One of the main methods that people are using to earn money on the internet today is through freelancing. The increasing demand for online activities is creating a lot of money-making opportunities for freelancers. In this article, I am going to share with you freelance business ideas that anyone can start right now. Even if you are a complete beginner, these ideas are for you too.
According to a new study from Upwork, a freelance job platform, Two million Americans have started freelancing in the past 12 months. And that has increased the proportion of the workforce that performs freelance work to 36%.
As in the case of any business, before starting any of the freelance business ideas below, you must do extensive research into the industry and create a business plan.
The best part of the freelance business is that you have full control over what you do. You choose your clients and the time to do the job. So, with all of these, you can transform and change them to fit with your skills and interests.
Related: 10 Home-based business ideas for teens
what is freelancing
Generally, freelancing means working directly for a client or many clients at the same time. This is not the same as having a formal job where your boss will assign you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. When you negotiate directly with a client about a job, you are a freelancer.
The benefit of freelancing is that you can start without any overhead. The only thing about freelancing is that when you start, you need to have a lot of patience and passion for it.
pros and cons of freelancing business
When you are doing freelancing business, you have to be aware that there are pros and cons. I will try to enumerate them below.
pros of freelancing
Following are some of the pros or advantages of starting a freelancing business
- Flexible and highly scalable
- You can work from anywhere
- You can start earning money right away without putting any of your own money up-front
- doing freelancing gives you the oppotunity to build relationship with people from all over the world
cons of freelancing
Below are the cons of the freelancing business.
- In this business, you initially trade your time for money.
- It can be difficult to interact face-to-face with others, which may isolate you
- Jobs qre not always online, you will need to work offline at times
Read Also; Companies hiring remote workers: Most paying ones.
Websites to start a freelancing business
As a freelancer, you have to get yourself in front of your potential customers. To do this, there are special platforms or websites called freelance platforms where you can create gigs about your skills.
Another way to let people know about your freelancing business is to publish the services you offer on your website or blog. This appears to be the best way to reach clients because visitors to your site will easily find you. The trust that has developed between you and your audience will make buy your services easily.
On the other hand, if you don’t have a website, you can still start your freelance business. Some of the websites on which you can go to start your freelance business
- Fiverr : This is the most popular of them all. you can join Fiverr freely and create up to 7 gigs for free
- Upwork : Upwork is another big freelance platform. joining and creating a profile is free. You can bid for jobs or companies who need your service will contact you
- Peopleperhour : Also functions like Upwork
- Freelancer:
- etc…
8 freelance business ideas
Following are the 13 freelance business ideas and I hope you will find one that fits your interest. Some of these freelance businesses require you to have some experience and patience especially when you are just starting.
1. WRITING
One of the most popular freelance business ideas that we can find on the market today is writing. With the increase of websites and blogs, many businesses and individuals need people to write for them.
Many are too busy or just a bit lazy to write that article of two thousand words and if you are good at writing, starting this freelance business idea is right for you. You can write for websites, news magazines both online and offline.
Most writers in the freelance writing business, choose to focus on a particular niche. this helps them perfect the topic and can easily write anything as long as it concerns their niche. But the good news is that you don’t necessarily need to have studied the subject you write about.
Having a lot of passion for the topic and a good writing style gets you ready to start this business.
2. GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphic Designing is another very popular one when it comes to freelance business ideas. Some people need writers to create content for their websites, the same way they need graphic designers to create beautiful graphics for them.
If you already know graphic designing then joining this freelance business can be easy for you. But in the situation where you are not good at it, you will need to take time time to learn graphic designing.
You can learn graphic designing offline and online. There are courses you can find on Udemy. Another way to learn this without spending any money is by watching Youtube videos.
Youtube as somebody said is the biggest university available in the world today. With a lot of passion and determination, you can become an expert in anything just by watching free videos on Youtube.
3. TRANSCRIPTION
There is a wide variety of people looking for transcriptionists to transcribe their works for them. The demand for transcripts is high especially in fields such as law, medicine, and business.
Transcription is the process of typing up recorded audio or video files. This is one of the freelance business ideas that you can do on a part-time or full-time basis.
The skill needed to become a good transcriber is typing skill. The more good you are with your keyboard, the more chances you have to do very well in the transcription business.
4. TRANSLATION
According to Simple Wikipedia, “Translation means to Copywrite a speech from one language into a different language. The people who do translation are called translators. A translator who is copying a book into another language may use a language dictionary to find out how a word is written in another language”
When you start a freelance translation business, you must be ready to face some difficulties.
It is a normal process in all businesses. You only need to have a lot of confidence in yourself and I can assure you that will surely get over it.
5. PROOFREADING
Another one from the list of freelance business ideas is proofreading. A proofreader is a person who reviews written content by somebody else to check and correct all types of errors such as spelling, punctuation, and many other errors.
Before you can start this proofreading business, you need to be good in English or in the language in which the content is written. Apart from this, you need to be the kind of person who loves to read because if reading is not your passion you can’t proofread a book.
Among the things, you will be reviewing as a proofreader are books, web content, assignment by students, articles, etc… Deênding on your client, you will be asked to proofread almost anything physically and virtually.
Starting this business might be hard in the beginning because you need to take a lot of time to read and read again in order to make sure you did not miss any errors. You can read here to see the steps needed to start a proofreading business.
6. WEB DESIGN
This web design business requires you to have expertise in web designing before you can start it. Starting a web design business relies strongly on you having the right knowledge and resources.
In the freelance business, you will have to be creating and design websites for your customers. People have different desires as to how their website will look and as a web designer, you must be able, to satisfy their wishes.
You must know how to create a website using major website designing software like WordPress, Elementor, Wix, Weebly, Adobe XD etc…
Nonetheless, the good thing about being a freelancer is that you choose which job to do and which not to do. So whenever a job seems to be higher than your capacity, you can decline it.
To help you get started, GoDaddy developed this ebook. It’s free to download and it contains more than 100 pages packed with tips and tricks for you to get started with Web Design. You download it here.
7. DATA ENTRY
Data entry as you understand from the name is the entry of any kind of data in any form whether physically or virtually. This type of freelance business requires you to compile the raw data in an informative manner so that it could display some valuable results.
You can do data entry both online and offline. As a data entry operator, you are expected to convert the data and send it virtually to your client or to an e-platform.
There are many companies and businesses with raw data at hand that need to process that data in order to run various statistical tests on that data to find valuable answers. Because they are maybe too busy to compile these data themselves, they hire freelancers to do this for them.
Data entry can seem difficult for you as a beginner but it surely becomes easier as time goes on. All you need to succeed in this freelance business is passion and patience.
8. VIDEO EDITING
According to Wikipedia, Video editing is used to structure and present all video information, including films and television shows, video advertisements, and video essays.
This job business requests you to have video editing skills. a lot of YouTubers are in constant need of video editors to put their videos in shape for them. If your interest is to start video editing as a freelancer, it is very important to know how to use video editing software like
- Adobe Premiere Pro.
- CyberLink PowerDirector 365.
- Adobe Premiere Elements. …
- Pinnacle Studio. …
- Final Cut Pro. …
- Adobe Premiere Rush. …
- Corel VideoStudio Ultimate. …
- Filmora.
Finally…
I believe you have now got a little understanding of freelancing. Are you now ready to start your freelance business? Which of the above-listed freelance business ideas are you going to start?
You can share it with me in the comment section. Also if you have a particular freelance business idea that you want us to add to the list, you can still say it in the comment.
Good..
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