Freelancing is becoming more popular and a lot of people are already doing it as a full-time job so I thought I could share with you some of my experience.

I’m not going to tell you whether you should consider freelancing as a career, but I’m going to tell you how you can start if you decided to go for it.

First of all, and what’s probably the most important: patience and persistence.

You have to be patient because it could take a while to find your first job and you need persistence to not give up.

I think the best place to start right now is Upwork. I tried Freelancer but it wasn’t as good as Upwork. If you have enough time to apply to jobs on both Upwork and Freelancer then of course you can give both a try.

Once you create your account you have to set up your profile. Make sure to include all the relevant studying and working history, previous projects, and a portfolio if you have one.

Your profile description is very important because that’s probably the first thing clients see when they visit your profile or find you in their search results. Make sure to focus on how your experience and skills could help the clients. Don’t just tell what you’re good at, tell them what they’ll get by working with you and how you can help them with their projects.

Your profile picture is also important, it improves your credibility so find a high professionally-looking picture of yourself. If you don’t have one then take one, use your smartphone to take a nice picture. Maybe you think this is not so important but it is, believe me.

Once your profile is ready you can start applying to jobs now. Start searching for small projects, small tasks that don’t require a lot of time. It will be easier to find a job like that since they don’t require a big commitment from both you and your client and the clients are considering even freelancers without any experience for those jobs. You can also search for bigger projects but make sure to combine them with smaller projects because you’ll have more chances of finding a job.

What’s important for you right now is to find your first job and to get your first feedback. Once you do that, it will be much easier to find projects.

Remember that at this stage you have to be very patient and persistent. You should search for and apply to jobs at least 2–3 hours a day for at least two weeks. You will probably find your project in a week or two. Applying to jobs every day is really important and I am sure that your first project soon enough if you do so.