How to become a freelancer – Part 1

Hello, my name is Daniela Borges, I have a degree in System’s Development and have been working in the IT industry for almost 5 years.

I’m currently a freelancer webdesigner. Until a short while ago I used to do freelancing jobs only during the spare time and on weekends, however, a couple of months ago I decided to leave the industry and fully embraced the responsibility and risks of working from home.

This is my first article, and also the first one from a series of How to become a freelancer. Let’s start with a very interesting topic: Develop Your Freelance Skills.

I intend to provide as many references, tools, as well as tips to auxiliate us all, beginer freelancers, and those who are already seasoned freelancers will certainly take advantage of it as well.

So, shall we begin?

Do I feel scared of leaving my former steady job? Heck yeah. However, during these 5 years of freelancing, after so many successfully finished projects I noticed that many new projects are a result of indications from former customers, and they are every increasing! Of course you have to be good with at you do, otherwise you can ruin your reputation.

DEVELOP YOUR FREELANCE SKILLS

A previous experience in any IT company will add to your expertise. Try to get to know how the lifecycle of the projects work in all the IT departments of the company.

Another way of getting to know how one project may spread its lifecycle though all the departments of one company is by studying the cases and whitepapers many known companies release on their websites

For both cases the idea is to keep always learning about projects’ lifecycle, so you can get the best possible overview of the big picture on what involves the project you might be part of. For that, there are plenty of resources, from youtube channels, tech events, and so on!

Always get to invest more time in what you are good at! Further develop your abilities, meawhile you get to understand more in the broader sense, you’ll be able to get down to the nitty-gritty of some other areas, which are not your sole focus of study, but certainly will come in handy when time arises.

As a webdesigner, I need to understand a bit of many different areas, such as:

The Digital Marketing: get to know how it works, the entire process of planning a digital campaign.
UX – UI: also known as user experience. Get to know how the job requirements assessment is done; the gathering of information, all the way to the wireframe construction.
Design: Find out how the UX team does their info gathering for the layout construction phase. In most cases it’s the designer that gets to wear the UX hat.
Web and Development: it’s where the webistes and apps are built. It’s important to understand about what they are speaking, their tools, and so on.
Customer service: Knowing, listening to the customer and knowing the time to speak, be polite, pass security for the client, know how to dress, etc …
Sales: Make a budget, know how to price the value of a project and close a sale.

Getting to know at least a bit about these areas, will certainly help you a big deal when for instance, having a meeting with one of your customers.

Of course, you are not required to understand every single detail, and to have an answer for every single problem, but the professional who has this knack for a variety of aspects in the project thereof, will certainly be an asset, and will also greatly aid you when it’s time to send the projects estimates and pricing.

Another very important thing. Learn to speak a second language (in my case, English). Sooner or later you are going to need it. For non English speakers, knowing English nowadays, in most cases, isn’t even considered an asset, but a mandatory skill. In the IT field it’s one of the cases which English is the bridge language, used for a variety of tasks, from basic communication purposes, to even coding the company’s products.

Here below, I’m leaving a few extra resources which might add up to one’s knowledge acquisition:

Free online courses:

Follow the series How to become a Freelancer: