Don’t like your job? This article is made for you then as it will help you transition into self-employment. In the United States, we see a growing trend of people taking the route of self-employment or freelancing their skills. We now live in an age where companies like Airbnb, Uber, DoorDash, and Upwork allow people to work on their schedules and become self-employed.
Think about the freelancing market as the sports world. Athletes are continually being put to the test on their team and are traded with new contracts. Companies are now moving into hiring remote employees to hire the best talent without the worker’s location playing a role. With freelancing, employees can showcase their skills to the top companies and create a bidding war on their abilities, just like in sports. If you’re freelancing and want a change of scenery, there’s an open market to be picked up by a new company as an athlete would. *Tom Brady, cough cough. *
The facts speak for themselves; millions of Americans have been using Freelancing as full-time employment or side hustles. Freelancing will only get more prevalent as companies start to hire more remote employees to handpick the world’s best employees. Below we will discuss three distinct steps on how you can form a freelancing business on the side.
Step one: Plan For The Expenses
When starting a consulting company, many hidden costs vary, so it can be challenging to plan thoroughly. Creating a website for your company that outlines your services, past projects, and company-related content is essential. Your website will allow clients to view your work and help you create an open marketplace for your services.
Starting Expenses:
1. Squarespace Website Costs: ~ $30/m
*If you pay for an entire year, it can be cheaper, but if you are looking to start, then a month to month option is better.
2. Domain Purchase: ~ $20/yr
3. Phone Plan: ~$17/m
4. Phone: ~$50
*If your business doesn’t require a phone, you could hold off on it, but having a separate phone is excellent as you can separate your business from your personal life. You can purchase a phone at Walmart that is on a month to month plan.
5. Internet: $80/m
*If you already pay internet, then you can likely expense it.
This brings your starting costs to:
Fixed: $50
Monthly: $128.66
A big focus should be held on keeping your overhead low as you should be focused on building a client base that can be used to create a lengthy portfolio to then pitch to more prominent companies when you enter the scaling phase.
There are plenty of useful excel accounting templates that can be connected to automate reports. So, when starting, this might be the best option, so that you don’t need to pay anyone and can keep costs relatively low.
Step two: Attract Potential Clients.
As mentioned above, you want to keep your overhead costs low, so you will want to launch grassroots campaigns. Figure out what niche services you can offer and start launching educational blogs on relatable sites to gain a viewing audience. You can also build up an audience on your site by launching market-related content on your website with search engine optimized keywords(SEO).
Write articles and build mini content from the articles, so that you are pushing out different sections of the articles and not having to write overboard. Your mini content needs to speak to the medium audience, so, for example, you’re not going to write paragraphs of text on Twitter as that’s not the platform use. Facebook might be more suitable for paragraphs and more heartfelt content.
Step three: Build Foundational Clients.
It’s crucial to build clients who can pay for your expenses to prolong your business without going under the added costs of running a business. It should always be a priority to add clients; however, as you grow your portfolio, you will want to start raising prices to run a profitable business and help it eventually replace your current job.
Additional help:
Upwork:
When you’re starting a business, you want to keep your overhead low, which I’ve said a million times because it’s imperative. Upwork is a freelancing site that allows users to showcase their skills to employers and bid on contracts. Millions of people use Upwork so you can connect with employers and build a portfolio for yourself. This platform is beneficial because it has many paid marketing aspects to it, and you can advertise yourself for free.
The fees on Upwork from a freelancer side are all on the backend of the jobs and not upfront. So you won’t be adding to your expenses without revenue.
Although the projects you work on will stay on the platform, you can now introduce Upwork contracts with your consulting company so you can escrow funds. When you open a consulting company for the first time, clients will be nervous about sending funds to you without the work upfront. So Upwork will arrange for the contract to be escrowed with them, and they will help you through any disputes with the client. The fee is on the backend and will be 3.4%, which may seem high, but Upwork will take care of the mundane tasks associated with receiving payments.
Accounts Receivable
When you’re working with clients that are not paying upfront, you’ll be adding their revenue to Accounts Receivables. This is normal to have, but if your account gets too high, then your business might not have the cash on hand to pay employees, contractors, or even expenses. So, making sure that you collect payments on time and can account for your client’s invoices can be stressful and time-consuming, which is why the direct contracts on Upwork are worth the 3.4%. Eventually, when you get exponential clients, you can hire an accountant that will keep track of this information for you, so that you can focus on building fantastic work!
Go!
Freelancers are the future, so to prepare for this, you should start working with your strengths and turn your fun hobbies into a reality.
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