Around the end of 2018 I started my first company. My motivation at first was to use it for one of my online stores, but as months passed I started looking more into the idea of starting as a freelancer and use this company for that as well.

The begining

I remember that in the begining I just wanted to build some reputation. I was fortunate enough so that my last employer was so happy with me that he wanted to continue via a B2B contract for just a couple of hours per week. This flexible schedule allowed me to keep making enough money to make a living but also start looking for new clients in the hope that I will catch a big fish.

I know that for sure there are some huge rates out there, especially in the IT field. I managed to grow so far up to 30$/hour (for a php developer). This may not be that much, but coming from a smaller country, this is a big win for me. However maybe there are some better success stories out there.

When I started freelancing I started on Upwork. I wanted to build a name there so I just started applying to anything with the hopes that I will catch some client so then my profile will stand out better. Finding the first client it’s usually really hard and it may take long. You just need to apply to everything out there and accept anything…

I remember that my first job was for around 42$ but the work took along 6-7 hours (So clearly not a good job). Also this money were before any taxes so I lost a lot on this.

However, after that I started getting a few small jobs and things were starting to look a bit better for me. I didn’t manage to get right away some great deals but we will get there. I must mention though that at the time I got some small jobs outside of Upwork as well, through networking.

How I Managed To Get My First Good Deals

After a while of working on these small gigs and building some feedback on my profile, I finally started to get lucky and I got my first 20$/hour rate. It was not a full time job though, but it was a first good deal that I received (and it was taking me around 5-10 hours per week).

I really think that my profile having all these good reviews started to give the potential clients some good trust in me, and that’s how I got in this position.

However I felt like there’s more to freelancing. Therefore around that time I also started to watch a course about freelancing on upwork, on Skillshare. I remember that I had a 14 days free trial on that platform and I really rushed through watching the course in order to finish it before this 14 days period. However it did worth a lot!

After watching the course I rewrote my description and rearranged my profile. I started applying everything from the course which was suggesting as a main idea to promote yourself as a specialist instead of showing that you know a lot of skills (specialized profile instead of a general profile).

At first I was a bit skeptical about this strategy. However, I started receiving a lot of offers. I think I was getting invited for interviews almost every day and the new profile came into completion of the good feedback. I even got the badge of Top Rated for a while.

I’m still having the profile and I can get new clients using it. However at the moment I settled for a full time offer of 30$/hour since I also like what I’m doing at that place and I feel fullfilled for the moment.

Are you also a freelancer? How is it going for you so far? Please leave a comment so we can all learn from each other 😀