🤑How I got my first freelance project

When you have a burning desire and faith to achieve something, nothing can stop you to achieve that.

Well, I know that you unconsciously judged the whole blog just after reading the first line. If not then you are more conscious than 80% of the people who just scroll the internet by hours and learn nothing. If you are reading this line then I recommend you to read the whole blog and I bet you will feel the same energy that I felt before, after reading this blog.

This blog describes my experience of how I got my first freelance project or I can say how I made the client to accept my bid! Excited, here we go!

3 May 2018
Oh wait, let me introduce myself first. I am Rahul, a computer science engineering student who has just completed his 4th semester and heading home to enjoy the summer vacations(3 months hola!) with no plans. I have done a few projects in HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript(just basics) in the database project. Being rejected from several summer internships recruitment procedures, I had lost confidence in what I’ve been learning for a few months. I had no plans what productive am I going to do this summer but was determined that I’ll do something interesting.

5 May 2018
After proudly wasting Day 1, I decided to create a portfolio of myself(of course a webpage).

7 May 2018
It took 2 days to come out with the portfolio. Tada, now I have a portfolio now what next. What!! I don’t know.

14 May 2018
I was still waiting for someone who can guide me the way to do anything amazing. 7 days gone nothing magical happened. Frustrated, I again started looking for an internship. You know what sucked in that internship part, was my town.

18 May 2018
Totally frustrated for not finding anything that I can work on which will help me in the long run, I came across a term called FREELANCE. Curious, I searched from Youtube to Quora, from Reddit to blogs and almost everywhere on the internet from where I can get the information about the term FREELANCE. For those who don’t know about this word, freelancing means taking money in return of doing something for others.

19 May 2018
The burning desire of doing something productive started bursting out. I opened an account at Freelancer and completed the profile. With no idea of what to put in the profile, I have listed all of my projects and achievements made in the two years of college.
If you are still reading, I appreciate your patience because you are about to know the miracle, FAITH can do.
After completing profile with proper skills, I started bidding on projects** blindly** with such a proposal.

I was like:

• 1st bid done
• 2nd bid done
• 3rd bid done
• 4th bid done

I sat waiting and waiting to get the response. I didn’t know that it takes time. I was in no mood to wait so again I started bidding again.
Oo Oo “You have reached your bid limit– Please upgrade your plan to bid more”, popup replied. I hummed -“are you crazy, I am not gonna put my money into this”.
Hopeless, exactly 21 minutes later, a pop sound came from my laptop. I rushed to the laptop like a bullet.

That was a message from a contractor replied to my proposal to have a conversation. He wanted me to design web-pages (no coding only design- No Website Development).
If you are still reading then I am quite sure that your mind unconsciously made the decision that this is the miracle I am talking about. If not then you are not a normal human being. Haha just kidding!
This is not the miracle I was talking about. Read further if you really wanna know the real magic.
I told you that I was bidding blindly, so I didn’t bother to read the project description. Until his message popped up I’ve no idea how such things work. Honestly, I didn’t know anything about UI (User Interface) designing. I had experience only with the traditional buttons, and forms. So because of no experience in this work, one part me was suggesting to tell him that I can’t do it and another part of me was saying let's do this, you will learn through the way.

Here my FAITH started to create the magic. I heard the word WireFraming a few months ago in a Youtube video. So I used that word to make him realize that I am a professional.
I replied affirmatively with great confidence on the word WireFraming.
But this word, WireFraming became my bid savior. I successfully made him realize that I can do that.
Tadaa he is asking for the cost, in $dollars$. Let's make a deal!

Having no idea of how to charge, I randomly said $3 per page.
I was not bothered about the money though, so I agreed for $2 per page.

We then started discussing the project and he asked me to submit the mock homepage first before he hires me.

I was aware of the fact that I had no idea about UI designing, I need to learn it now. So I took my time. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about UI designing from YouTube and medium articles and luckily submitted the mock-up homepage in time.
And gratefully, he loved my work and I was hired.
After then I’ve made about 20 pages or so and one Ad Video (I knew a little bit of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects too) for his project.

Finally, I made about $70 in just 6 days.

And that’s how my burning desire to do something productive with the skills I’ve developed so far, mixed with FAITH in myself, I got a head start in the freelancing business which is nothing but a miracle to me.

NOTE: Later I realized that it is not the ideal or best way to start freelancing. It may take an hour, a day, or even a week to get the response or no response from the contractor because there are thousands of professionals out there with huge experience/feedbacks, bidding on the same project. You may say I got the response by luck but I believe that it was nothing but a miracle.
So experience/feedback on your freelancer profile is the key.* I recommend you to start your journey by participating in the contests. Hundreds of contests are being held every day on Freelancer. Keep participating in the competitions, start earning feedback to gain experience and make enough money to plan for the trips
There are lots of freelancing website such as Upwork, Fiverr, etc. as well
Remember: FAITH can make you extremely rich