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Freelancing sounds like the modern dream. Being your own boss, working when you want and as often as you want, from anywhere you choose, allows you to live a life of astonishing freedom and flexibility. As long as you have an internet connection, the world can be your oyster. 

However, don’t mistake freelancing for early retirement. With this flexibility comes uncertainty, risk, and a lot of hard work. If you want to make a success out of a freelancing career, you’re going to have to put in a lot of hours and energy. Here are some tips to help you on the way to an enriching freelance career!

Before embarking on your new direction, make sure you know exactly what it is that you’re offering, and how you’re going to stand out from the crowd. When building a personal website or a profile on a freelancing platform, be sure to draw a clear picture of the services you can provide to a potential employer.

What qualifications and certifications do you have? Google offers free certifications like the Google Analytics Individual Qualification, Google Cloud qualifications, and more – these can be a great boost to your profile, and ensure that employers know that you know your stuff. You can also sign up for online courses on platforms like edX, Coursera, and Udemy. These practical certificates prove that you’re driven and autonomous, as well as well-versed in your particular subject area.

Now that you have your profile in order, it’s time to start building up a reputation. You can do this in a few different ways, but a good baseline is to start taking on smaller jobs that aren’t particularly time-consuming. Make sure you deliver optimum quality, and ask your employers to leave you good reviews and star ratings. You’ll see your ranking go up, and your profile will start to look nice and established. As you go on, you can start to raise your ratings, comparing your prices to the other freelancers working on the same kind of projects.

Getting jobs is the easy part. The hard part, as any freelancer can tell you, is discipline. When you don’t have a fixed schedule or a time to clock in by, it’s far too easy to let things fall by the wayside. Learning to manage your own time is the most important tool in the freelancer’s inventory.Get yourself an app which can integrate with Google Calendar, to track your time. Every new job you take on should go straight into your schedule. Make sure that you don’t overload yourself, and that you leave enough time to be able to hit all your deadlines without ever skimping on quality. 

Good freelancers can easily pick up regular work and earn high rates, by building up strong profiles and delivering results to their clients. With a lot of discipline and good organization, you can create a whole career out of freelancing – and live life entirely according to your own rules.