So, you’ve decided to become a freelancer. That’s awesome, especially in today’s gig economy. The gig economy accounts for 455.2 billion dollars globally and is only projected to grow. Moreover, around 36% of US workers are already freelancers after the COVID-19 pandemic. So, it seems this is the future. Good for you for taking this bold step in bettering your work-life balance. But there’s no need to sugarcoat it – freelancing is hard.

Yes, there are the benefits of working your own schedule, having more time for yourself and your family, not having a boss, and generally holding your economic prosperity in your own two hands. However, on the other hand, you need to be able to operate a business, be it micro or small. You need to improve not only the skills you will sell but also your marketing and sales skills. No one will serve your job on a silver platter. You need to find your clients, dazzle them with what you do, and sell your skills at the right price.

Naturally, none of this is easy. Building your own freelance business requires a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, and dedication, at least in the beginning. And while we can’t force you to be dedicated and to work hard, we can at least assist you with the know-how of creating a freelance business. So, we prepared a 7-easy-step guide on how to start a freelance business in 2023.

1. Build up capital before you start

Before you leave your job and dedicate your time and efforts only to your freelance business, be sure to have a very detailed grasp of your finances. Starting your own business, be it a freelance one, is a considerable investment. So, you need initial capital to build your business. How much you will need depends on your business model, niche, and your lifestyle. Going into a business of your own should be an upgrade to your standard, not a significant cut.

Create a personal budget

So, before you start planning your enterprise, make a personal budget and follow your expenses, income, and savings closely. Keep track of these for at least 6 months to understand your monthly or week-to-week spending. Keep in mind that during winter, you will have a slightly higher expenditure due to heating, while in summer, you might have an increase due to vacations and off time. Regardless, you’re looking at the average. Knowing how much you make will help you later on with formulating your prices. For example, if you are currently making $3000 and need $2000 to survive, you have about $1000 for other expenditures, like grabbing dinner occasionally, having a night out with friends, going to the movies, or anything in between. At the end of the month, you need to be able to save between 10 and 20 percent of your income. This should be your revenue goal.

However, when starting your own business, expect that you’ll be working on a loss for at least half a year. Depending on your business niche and industry, this period could be a lot longer. So, it might be a good idea to keep your job and start your endeavors in getting clients and preparing the business part of your freelance gig on the side during off hours. Yes, this will disrupt your work-life balance for a while, but it will allow you to have a flying start once you dedicate all your time to your freelance business.

2. Research your business niche

Your next step is to do thorough research on your business niche. Start big. Check out your entire industry and see who are the really big dogs. Keep in mind they won’t be your direct competition. Still, you can use them as a benchmark on how the industry is going, what are the new trends and what are their customer’s expectations. While researching the industry, make sure your cover all legal requirements to conduct business within the niche. For example, if you want to start a cleaning business, some states and counties may require you to get certified to handle some waste by-products. On the other hand, if you are planning to start a freelance moving business, having the appropriate driver’s license is also a must.

Each industry has its legal implementations and requirements, and covering all of them is among your main goals while researching the industry.

Once you’re familiar with the bigger picture, you can go narrower. Find a profitable niche that’s outside the scope of the big dogs. For example, if you want to be a voiceover actor, you can base your niche on your voice capacities. For instance, if you have a voice like Susanne Blakeslee, you will be at the forefront of an even tighter niche – villain voiceover actors. Undoubtedly this will narrow down your job opportunities, but it will also narrow down your direct competition.

Knowing your strong points and finding a tight but profitable niche can help you build your unique proposal.

What is a unique proposal?

A unique proposal is effectively your sales pitch. It’s what makes you stand out from the crowd. Put yourself in the shoes of an independent animated movie producer looking for a fresh and relatively more affordable actor who can voice their movie. Now, you might send them a sample of your work, but you will be one of the thousands who will do that. On the other hand, if you promote yourself as a villain voiceover actor, this will allow the producer to narrow down the search. They will know what your voice is good for and will pique their interest. The same goes for any other industry. Finding your unique proposal, something that no one else is offering (or at least not offering directly), is the key to your success.

What you need to know from your niche industry

Regardless of how niched your industry is, you will have some competition. The obvious exception is if you are offering something completely new. Then, however, the entire process is a lot different, and we won’t cover it here. So, the best place to start your business niche research is your competitors. Check out the services they are offering, their pricing, their deals, and all other aspects of their offer. This will help you estimate your own prices and determine how many clients you will need to “cover” your month.

Moreover, you can check their website’s style, some comments on their work from third-party websites, and even look at some negative feedback on their performance. This way, you will know what kind of people will be in your customer pool. It will also help you immensely with creating your unique proposal and building your business plan. Most importantly, however, it will help you create your buyer’s persona.

3. Create your buyer persona

The buyer persona is a semi-fictional character that represents your ideal customer. The semi-fictional part is due to the massive marketing research that stays behind that persona. So the character is based on real data gathered from existing customers. In principle, this is the average customer of your direct competitors.

So, as usual, you need to start the process by doing your homework. Learn all there is to know about your target audience. What they like about your competitor’s product, what they dislike, and how you can improve on their service. Most importantly, ask yourself why they would prefer you over them.

When creating your buyer’s persona, you must attribute them with some specific characteristics.

Demographic aspects

First and foremost, it should have a demographic. This means you should assign them an age, sex, location, family status, and level of education. Demographic factors are a cornerstone behind building up your user experience and creating your distribution strategy, so don’t underestimate them or take them lightly.

Economic aspects

Moreover, your buyer persona should have some economic factors attributed to them. For example, what do they work, what is their industry? Are they working full-time or part-time? Do they work from home or from the office? What is their seniority? Most importantly, you need to address their income. This is crucial when you are within a B2B niche, where you will have to target influential people and decision-makers within a company.

Psychographic aspects

After you’re done with their economic features, you should move on to their psychographic portrait. List their beliefs, values, lifestyle, and even political views. Politics has a lot to do with marketing, as political affiliations usually align you with some beliefs and values expressed by them.

Personal aspects

You need to address their personal lives as well. Your buyer’s persona should have hobbies, favorite movies, TV series, books, music genres, social media, and everything else.

Pain points

Last but definitely not least, your buyer’s persona should have his fair share of pain points. For example, what makes them frustrated, what brings them down, and what will make them instantly leave a store? Acknowledging their specific problems can make your buyer’s persona much more realistic.

Once you’re done with your buyer persona, it’s time to start building your brand.

4. Build your brand identity

Just because you’re new on the market doesn’t mean you should look young and naive. On the contrary. Be knowledgeable, cocky and maintain a firm and convincing voice. In other words, build a brand persona that commands respect and inspires trust. Your brand persona should be a reflection of your buyer’s persona, but it should be more aware of the solutions to the problems that the buyer’s persona has. You can imagine your brand identity as the buyer’s persona big brother. One that’s already gone through the same problems and has found a solution. You should match their energy, but don’t patronize them by pretending to be exactly the same.

Many freelancers infuse their own identity into the brand’s identity. Don’t. You may borrow some parts from it but don’t assume you are your perfect customer. Data will determine that, not your gut feeling. So, while adding some quirks to your brand persona is good, don’t make them your quirks if they don’t fit your marketing goals. For example, if you like horror movies, yet your buyer’s persona loves rom-coms and musicals. Obviously, you can’t bring goar into your brand’s narrative. This will only chase your customers away.

Brand look and voice

Once you’ve established your brand identity, you must work on your brand voice and looks. Start with the name and logo. When it comes to the name, try to make it short and sweet. You may even use your own name if that’s not taken. Make your brand’s name catchy, easy to remember, and make sure it commands respect. For example, if you name your brand “the F**kin’ voiceover genius,” its shock value is high but certainly doesn’t command any respect.

For the logo, finding a good artist (if you’re not one)is essential. Usually, the designer will give you some feedback on the best practices within your niche. We suggest to listen closely and make your decision based on their advice.

Once you’re done with your Brand identity, it’s time to get out in the world.

5. Create your online presence

While using gig platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and others is a great way to start your freelance career, you will eventually need to build your online presence. This will allow you to find better-paying customers and not share your profits with a middleman.

Your first step in this direction is visiting Hostarmada’s website and securing lightning-fast, reliable, and secure hosting that will help your future traffic to get to your website without any delays or blackouts. This is essential for building your organic traffic, as website speed is intricately connected with your bounce rate, conversion rate, and, ultimately, your SEO score. For a freelancer portfolio, you don’t need to get too overboard with your plan. All you need is a basic StartDock package that will accommodate your needs for the first 6 to 12 months. After you start receiving higher traffic volumes, you can upgrade to Web Warp.

Building your website

Once you have your hosting, it’s time to build your website. It should be customer oriented and highlight some of your work. Make sure to underline your unique business proposal and make it a central piece of your website. People won’t be interested in your awesome experience and immaculate record if they are not first interested in what you have to offer.

When you’re done, start working on a blog and try to post a new blog at least once a week. Blogs should be informative and related to your customer’s problems. This will help your SEO immensely and push your traffic higher.

Still, make sure to make your presence known on at least some social media. Which ones depend on your buyer’s persona’s preferences?

Note that each communication channel has its own style, but you should retain your brand voice, regardless of the style and genre you’re communicating in.

Last, but not least, start gathering emails. This is the best way to ensure you will have direct contact with interested users whom you can convert into customers.

6. Promote yourself

Even if you are great at what you do, people will need to learn about your work. Of course, this means you need to invest in your promotion. There is no single way to do that, as it depends on too many factors—your industry, niche, potential clients, country, and much more. Still, starting and maintaining a professional blog is widely considered a must. It allows you to target more keywords and appear on more searches in search engines. This will not only increase your traffic, but it will boost your authority as an industry leader.

For example, Hubspot wouldn’t be almost synonymous with CRM if it weren’t for their many practical advice regarding business. They’ve established themselves as the industry leader, and despite having enough competitors on the market, they are seen as the go-to solution for those who have no idea what they are looking for in a CRM.

Along with the blog posts, you might want to invest some money in promoting your brand on social media and through PPC campaigns. Before you go ahead and spend indiscriminately, however, you need to do thorough marketing research and know exactly where, when, and whom you are advertising to. Still, once your business gains traction, the best way to get new commissions is the build a network.

7. Build a network and relationships with your customers

It’s not a secret that in freelancing, the best advertisement is word of mouth. That’s why building and maintaining your network of happy customers who won’t seek an alternative to your service is essential. Something more, they will gladly recommend you to others within their network. If you are truly good at what you do, all you need is to remain respectful, always deliver on time, and when you’ve made a mistake (and you will), own it rather than try to blame it on something else.

That’s it

That’s essentially the path to building your freelance business. It doesn’t sound easy, and yes, often it is not. The hard part is finding clients, making your business profitable, and ultimately, not falling into the trap of working all the time to get more money. After all, the aim of being in business for yourself is to have more free time, isn’t it?