The pandemic has given professionals across the globe a taste of remote working. The freedom to have flexible working hours, the mobility to choose where you work out of, and the luxury of being able to juggle multiple tasks, has pushed professionals to explore side hustles apart from their full-time roles. While professionals across the globe have enjoyed these benefits for the better part of the last two years, there is one group that’s been exposed to these luxuries in the pre-pandemic world as well. We call these fortunate few; freelancers.    

Freelancers comprise what you call the gig-economy. Taking up projects, working as consultants, and juggling between retainers, these individuals are dressed like any other professional but their life isn’t dictated by the monotony of 9-5, and routine office meetings. Freelancers have the luxury of working in a remote, or hybrid setup hence allowing them to pick up multiple gigs at once, which of course means that there’s no cap to their earning potential. Infact, most full-time employees have at some point picked up freelancing gigs as well.   With the post-pandemic world coming to an ease, offices around the world have started to open up again, making employees question whether or not they’re ready to give up their freedom and flexibility to work. If you’re one of them, and have dabbled around the idea of taking the plunge into freelancing as a full-time career, this blog might help you (and so could LMON but more on that later.)  

5 Tips For Freelancers Looking To Freelance Full-Time  

1. Figure out your niche: Taking cues from your full-time job, and your set of personal and professional talents, start listing down skills that you can offer to clients. For example: If you’re a writer, figure out what you like writing, the areas where you can offer expertise like technology, fashion, sports, etc. Then move on to the kind of formats you specialise in, this could be long form like books and blogs, or short-form like social media, and advertisements.  
2. Build your portfolio: Having a portfolio, or links of your previous work helps build credibility, and provides your prospective clients with an insight into your way of working. If you’re just starting out you could start by working on a list of samples to build on your portfolio. If you’re freelancing in a more professional field where your work is protected by NDA’s try getting references, and testimonials to speak for your professional background.  
3. Create a budget: If you’re working as a freelancer full-time you need to sit down and urgent your expenses. Calculate how much you need to make each month to sustain yourself, accordingly figure out the number of projects you'd need to sustain this lifestyle.  
4. Research: Probably the most important part of freelancing. Research on your target clients, the field you’re interested in, the average commercials and growth potential for your skill set, and most importantly ways to increase/enhance your areas of expertise to create more growth avenues for yourself.  
5. Network: Every freelancer is also a salesperson. Their primary job involves marketing themselves. As a freelancer it’s important to keep your eye out for newer avenues to find work and the better you get at this, the smoother your inflow of work will be. Your search for work can be a mix of offline and online mediums. Offline you can start by letting everyone in your professional network know of your services. Online you can use platforms like LMON to connect with recruiters, and businesses across the world.  
   

The most important tip however has to be to just start. Begin by picking up a few freelancing projects and establishing your connection with a few clients to find regular work. You can start by finding your first gig in no-time by signing up on LMON. LMON is a fresh networking platform that helps freelancers find consistent gigs without any hassles.