How to get freelance work for beginners

Tell about common mistakes freelancers make; how to prevent them, and indeed how to start freelancing, and how to earn twice as much on it. Go! The first mistake a freelancer makes is to overestimate expectations from self-employment. Understand that most courses, in pursuit of profit, idealize freelancers. Courses show us not what we can learn from them, but the emotions of successful people. Hence, this persistent association of a freelancer with a pile of money, freedom, sleep until lunchtime, and palm trees. Yes :) it is the umbrella that is the most important thing in freelancing :) Guys who have seen enough of this advertisement, but in fact a real shameless advertisement, can be very disappointed with the real situation cases. Do not think that freelancing is like an easy walk ... BUT! I can responsibly tell you that freelancing really brings in more money than hired work. Even if you live and work in Moscow, what can we say about the regions? 200-300 thousand on a freelance, in the good months - this is a completely realistic result, but in order to achieve it, you should avoid the mistakes that I am talking about today. Let's start from the very beginning, how to become a freelancer, what mistakes are there at the very beginning? If you have already decided that this cannot continue, and you need remote work, you cannot delay and postpone it. Procrastination is the second mistake. There is such a concept as "an eternal student" - this is a person who is afraid to start earning. He constantly thinks that he is not ready, he lacks knowledge, that he needs to learn a little more, take one more course, add works to his portfolio. By the way! For designers, filling a portfolio is some kind of disaster. There is such a joke - if you want to win, at least buy a lottery ticket. When applied to freelancing, this means sending out your work and making commercial offers. But designers, instead, persistently grind their pictures on Behance and study all related directions. Well, for example, a designer wants to create websites, and at the same time studies animation and 3D. He thinks that now he will understand everything in general, prepare 100% - and so handsome on a white horse - will break into freelancing. It doesn't work that way. Moreover, even if the person gets a job, they may develop impostor syndrome. More than half of the employees of the most famous IT companies, with the highest salaries on the market, considered themselves unworthy of this job. These are the numbers, pause and take a look. Apple and Cisco have a little less than half. But think about it - 45% of Apple employees consider themselves impostors, but still, work for Apple. I think it's better to consider yourself an impostor and work at apple than to be an eternal unemployed student. Therefore, there is no need to delay starting a freelance. You will constantly feel that there is not enough knowledge, and this is normal. But the more you save, the more your anxiety grows. And at some point, this fear of freelancing will outweigh all its advantages, and you may even give up the idea of ​​working for yourself. I understand that it is difficult to decide on such global changes. And to remove this anxiety - you need a plan. Lack of planning is the next mistake the aspiring freelancer makes. You can't just quit your current job, stay at home and decide, "I'm all a freelancer." Unlike a hired specialist who has a predetermined range of responsibilities, a freelancer does everything himself. Manage projects, negotiate, and do his main job. It is very easy to get confused here, and, for example, spend all your working time on completing tasks, forgetting about finding clients. To begin with, write down somewhere all your actions in stages: - create a portfolio, register accounts on stock exchanges, or collect a list of all possible employers. Well, for example, those who want more uniform and predictable work go not to the stock exchange, but to the agencies. And that means we need to leave a list of these agencies. This also takes time. Planning time is the most important thing - as a freelancer, you have to set your own deadlines. At the very beginning of your journey, when you are just making a portfolio, there should be a deadline for its creation. That is a certain date after which you will send it out. Even if you don't like it. Otherwise, I knew designers who endlessly made portfolios and did not even start the mailing list. Already working as a freelancer, you need to learn how to set deadlines yourself, discussing them with the client. Most often, the client's manager does not want to take on unnecessary responsibility and says simply - the task needs to be completed ASAP, that is, as quickly as possible. I myself am almost burned out on this. I dropped everything and proceeded to the task - this is not necessary. In most cases, ASAP is today, during the day, or even tomorrow. Do not drive yourself into a corner. Call the deadlines with a margin, and the client - in most cases - will agree with you. To summarize, it is very important, in simple and understandable points, to write out a plan of your actions at least a month in advance and set goals! Further, the next mistake of a freelancer is a passive position in the market. What does it mean to start a freelance career? First, it's about finding clients. That is people whom you can help with something in exchange for money. Many, according to the classics, go to the stock exchange, register, and wait for orders. Obviously, orders don't come out of thin air. If you are on the stock exchange, you need to send applications every day - at least 10 pieces each. If you yourself are looking for clients, you need to send out commercial offers. The same - dozens, every day. Many freelancers talk about the fear of being intrusive, for example - you sent a letter to a potential client and did not receive a response - many perceive this as a rejection. In fact, the letter could get into spam, it could get stuck due to a too large attached file, or it could simply be missed against the background of a large flow of correspondence. As a manager friend of mine used to say, when there are a lot of letters, the main thing is to “remove the bold”. That is, to make all the letters read - to answer the important ones and score on the rest. Naturally, when the manager works in this mode, he can simply forget about your letter. Do not be shy if you are not answered, continue to write regularly. This advice is not new, and it may seem to you that everyone has been successfully following it for a long time, and employers are simply inundated with letters from freelancers. Hence, the next mistake - fear of competition. It is very easy for him to succumb, for example, right now there are thousands of freelancers on the exchange and each with a hundred jobs. It seems that it is simply impossible to break through them. But here you need to understand that at the top of the exchanges, first, "type" marketers, not specialists. It seems to them that only the amount of work is important to the clients.