How To Start Freelancing/Tutoring?

It is a dream for most of us to find a freelancing opportunity or that tutoring client. Most people do not know the most essential tips and tricks to start your own freelancing career, and I will be discussing some key points today.

1. Why do you even want to freelance?

Most of you already understand that freelancing is not something easy and that often makes me wonder why would several of you come to read this article. You need to ask yourselves, “Is freelancing right for you?”. Let me share some pros and cons to freelancing here:

Pros to freelancing:

• Independence
• No boss
• Work at your own terms
• No limit to how much you can earn
• You get to choose whom to work with
• Work from anywhere

Cons to freelancing:

• A lot of chaos every day
• Some days you might have a ton of work, other days you have no clients
• No security
• Without a boss, it can become hard to organize your day

I really want you to know why it is that you want to freelance. Can you take the risk? Are you comfortable with having a lot of chaos in your life every day? Can you handle weird clients and can you handle the pressure?

If you started doubting yourself here, then I do not think that freelancing is the correct approach for you, as there can be so many things that go wrong right from the beginning, and the last thing that you want to have is depression because of what you do. Make sure that you have fun while doing it!

The next part is tutoring. Personal tutoring is something that you can be paid for very well if you know how to do it, but this is not something that you want to take up full time. Of course, you could, but ideally, I would keep it on the side while having some other form of a job or freelance work to do.

Here, what comes into play is your speaking skills. It becomes hard for some people to speak well in front of others, and make them understand the concepts. If you can do this very well, you can go far in this field.

Now, let’s talk about how to do it.

How Do You Get These Clients?

For Tutoring

The most important thing to understand to get tutoring clients is the power of providing free content. As mentioned by John Sonmez in his book “Soft Skills”, you should give away 90% of your content for free. You heard it right. There is no point to act smart and keep that for your paid courses. I have seen people rise and grow just because they provide so much free content that the users cannot deny their paid courses.

Although, do not think of this to be completely free content that you are giving out. If you put your videos up on YouTube, you can get paid through google ads or some sponsorships.

The power of free content

Free content has a lot of power. Not only does it allow you to share your knowledge with others, but also, you build a powerful audience that can support you in the future if you decide to release any product. I know it might feel as if you are doing this all for nothing, but it is just a part of the process.

For Freelancing

I am sure that most of you already know about platforms like Upwork or Fiverr, and yes, even though they are great platforms, what happened to me was that I was not able to find work here, as I was just a newbie. I thought of finding a different way to get these clients, and it turns out that the best way to do it is through social media. Most prominently, through LinkedIn.

Almost all of the developers forget about LinkedIn, but this gives you a chance to dominate here. If you are posting content on Linkedin, and if you know the hashtag techniques, then you can get to your ideal clients in no time. You do not have to pay a dollar to get into the site of your audience, as there is not that much content on Linkedin, although, there is a lot of traffic. In my opinion, if there is a lot of demand for something, but there is not enough supply, there is a chance for you to come in and crush it there. Make good use of the opportunity that you have with LinkedIn.

Maintaining a personal blog or a podcast is another great way to boost your growth in this industry. The number of people who are famous for their blogs and podcasts is not much. But those who are, they are some people who everyone notices.

It is going to be extremely hard to maintain a personal blog at first because you might not find enough traffic or maybe you do not have an existing audience. It feels like you are doing it all for no reason at all because you do not see any growth. Although, the key here is going to be consistency. If you are consistently posting articles or making videos or shooting podcasts, there is a high chance of you getting noticed. Do not give up.

Although with that said, I cannot guarantee your success through blogging or podcasting, as it comes down to your content and the market. Today, podcasting is coming up, but you might still not be noticed even though you are giving your 100%. What you should take away from this is that you tried something new and in the worst-case scenario, you are going to have evidence that you did something sometime earlier. People want to see your real-world experiences. Do not aim to be rich in money, be rich in experiences. Money is just a lagging indicator of the value you provide. It comes along the way.

Final Words:

Tutoring and freelancing are both great ways to make money, although both require some initial input from you. If you are willing to give a few months or years worth of work to this, then you will have a lifetime of ease. By ease, I mean you won’t have to go job hunting any more for a long period of time.

Keep Grinding, Keep working. Be patient, and hustle!

Thank you!

Priyanshu Saraf.