Freelance. The beauty of being a freelancer is that you are the boss of your own. There is no rules because you set the rules. In terms of profit, you takes 100% of the cut and you have the ultimate freedom to do anything you want.
But here’s the thing. Not many freelancers are successful and most freelancers are struggling to kick off and launch their business. One of the biggest questions is always “How to start a freelance business with minimum startup cost?“
In this post, I’m going to share some simple steps you can do so without losing any hair (seriously).
How to start a freelance business?
There are many freelance businesses that you can choose today (thanks to the technological advancement). Let’s say web development as the most common ones which is also the most lucrative one in the market.
There are two things you should be thinking now:
- How to start a freelance web designer work without any coding knowledge?
- How to start a freelance web designer work with coding knowledge?
Here’s the beauty of freelancing. It really doesn’t matter if you have coding knowledge or you don’t have at all. I know, some of you may not agree with me on this but I’ll share with you more information below.
Create a portfolio for yourself
You need to have a portfolio of your business. At the very least, the portfolio should be clear enough to share the reasons why the client would need to hire you.
It takes time to build a portfolio but it is worth it. More importantly, you should focus on building your brand and portfolio as much as you can.
Be honest with what you can offer
This is where the tricky part is. You need to be really honest on what you can offer. For example, if you lacks coding skill experience, your offering should be heavily based on templates and drag and drop builders. Here’s a real-life scenario for your understanding.
I’m the co-founder of Marketing Lancers, a creative agency in South East Asia. We provide two types of web development packages known as low and high tier respectively for our clients. In the low tier, web development is based on templates and drag and drop builders for fast website development. On the other hand, the high tier web development is geared toward custom made templates which require more time, effort and of course, a higher pricing model.
If you have the coding skill knowledge, then you have no issue building a website from scratch. Now, thinking back, having certain skills (in web development for example) is important but not the ultimate necessity.
How much should you charge?
It really depends. If you are going the low tier pathway, pricing can be way much lower compared to a well-planned and custom made website design. In this case, the price should at least lower by half compared to the high tier package.
For example, a full-fledged and high tier website development may costs you around RM 8,000.00 per project which a low tier website development project may costs you around RM 3,000.00 per project.
What are the recommended website development tools for freelancers?
Last but not least, this is one of the most asked question by most freelancers. There are many tools that you can choose from (here’s a full list of them) but here are our favorites:
- Thrive Themes & Thrive plugins (including 10 WordPress themes and 9 plugins, drag and drop builder, lead generation plugins and membership site integration)
- Divi (drag and drop website builder only with integrated lead generation system)
- OptimizePress (drag and drop website builder only with membership site integration)
Summary: How to start a freelance business with minimum startup cost?
As you can see, you don’t have spend thousands of dollars to start a freelance business. At most, the initial startup costs is merely under $150 for you to start a freelance web development business.
And by just securing your first client, you have already covered your initial startup cost and still make a profit multiple folds!
What are you waiting for? Start a freelance business today!
