A question all self-learned freelancers: What sources did you use to learn? How did you do it? What's your story?

[Paranoctus]

Hey guys!

Iit's been some years since I last used this forum... should've never stopped reading.

A simple question to all of you, since many of you actually do what I strive to do:
Freelancing - or better said adding value to your clients in a independent, self-managed manner... how did you do it?
What did you do before and how did you start this journey? What resources did you use to learn and how long did it take?
What's your story?

 

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[Twiizlar]

My timeline:
1. Obtained general business admin degree from college: 2014 - Aug 2018
2. 3 month digital marketing internship with big agency: Aug 2018 - Dec 2018
3. SEO freelancer: Dec 2018 - Current

I found my passion for SEO during my internship. Before I had no real knowledge of it. Luckily, during my internship I happened to be seated next to a SEO specialist. As I slowly started learning more about SEO, I began asking him questions. I would bug him all the time and he was a really nice guy who always took time to answer. Everyday I would go home, read/learn more about SEO and come back to work with 3-4 questions.

Eventually, he started to let me assist him with certain SEO projects. These were still intern tasks but he was also showing me the ropes while working with clients.

After 3 months, the internship ended and I wasn't offered a job. The very next day, I decided that I am going to work for myself and basically start freelancing. It was 10x harder for me to find clients since I had no portfolio but I had drive. I worked harder to obtain clients.

Once I landed the meeting somehow with the potential client, I would prepare 5-6 hours for the meeting. I would be doing SEO research for free for them to show them the value I can bring. After a handful of these I finally landed my first client.

The battle wasn't over. Now that I had clients I had to actually do the work. To be honest, I didn't have experience working with clients on a complete SEO campaign but I knew I could make it work. I knew because I was willing to put in that extra time to not only complete the work, but figure things out as I go along. That's how I've always been. Jump first, figure out how to swim later.

My revenue has been growing every month as I've been adding clients. My initial clients have seen over 350% organic growth and are still with me today. I have a progress thread on this forum (May update coming soon) if you want to read through that.

 

[Sander]

I have been a freelance writer for around 8 years now. I always loved writing, so when I discovered that I could earn some pocket money writing online, I was hooked. Since then I've been making a living from writing on and off in around five years, while building projects on the side.

For instance, writing has given me the freedom to cancel my apartment lease in cold and dark Scandinavia and drive across Europe with my wife, and as I write this, we're living in a big apartment with a roof terrace and a swimming pool at a golf resort in sunny Spain for the same amount as we paid back home.

I jumped right into it as a 17-18 year old. After writing 5 free articles for 5 different people, one of them returned and paid me to write more. Since then it's been pure snowball effect, and I've never ever used a dime on marketing. Purely word of mouth, branding and delivering a good product to my customers.

So for me it took about a weekend of writing for free, and I've earned good money from it ever since.

 

[Ian Jones]

Hey guys!

Iit's been some years since I last used this forum... should've never stopped reading.

A simple question to all of you, since many of you actually do what I strive to do:
Freelancing - or better said adding value to your clients in a independent, self-managed manner... how did you do it?
What did you do before and how did you start this journey? What resources did you use to learn and how long did it take?
What's your story?

Hi. In addition to any major/expensive paper qualifications like an MBA, I'd suggest you make maximum use of free - or at least cheap - short courses such as those on Futurelearn. Another good resource is MindTools, though to make the most of this you need to take out a monthly subscription of about US$17. MindTools has a massive range of articles, tools, templates covering a whole range of business topics such as project management, managing change, leadership, team building, coaching etc. One thing you must do as a freelance now is to constantly reinvent yourself and keep up to date with changes in your industry or specialism. I started out in 2007 wanting to do quality/operational excellence as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Within a year we had the global financial crash and companies didn't want quality anymore, they wanted cost cutting , off-shoring and automation. Now I find myself stuck in process improvement/automation. I've given up fighting. There is a living to be made in process automation so for the time being I'll stick with that.

 

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[G-Man]

@Lex DeVille has a couple gold threads on freelancing. Look them up.