How to Begin Freelancing Without Experience (Tips for College Students)

How to Start Freelancing-

Try juggling a part-time job, four classes (or lectures), and a buzzing social life, and one of these things will suffer.

Your life suddenly becomes an exhausting combination of four-hour afternoon shifts, last-minute cramming, and prioritizing power naps over Friday night football games.

But this trifecta can still work for a 20-something looking to earn extra money while earning a degree. The trick is ditching the rigid supermarket shifts and taking the freelance route instead.

No experience?

No problem!

In this guide, we’ll review tips for inexperienced college students looking to snag a freelance gig and earn a livable wage.

Create a Professional Online Profile

Welcome to the freelance community!

Whether you’re hopping on the Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com, or People Per Hour bandwagons, you don’t have a career until you build at least one online profile.

A good one.

Don’t start applying for gigs until your profile has the basics, like:

A professional-ish headshot
Volunteer work, completed courses, or internships
A soft skills list (Are you a skilled communicator? Research-savvy?)
Samples of completed projects, capstones, or research papers

Once it’s all stitched together and tidied up, send the link to a diligent professor, parent, or friend who knows you well.

Ask for constructive criticism.

Are there grammatical errors you overlooked? Is your real-life “persuasion” skill as impressive as you described? Are you truly an HTML master?

Look for Gigs Under Your Major’s Umbrella

Thousands of gigs post daily on every job platform, most of them mindless or requiring minimal skill.

A $13/hour gig addressing 1,000 envelopes from your dorm room is undoubtedly “easy money.” But you could be doing more and learning more.

Before you fire off a job proposal and waste your Upwork Connects, ask yourself:

How will this help me down the road?

If you wouldn’t add it to your professional resume or ask them for a reference letter in the future, pass!

Instead, filter your job results with keywords related to your major or expertise (ex: “writing” for an English major or “stock photography” for an art major).

By the time you graduate, your resume’s “work experience” section will be plumper and more competitive than your peers, who worked an unrelated job as a summer camp counselor or grocery store clerk.

Don’t Lowball Your Rates

The college student stigma can be daunting to overcome in the freelance world. Some clients will assume that, since you’re hardly 21, you’d accept scraps if it meant snagging beer money or road-tripping next summer.

Don’t undersell your skills.

Craft competitive rates that you can back up with your skill set, experience, and drive to learn. If you set your hourly rate to $17/hour, a $16/hour offer would be reasonable, but $9/hour would be insulting.

Negotiation skills will help you in the future as you finagle for a higher — more deserving — salary after graduation.

Remember: School Comes First

Juggling multiple freelance gigs and a full collegiate course load will catch up to you eventually (if it hasn’t already!). That $20/hour freelance gig is mindblowing for a teenager used to pocketing half that at a local boutique.

But always put school above your freelance career.

If accepting a gig and hitting the deadline also means cramming for a final and skipping group study sessions, the potential risk isn’t worth it. Limit your weekly work schedule to 12-15 hours a week and leave extra time for:

Socialization
Studying
Going to class (of course)
Exercising
Sleeping
Eating

It’s impossible to please every client.

But it’s also 100% within your right to say “no” and live the traditional college student life, too, where sleeping and eating rank higher than freelance work.

Press Your Comfort Zone

College is all about exiting your comfort zone and engulfing yourself in the unknown. As you’re scrolling through freelance gig listings on your preferred job platform, you might notice a trend:

You nail most of the criteria.

But the rest is still “well above your paygrade.”

Don’t assume that lacking one out of the eight listed requirements means you aren’t qualified for the project. Many passionate industry clients will teach newcomers the ropes if they’re willing to stick around long-term.

Growth is only possible by pressing your comfort zone. Unless they’re specifically requesting industry veterans, there’s no harm in applying! You might just learn something new.

Create a Daily Schedule

The only way to balance your separate social, school, and work lives is by setting a daily or weekly schedule that you commit to. Maybe your hectic capstone courses and fraternity lifestyle leave rogue openings like:

4-6 PM on weekdays
Between your morning and afternoon classes
Only Saturdays
All-day Monday

Let your prospective clients know when you’re available to work and don’t accept jobs that branch out of these “free slots.” It can be emotionally draining to realize that your next “break” is spring break, three months away.

Take Time to Make the Transition

Jumping feet-first into any career is challenging, but even more so for a college student craving balance and free time. Ease into the freelance world by not taking the classic bait:

Don’t apply to dozens of jobs at once and cross your fingers. You might hear back from every single one offering a deal, and saying “no” bluntly is hard.

Seek out freelance positions one at a time, track how long it takes to complete projects with your few clients, and ask yourself whether you can take on more.

If possible, look for clients seeking long-term work or weekly freelancers. That way, you have a steady workflow (and income) without applying for new positions every few weeks.

Stock Up On the Right Supplies

The only thing more essential than your skill set and industry knowledge is having the tools to succeed.

What does a person in your industry need to be hireable?

A high-speed internet connection, computer, and cell phone data? A printer or fax machine? Textbooks, workshops, or specific software?

Whatever would set you up for success without completely draining your bank account, get! The only thing that makes you more prepared for a freelance gig is having tools that make success easier.

It’ll pay itself off after a few weeks on the job!

Conclusion

Your freelance journey might begin on Upwork during freshman year, filling in those long stretches between lectures and during that endless 10-day spring break. But don’t look at these gigs as just extra cash in your once-bare pocket.

Instead, view freelancing as a stepping stone to your future career.

Fine-tune your work ethic, select gigs related to your major, and collect industry references that can vouch for you after graduation.

Hey, you might just stay the freelance path like 35% of all workers while your peers battle for 9-to-5 office positions.

Don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail!

Author Bio

Adam Marshall is a freelance writer specializing in all things apartment organization, real estate, and college advice. He currently works with Copper Beech at Ames to help them with their online marketing.

Hacks for Indian Freelancers to Find Remote Jobs

7 Hacks to Find Online Jobs

Finding a permanent or long term guarantee of remote freelance jobs can be one of the biggest challenges confronting a new freelancer. While there are countless sites which unite freelancers and clients, there’s always a lot of competition and your selection among them can be really difficult. That’s why it’s needed to prepare yourself with some tips and tricks to be more visible.

Most clients tend to hire freelancers online who have testimonials from previous clients and have high reviews or ratings on their profile. They might be reluctant to take their chances with a new candidate. Freelancing is becoming popular among beginners who want to start their career as a self-employed person.

Here we come with some amazing hacks for Indian freelancers to do freelancing in India Online and find remote jobs:

Hack 1: Engage more on Social Media –

Joining highly engaged Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Slack communities and Twitter chats can assist you meet and build relationships with potential clients. LinkedIn is the best platform for Posting jobs Ad which helps you increase the visibility of your job ads among potential candidates. If you’re creating top quality content tailored to your audience’s needs, it should generate shares organically. Social media offers freelancers and clients many chances to urge their content seen by their audience. When people share your content, it not only increases reach, but it also boosts your credibility.

Hack 2: Freelancing Sites –

Freelancing sites are becoming popular day by day. Freelancing sites play a vital role in reaching out freelancers to genuine clients. Rockerstop is the freelancer India website that has a broad sampling of freelance jobs. Whether you’re a content writer, Web designer, Web developer, marketer, salesperson, photographer or virtually any other service provider, there are freelance jobs for you on this marketplace.

Hack 3: Make Connections –

Does your address book know that you are now a freelancer? Look through your email contacts, social media contacts, professional and personal networks. Let them know you are a freelancer and looking for online jobs. Outsource your portfolio may any of your contact have any work for you. People who know you’re more likely to rent you than an entire stranger.

Hack 4: Turn on Notifications –

Set up an alert on Google, Bing or other search engines for keywords associated with your job. Make sure you employ words like freelance, consultant or remote jobs to make sure you’re getting alerts about companies that are hospitable remote staff. You can also find out alerts for your job function then reach bent the corporate together with your pitch.

Hack 5: Versatile Freelancer-

Suggest you to be quality freelancers who have the bandwidth to absorb any challenges. Freelancers need to be able to present well over the phone, in person and in writing. Freelancers need to be cold-hearted about time management to succeed. Clients have deadlines; if you miss those, you’ll cost them money, and that they won’t want to figure with you again. If you’re the type of person who gives up whenever an unexpected challenge comes itself, freelancing is going to be really hard on you. To win clients, you’ve got to be persistent in marketing and sales. To deliver value for your clients, you’ve got to be persistent about doing the simplest work that you simply can do.

Hack 6: Make Cold Call –

A cold call is an unrequested call to an employer with the aim of expressing your interest in their open position. Cold calls give you the chance to show your prelude and solid interest in the role. Initiating with a cold call might even help you fix an interview or meeting. Many times, cold calling an employer is the only way to get your CV in front of a hiring recruiter before you submit it along with all the other potential candidates. Although the thought of cold calling an employer might not come spontaneously to you, you’ll experience some success as long as you’ve got confidence and are ready to plead to your contact’s workplace needs.

Hack 7: On site Jobs –

In my experience employers want their freelancers to work onsite. They often feel that there will be a high control over what the freelancer does if they are onsite. If you are business and you have a freelancer working onsite you will be able to make sure that they are doing what they say to do. It might sound weird but some employees will have a hard time working with someone that they only have talked to over the phone. They value the face-to-face interaction which will be provided by having someone onsite. Having a true person on site can really bring someone into the office culture which can be great for an ingenious individual.

So, these were the hacks for freelancers in India to find their suitable online jobs. Let us know if you agree with these hacks.

5 great reasons to become freelancer in India after your degree

Reasons to become Freelancer

People have been spending a couple of years looking forward to getting their degree, your first job and your first salary. Then, finally you have a degree and you actively start to find jobs. You apply for the job, attend one interview, and then another and another. They ask you for a five-hour wait alongside 100 other hopefuls! You wait for their response and you will find that you were too late and another fresher has walked away with the job. Being a fresher within the current Indian job market are often difficult. You need to be ready to convince potential employers that you simply are employable which may be a large order because the unwelcome truth is that a lot of freshers in India are unemployable.

After getting a job, people complain about their stressful life, insufficient salary, and intolerant behaviour of their bosses. In that case there are a lot of freelancer India websites that moved forward to support these employees. An increasingly sizable amount of freelance jobs are available online for beginners. Most freelancing jobs for beginners are anyhow linked to their stream of specialization.

If you are self-motivated, like being your own boss, want to pick the projects you want to work on personally and if find the daily office life stressful, then freelancing is a better option for you. Also remember, choosing any of them will not tie up you with it forever.

Here are a couple of great reasons to become freelancer after your degree:

1. Helps you work out subsequent steps in your career

Despite the benefits of being related to a brand and getting a gentle pay package, corporate roles are often extremely hierarchical and strait-jacketed. It might be years before a fresher is trusted with a responsible role. Freelancers however need to chart their own course and while they’ll miss out on the predictability and stability of a full-time job, they gain insight into the important marketplace ahead of their peers. From this viewpoint, freelancers often find other areas that they need to specialize in or diversify to.

2. More Attractive Resume

Many freelancers in India find that the easiest way to convey their expertise and experience to a client is in a resume format. Your aim is to showcase your value by gathering your talent, ambition, and personality into an incredible document that’s tailored to your viewers. When building your resume, use a format that permits you to spotlight your unique skills also as your work experience, during a readable, attractive way. And once you start writing, use your freelance experience in sales, marketing. When you finally get that interview call you’ve been expecting, the actual fact that you’ve been freelancing will speak volumes in your favour. It presents you as resourceful.

3. Builds up your area of expertise

To freelance, you would like to own a skill you’ll offer to potential clients. Most people draw on their employment experience, offering services using the skills they have already got. Whether you’re set to become a freelancer full time or part time, your business will be built around the unique skills you have to offer. Those skills are your greatest asset. So, the first step is identifying the various skills you’ve built over the years that people might not have and need to pay YOU to use.

4. Habit of Time Management

Workplace rules and disciplines are quite burdensome to follow. As a freelancer in India, you can even work from your bed on a Saturday. Since there’s no concept of office timings, many freelancers tend to use their personal hours to figure and find yourself with a messy schedule. The most mandatory time management routine that every freelancer needs is a fixed schedule. Set down a rough time schedule— awaken, work out, start working, cut your laptop. You could accompany the standard 9-to-5 work timing or slot your active hours into two 4-hour slots, with a fast afternoon nap and a workout in between. Make sure you aren’t overworking on the daily and have enough time for yourself to unwind.

Freelancing offers you time management, good communication, negotiation and a number of other transferable skills. It is, in short, an excellent training ground which will prep you for the rigours of the company world.

5. Financial Independence

Freelancing is the great way to earn money as a teenager. As a freelancer in India, you’re on top of things of your earnings. Most of the time this may be associated with the amount of projects you opt to require on and your agreed rates. If your rates are too expensive, and business try to trade you down, then you’ll politely tell them no. Other people value your work and can pay your rates.

So, these were the 5 most amazing reasons to kick start your career as a freelancer after degree and also if you are a freelancer do share your freelancing experience with us.

How to use Rockerstop as a Freelancer Service in India?

Use Rockerstop as a Freelancer –

Rockerstop is an Indian freelance platform with more than thousands of high-quality Freelancers. It is easy and quick to Post a job and get a quick response for your requirement. Rockerstop offers all varieties of Freelancer with a real genuine profile and are available to be hired on Rockerstop.com. Hiring Freelancers is budget friendly than a full-time employee. Rockerstop is an open source platform, and serves 100% satisfaction Guarantee.

In this blog we will tell how you can use Rockerstop to become a freelancer and earn money online. So, let’s get started –

1. Create Account and Complete your profile:

Create your account at Register as a freelancer. After successful registration complete your profile. Completing your profile doesn’t mean just filling the mandatory fields. You need to place the maximum amount of information as you’ll out there for people to be certain. Every organization wants to understand who you’re before hiring you. It is also very important to fill up as many as skills in your profile so that the business can know which work you can do best. Therefore, the more accurate you’re about your skills the higher the matches you’ll get.

Other than your skills and qualification details don’t forget to enhance your profile by fixing a portfolio under the ‘documents’ section. Whatever it is like some art, graphic design, research documents or a certificate of any course, training. Uploading those documents might help a business decide that you’re the suitable person for their project.

2. Next step is verifying your Details:

Rockerstop motive is to provide a secure and 100% result guarantee platform for all its freelancers to transact on. To do the verification some information which incorporates your PAN, GSTIN (if you’re eligible for it) and must check your account details. This step is very important, if you haven’t verified your information, you will not be able to apply to the various projects that match your skills but you will not be able to accept any offers that a company might send you.

3. Apply to projects:

Now your profile with each one your information is ready, start applying to projects. Find Projects that match your skills and apply. Rockerstop is a leading Freelancer Service in India, offers real and verified freelance jobs and projects latest updated. Find best match freelance jobs without any investment, search for jobs near you or across nation India, select from 900+ categories.

After applying wait for some time let a client have a look at your profile and review if you’re the right person for this project. Here there is also one vital thing to keep in mind while applying for projects, a freelancer should review the client company details. If the job recruiter may have found out challenges for you to answer to measure your capability then this is an opportunity that a business person has a view into your process, thinking of giving you a chance. So, answer them well and show they will not get another best candidate for this project. Once a client has sent you a suggestion, you’ll then ask the client to discuss the terms of your contract or anything else that you might think is important before you start working together.

4. Start working on your projects:

Once you’ve accepted the offer, you are “Onboard”. This sequence of intercommunication between you and the client leading up to the project start date is known as your “on-boarding” process — the process of bringing a new client “on board” with your business. Make sure you have all contract details, work related details. Every freelance project starts with a starting point of contact. Sometimes it’s you reaching out to the client and the other times the job recruiter is reaching out to you (via email or a contact form on your website). From there, it’s your job to ask the proper questions, find out what the client needs, price the project, collect payment, and begin work. This will avoid any hassle further.

5. Persistently Communicate:

Whenever you’re performing on a project it’s always an honest idea to speak continuously with the client. This not only helps keep the client up so far on the project but also reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings arising. While communicating with the client we might urge you to stay all communication using our online collaboration tools only. In the extreme case of a dispute arising at some point the sole sort of proof which will be accepted are going to be that that has taken place on the platform. So, certainly it’s submitting a file or verifying details about the project, using our platform to keep running everything smoothly.

So now that you know the easiest ways to use your platform “Rockerstop”, move ahead and take projects. Increase your portfolio visibility, increase your experience and increase your income. Give your career as an independent worker a lift on Rockerstop today.

How to Travel the World and Do Freelancing in India Online?

Career in Freelancing –

Freelancing is a most popular career way-out for many people, especially those with entrepreneurial people and a want to escape from a boring 9-to-5 office job. Freelancing comes with its taste of fantastic and bad, but when it’s done right, it comes with great perks of freedom, money and peace of mind. No chief, no rules regulations, no office fix timings, and can work from anywhere.

Imagine the posh of having the ability to travel the planet without the fear of wanting to revisit to figure or the strain of getting to pay your bills.

Highly paid freelancers who work from beaches in Thailand or cities in Europe are becoming increasingly prevailing as today’s definition of employment becomes more flowing. Give up the thought of settling down for the nonce, build a portfolio as a freelancer, and set your sights on traveling on your own terms.

The path to become a successful freelancer demands consistency, dedication, discipline, and patience.

Yes, you have a higher degree of control. But meaning you’ve got to try everything yourself. There’s no one sending you a stable paycheck every fortnight. Instead, you will have to pitch and land clients to form money.

Defining your freelancing goals helps you stay more productive and focused every time.

Become Travel Blogger –

Travel blogging could also be a crowded field — and it gets more crowded by the day. After all, the thought of “getting paid to travel the world” looks like a tremendous thing to undertake to try to. You get to travel to wonderful places around the world on someone else’s dime! Here is some suggestion from most successful travel bloggers in the industry.

1. Choose your Niche

Freelancing in India Online starts with finding your passion. Write about what you know. This is the good advice experts will offer you when you’re checking out a distinct segment to start out a blog. But, it’s not enough. The key to producing a successful blog is finding a “profitable” niche.

Finding the right niche is that the foremost vital a neighbourhood of building a blog that always gets overlooked. If you select a definite segment with an excessive amount of competition, your blog will get beaten down by high authority websites. If you select a smaller niche with no demand, your blog will barely make an impact. You need to seek out a distinct segment that’s within the middle and a distinct segment which will even be monetized easily.

2. Right Audience

When you’re just getting started with blogging, you would like to form sure you’re using some time and money as wisely as possible. You have tons on your plate, so you would like every minute of some time to pay off.

The best thanks to confirm your efforts aren’t vainly is to understand who you’re writing for. That’s the simplest thanks to confirm your articles are generating the maximum amount of valuable traffic as possible.

So, do you know who’s reading your blog?

If not, there’s no need to worry. We’ll check out how you’ll find your audience during a minute.

But first, let’s consider a couple of the most important benefits of knowing who your audience is. When you target a really specific audience, you’ve got a far better idea about what they have and need. Your blog posts are going to be the right answers to the questions and problems your audience is facing.

Therefore, they’ll find far more value in your articles as long as you’re conscious of who they’re.

3. Social Media Platform

Travelers round the world don’t recoil from sharing their insightful journeys. Their travel blog and other Social Media Platforms are crammed with many oh-so-beautiful images.

Platforms like Instagram have made it easier than ever for travel-lovers to form traveling their full-time career.

You need to possess a presence on each social media platform to be accessible to a spread of audiences.

4. Research and Explore

Quality must be a top priority, and because the industry is becoming more crowded, it’s needed quite ever to form you stand out. Take the time to research and explore the topic you’re writing about – check it out as a reporter or journalist to attract readers and potential industry partners who believe you as a source of travel information. Assume your readers’ intelligence and are available up to their level with engaging, useful, and artistic posts.

5. Work with the Suitable Brands

Have a research which brand you want to work with, browse their website and social accounts, find previous campaigns, and familiarise yourself with their product – show this data in your pitch. Golden rule: the blog you write and your suitable brand should accompany each other, and offer mutual benefit to a shared audience.”

6. Monetise your blog

Plenty of bloggers make blogging websites. If you write blogs and are consistent, building up an audience on your website and putting ads on them is a great way to develop an income stream. This is also a long-game approach, like most of what I suggest on here, but if you build up a robust and consistent audience, you’ll have yet one more passive income stream.

All the Best Travel Blogger!