My cousin recently messaged me asking for help with her Upwork profile. She wanted to give freelancing a shot after working in customer service and the food industry for 10+ years.

I have spoken before about how much I dislike these Freelancer sites because I find them exploitative. In my experience, the best way to get started as a freelancer is by tapping into your local community. Below, I go into depth about the actions I would take if I wanted to get started as a freelancer (and was my actual response to her as well.) Hope it helps!

Tbh, I don’t recommend Upwork or any of those freelance sites. The reason is that you’ll be competing with people who have been on the site for ages and have tons of reviews, etc., or people who live in India and can afford to charge nothing.

I think it’s better to start with your inner network first.

First, though you’ll have to establish a product or service

I recommend reading 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris and 100 Side Hustles. Between the two you should be able to come up with an offering. If you’re still unsure, ask your loved ones what they think you’re good at.

Once you have an offering, you’ll need an online portfolio, this will depend on your offering. Could be as simple as an Instagram or website or Facebook page. You’ll need to put a few case studies on there which means you’ll need to work for free or cheap in the beginning. For example, if your offering is designing meal plans for busy moms, you’ll need to offer your services to 3 or so moms for free or very cheap, in exchange for feedback and reviews.

Reviews are VERY important!! Best is to register as a business on Google Business. And then you can send the Google link to your clients and ask for a review.

Once you have a few case studies/online portfolio ad reviews, you can start marketing. I would start marketing to groups you already belong to. Like if you go to a particular yoga studio you can ask to leave some flyers there. You can also offer to co-host events to further establish your credibility.

There are other Bootstrappy ways you can promote your biz but TBH the things that work for me are
1. Google reviews, cannot stress this enough.
2. Website where I update at least twice a month with industry-related blog posts.
3. Light LinkedIn posting (1-2 times a week)

I’ve never had to spend money on advertising or promoting myself. People find me organically through Google searches and/or word of mouth. But that takes time to build…content marketing is not an instant gratification method haha there are other ways to grow faster though (ex. such as hosting community events, and having an ad budget)

The last thing I will say is to use ChatGPT to help you write content for your site or promo materials. No need to reinvent the wheel ❤️

Anything else you’d like to know about getting started freelancing and/or bootstrapping a business? Get in touch!