Imagine the feeling of earning an extra 20-25K a month. How would that feel to you?
What would you do with that second income? Shop? Travel? Or maybe just save?
With freelancing in india on the rise, it won’t be a surprise it’d be a huge shift in the next 3-5 years with almost anyone enjoying the flexibility and freedom it provides.
As you know, my primary goal with this site is to help you start a side-business that brings you a second income, consistently.
No more digital marketing “tactics” or facebook ads gimmicks! Simple recurring revenue by doing three things:
- Find an idea
- Validate it
- Get your first 1-3 paying customers
And that is it!
So, I also want to make sure I bring along as many experts on this site to share their knowledge
- How did they achieve the mark
- Mistakes they made along the way and (how you can avoid it)
- What things to do if you start today
- and many more
Today, I invite Shabbir Bhimani, a blogger and a freelance developer, who’s been through all — working at a job, quitting it, did freelancing, starting a business, making more than 6-figures, etc.
All the questions on “How can I do freelancing in india” gets answered, straight from him. And yes, you can start freelancing while still working at a regular day job, or have an extra spare time.
Here are the exact answers to help you get started:
Here’s Shabbir.
How To Start Freelancing in India: Secrets and Learnings from a 6-Figure Freelancer
1. How do people who just start out get their first client? Specific steps you’d advise the following?
A freelancer has to do many tasks – sending proposals, interacting with clients and finally getting the task done.
So when one is starting out, it can be overwhelming. Still, I will share a very common way of getting that uber-important the first client.
Open your phonebook and make a list of people who can be your potential client. Getting the first from Upwork isn’t a must. One can get through a different channel as well.
Here is a complete process to approach potential clients from your contacts and convert them into being your first client:
1. Explore all the contacts from your address book and assign the priority as 1, 2 or 3 to them based on who you think will be more interested in your offer.
2. Call them and ask them to meet them to discuss what you have in mind.
3. Those who agree, do research about them to provide customized offers.
4. Research about their competitors and how you can help beat the competition and increase their business.
Pro Tip: Approach them not as someone you know but as a professional. It helps you market well.
5. Follow up is necessary. You can’t expect business in the first meeting. Get in touch with them on a particular date they give you.
Some extra tips:
- Be the conversation starter
- Don’t argue or show off yourself
- And finally as an Indian, never be late
2. If you were to start today on your freelancing journey, what are the first few things you will ABSOLUTELY do? And what do you wish you’d known when you started out?
The first step in the freelancing world is to create samples. Build a portfolio to demonstrate what things you are capable of.
I see so many developers make the same mistake of applying to projects on competitive marketplaces like Upwork instead of working towards building the samples and expertise.
Put yourself in a client’s position. If I am looking for a developer, will I prefer someone who has a sample around what I am looking for or will prefer the person who has the lowest bid? The same applies to writers, designers, etc.
Clients aren’t technical people and often don’t have the expertise to judge the level of expertise. So they go about with samples.
So if I am looking for content and want it to rank well in Google and get some traffic from social media will I prefer hiring a writer who has done it before?
So one thing that I absolutely do is to build a portfolio with samples. (Here’s a post on how to showcase your samples)
3. There are already a lot of freelance developers in the market? How does a newbie beginner stand out?
To stand out in a competitive market, one needs to build a USP or unique selling proposition. I like to be a big fish in a small pond rather than trying to be a tiny fish in a big pond.
So ideally, I like to start in a small niche as a freelancer and then go deeper than wider. Moreover, to be able to do it one has to enjoy what one is doing and have a good attitude towards working for clients.
Every freelancer started his/her career with zero experience. So if you are new in the world of freelancing doesn’t mean you are new to what you are already doing.
Moreover, one can consider the marketplace as competitive but that is if you look at the numbers from the outside. Millions of developers compete to get the job done. Now out of those millions, how many knows PHP. Grinding further, how many are experts in WordPress. Still, take one step further, how many are experts in AMP in WordPress.
As we niche down, it is much easier. As a XenForo developer, I have more work than I can handle from my existing clients at an hourly rate, I am comfortable working for them.
4. What are the 2-3 channels you suggest to get your first clients?
I suggest Upwork and Blog are two of my best channels for clients. Initially, I even used vBulletin as well as XenForo forums for clients but not anymore.
I see most of the people who aspire to be a freelancer lag the urgency to start a blog and work towards growing it.
Consider a situation where an article can solve the problem of a potential client. What if they need more than what you offer in that article? It is a great starting point to get clients and be a freelancer.
As an example, my article on vBulletin optimization has landed me with thousands of dollars of work in the past.
5. What are the top 3 things which helped you grow tremendously? (For eg: “Getting featured on XYZ website helped us get huge traffic and readers…..”)
As a blogger, I think the reason I am doing ok is because
Consistency and Perseverance
I believe these two components are the main ingredients in building a successful blog.
Can you write for every single day for the next 100 days and shell out 100 posts? Will you keep writing for the blog post which gets unnoticed? Are you willing to write daily even if there is nobody reading?
The answer to each of the above questions will be yes only if you love the process of writing and not because you want to be read and want fame or money.
Learning Attitude:
If you want to become a successful blogger, you have to be a student all the time. Learning is a never-ending process. Even Warren Buffett as one of the richest persons on the planet still dedicates 8 to 10 hours reading.
Without the willingness to learn how will you stand out in a competitive market? I am c++ programmer but moved over to PHP programming. I am willing to learn to write knowing the fact English is not my first language. Similarly, learned SEO or investing in market for that matter..
One has to wear various hats to grow in life.
Believe in Niches
People try to focus on taking a smaller cut of a bigger pie. Freelancers try to work in the industry they find enough work is being posted without considering how many developers are in the market as well.
As a WordPress developer, it may be too tough to get the hourly rates I demand but being a developer in vBulletin and XenForo helps me garner much better rates. Moreover, for existing clients, I even get the same rate for working on WordPress as well.
So, one should work in a niche with existing skills and expertise. I truly advocate the riches are in the niches.
6. What were some of the mistakes you made along the way?
The biggest mistake I did was I took a long time to build the team. Be it a team for writers for IMTips or developers for my freelancing business.
The second mistake that I did was to remain as a freelancer for too long. I should have focused more on building my blog than working for clients. I was more of a freelancer than a blogger for a very long time in the past decade. I am trying to make it up now.
If I would have focused on building the blog earlier, the growth of IMTips would have been much more than what it is now.
7. What are some challenges/problems freelancer experiences, and how does one overcome them? (For eg: “timely payments from clients are a huge challenge. The way to overcome them is……)
When I started freelancing, I faced many hiccups but not anymore for someone starting now.
The most significant of all was when I started, there was no way I could receive money from PayPal into my bank account. The day PayPal mailed us paper checks, we were on top of the world. Took almost two months to get the funds available in the bank account. Fast forward in 2019, it is hardly days to get the funds in the bank in India.
Moreover, when I started working from home, people looked at me as if I was jobless but it is not the case anymore. Working from home is becoming conventional.
Here are some more barriers as a freelancer.
8. Are freelancing sites (like Upwork) worth it with thousands of freelancers out there already? How does one who starts out today make good use of it?
Ohh absolutely. I see many bloggers thrash Upwork and consider it to be price competitive. And then there are others like me who encourage people to be using Upwork. I say it from my experience. My personal Upwork profile (I say personal because it is not an agency profile) has over $100k worth of completed projects and counting.
UpWork is an amazing marketplace and so are other such sites for freelancing in india. One has to know how to use them and get clients from them. If you try to find work for data entry projects, of course, it will be price competitive. Or if you try to be yet another PHP developer.
But as one specializes in a niche, one can demand better rates and dominate sites like Upwork.
How Much Do Freelancers Earn in India
To put it simply, you can earn 20K, 50K, 1 lakhs, or even 5 lakhs a month.
In fact, there was a survey recently done by PayPal, which revealed many insights and facts.
Freelancers in India, on an average, earn about Rs 19 lakh. The survey further breaks it down:
- About 23 per cent freelancers earn in the range of Rs 40-45 lakh annually
- 23 per cent earn in the range of Rs 2.5-5 lakh a year
- 13 per cent earn between Rs 10-15 lakh annually
- 11 per cent earn Rs 2.5 lakh or less annually
- 8 per cent earn Rs 7.5-10 lakh annually
Conclusion
I truly believe NOW is the perfect time to start freelancing in india. And I know it can be overwhelming thinking of so many things, so here at Progress and Win, there are specific resources on how to get started. and that’s if for how to start freelancing india.
The first step is finding and picking few freelancing ideas, and below you’ll find a list of 40+ ideas which are proven to work.
About the Author:
Shabbir Bhimani is a blogger, author, investor and a freelance developer. He guides, motivates and mentor developers to start a blog along with Upwork to become self-employable freelancers.
