwork, and replied to the buyer. But I was late, the message was from 2 days before, and the buyer got another developer for the job. I was so sad, that I missed a big opportunity. I decided to always check all these platforms everyday from that day onwards.
Niche Down
There is a lot of competition in these platforms. You most probably can’t get a client for a service that is so generalised, because there will be so many people offering them.
You should offer a specialised service. People offering services on a specialised section of a field will have higher chances of getting clients and the competition will be low.
I created a gig on fiverr, I offered web development as a service. It is such a wide service, and there was a lot of competition and I wasn’t getting any clients. So my friend said to me to niche down and offer specialised services. So I did that and created a gig which offered 3D front-end web development. There was very less competition for 3D front-end web development and surprisingly I got a message from a buyer after only 2 hour of posting the gig. The job was to fix a bug in a 3D website. I was very happy and I did the work for the client for $15, as it only took me couple of hours to fix the bug. The client was very happy with my work and asked me whether I could work on some more projects with him. I agreed and worked on a full 3D website, for which he paid me $200.
So that’s how I made my first $200 as a freelance web developer. If you find this helpful, share with your friends who may need it. Are you interested to get into freelancing? Let me know in the comments!
