How To Start Freelancing as a Student in 2024: A Complete Guide

Freelancing as a student is the best time to start gaining work experience, earning extra money to lessen the burden on your parents, and living financially independently. 

But how to start freelancing as a student without any prior experience and skill set? You don’t have to worry about it anymore because I will be sharing all the detailed information on how to start freelancing as a student, even if you don’t have previous experience and skills. 

Everything I share in this article is based on my personal experience when I began my freelancing journey back in college.

Why Is It Necessary For You To Start Freelancing As a Student?

There is no doubt that freelancing is the best way to start earning immediately for students. But if we have a look at the bigger picture, freelancing is helping students build career paths, and developing skills at the early phase in college. 

If you have a certain skill set in your belt, working as a freelancer with a good amount of testimonials and reviews from clients. It can be used as a portfolio to replace your internship hassles.

How To Start Freelancing As a Student

Before you start freelancing as a student you need to know certain things to become a successful freelancer. I have mentioned some crucial points to consider:

What Are The Pros and Cons of Freelancing As a Student?

Pros of Freelancing As a Student

Cons of Freelancing As a Student

Steps To Start Freelancing As a Student

We have covered all the necessary information on how to start freelancing as a student. Now, we are going to focus on the steps you need to follow to avoid wasting your time and energy. if you follow my steps, you won’t have to look anywhere else for resources to start freelancing. All steps will be mentioned in detail.

1. Decide Your Skills For Service. 

If you are serious about freelancing, it is necessary to have certain skills or spend time learning your desired skills to be a successful freelancer. Skills that you can become an expert and provide your clients with the best service to stand out in the market. 

Many beginners make mistakes when choosing their skills and end up losing motivation to continue freelancing. You can either pick a hobby or a previous job that will help you start quickly. Otherwise, it’s better to check for skills that are in high demand in the market. 

2. Set Up Your Portfolio

Not a single client will be impressed or engage in a conversation with you if you don’t have a portfolio to showcase your work. Portfolio is the next thing your client will check after they read your pitch. It is most important to have a fantastic portfolio that clients can’t resist. 

Even if your portfolio gets rejected multiple times by the client. Don’t give up easily as it tells you to fix your mistake and improve your portfolio.

3. Provide Multiple Services Related To Your Skills

Diversifying your services related to your skill helps you get more clients. For example, let’s say you have a skill as a video editor, you can add Instagram Reels editing, YouTube shorts editing, and Thumbnail creation services. The only reason to provide multiple services related to your skill is to increase your income.  

4. Set Your Rates

Keeping aside all the doubt that you are charging enough for your service or not. As a beginner, I would suggest you start at a low rate to get more clients, and that helps to get more reviews. After building your reputation in the market you can set your desired rate. 

5. Set Up Your Payment Method

Payment is the most important aspect of freelancing. Choosing the right payment method, one that every client accepts, helps you solve your payment problem. If you are working at any freelancing platform, there are multiple payment methods available to withdraw your money.

For freelancers who work directly with clients instead of any third-party sites, it is necessary to have commonly used international payment methods like PayPal, Wise, and Payoneer.  

6. Reach Out To Target Clients 

Never depend on freelancing sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer for clients. Instead, you can reach out to your target potential clients using cold email and social media platforms like X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

LinkedIn and Twitter are by far some of the best places to find potential clients. Indeed, millions of businesses and companies are reaching out to employees directly to offer work on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

7. Manage Workflow

As a beginner in freelancing as a student, you will be a perfectionist and intend to take one client at a time. As you gain more experience, you will explore ways to handle more projects through outsourcing. That will help maximize your earnings.  

Never keep a project pending for the utmost amount of time as it may affect your reputation and decline your order. Use tools like Notion and Keepa to manage the project like a pro freelancer. 

8. Abide Laws

Read and research the freelancing laws of the country where you belong to. Not all countries will have the same rules and regulations. It is better to take responsibility as a responsible citizen rather than break laws, wasting your time, effort, and money in the future.

As a beginner freelancer, you don’t have to register for freelancing, but if you reach your income to the taxable amount, you have to file your taxes.

15 Best Freelance Jobs For Students

There are many freelancing categories available you can choose to start your freelancing journey as a student. However, only the right one will work wonders when it aligns with your talent and meets market demand. 

I have listed 15 best freelancing skills that are in high demand and also fairly easy to start with.

1. Data Entry

Data entry is the easiest of all the mentioned categories. Anyone with basic Excel knowledge can start right away. Accuracy and meticulous attention to detail are the requirements for this job, so you have to be very detail-oriented and efficient with your work. 

Most of the common data entry tasks are Copy Paste, entering data into Excel sheets from multiple sources, and entering data into data management systems like CRM, product listing on eCommerce platform, and so on.

2. Video Editing

Due to the increasing number of content creators and influencers, many creators outsource their video editing work to freelancers to lessen their workload. 

As reels and shorts become a quick form of entertainment and knowledge-sharing content, your creativity and editing skills will help you to get work.

You can start learning editing today without any second thought because this skill will stay forever as long as the content creator’s market is there.

3. Virtual Assistant

From small business owners to busy people, personal assistants have always been required to grow their businesses and manage their busy schedules. Hiring a part-time personal assistant is expensive so virtual assistants become an alternative. A virtual assistant can work from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection. 

The task can vary according to a client’s request, it can be internet research, email handling, admin tasks, calendar management, scheduling appointments, and so on.  

4. Content Writing

Writing has always been a part of our lives, from school assignments to writing essays and applications. If you have the patience to research any given topic and the creativity to write, you have endless opportunities to work as a freelance writer. 

In this digital era, blogging and digital marketing become a lucrative business. Writers play a significant role in writing content like blog posts, news articles, copywriting for email marketing, website content, and more.

5. Social Media Marketing

Traditional marketing like TV ads and billboards is expensive and hard to start for small business startups. Because of this, small businesses and big brands are adopting social media as an alternative. 

You can learn digital marketing and social media marketing easily. There are many courses available on Skillshare and Udemy, or you can buy courses from a reputed expert who specializes in this field.

6. Video and Audio Transcription

The transcription job doesn’t seem promising for a beginner freelancer, but it has been around since the beginning of captions in videos and visual podcasts.

You can check on freelance sites for transcription gigs and websites for transcription jobs to assure yourself. All you need is a sharp listening ability to convert the audio to text format. It’s as simple as that!

7. Graphic Designer

Everything we see in our day-to-day life is the work of graphic designers from product packages to magazines. Digital marketing agencies and small brands are daily hunting for talented independent graphic designers in the market.

Whether you want to start freelancing or build a career out of it, you can check this interesting skill if you have creative design skills. 

With the rise of easy design tools like Canva and AI-generated designs, creating a professional-looking design or finding inspiration has become much easier. If you want to pursue a career in graphic design, you can learn industry-level software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

If you don’t have a budget for such paid tool, you can opt for open-source software like Gimp and Inkscape.

8. Digital Artist

Art is the only way for visual representation for any fiction illustration. Demand for digital artists is more than any traditional artists in this digital era. But it is also one of the most time-consuming skills to learn. Being a digital artist as a hobby I have made decent money from personal portrait painting, pet portrait, and illustration. 

There are many opportunities available if your art style is unique and amazing. You can sell your art on platforms such as Etsy, Gumroad, and Creative Fabrica.

9. Voice Over Artist

If you have an amazing voice, you can start your freelancing as a voice-over artist. Potential clients for voice-over artists are mostly from Youtube channels (which have long-term opportunities), brands for advertisement, and many more. The sky is the limit for voice-over artists.

10. Website and App Developer

Nowadays, it has become necessary for any size of business to have a website or an app. Having a website or an app helps to show who they are to stand out from competitors in a professional way. Many freelancers and agencies prefer having a website to showcase their portfolio.

Developers are the most in-demand freelancers in this tech world, handling tasks from web or app development to fixing bugs. If you are a tech-savvy person you can learn website and app development for freelancing and future career opportunities. 

You would be surprised to know that many self-taught web developers and software engineers work in top companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

11. Social Media Manager

Social media management is by far one of the most lucrative freelancing options. Anyone with creative and analytical ability can become a successful social media manager.

Every single business, brand, and influencer is hiring an independent social media manager to grow their account and creatively increase audience engagement. It doesn’t require any certification or qualification, your creative and content creation skills are enough to embark in this field.  

12. Online Tutor

Being a student, your expertise in a subject is your skill. You can become an online tutor if you have good teaching and explaining ability.

There are three fully proven ways you can make money as an online tutor; teaching on Youtube, tutoring students one-on-one, and creating courses for online education platforms like Skillshare and Udemy.

Online course creation takes more time and effort but it’s a one-time investment. Once you create it there is recurring passive income.

13. Music Artist

Copyright-free music is saturated. Content creators and many industries are looking for unique music for their content. If you have a taste of music and are creative to produce amazing music, you can become a freelancer in this field.

Not only freelancing but also a chance to become a big music artist. In this digital world, opportunities are endless, social media and production-free platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud have helped many small artists to become successful.  

14. Animation

Even if you don’t work at the level of movie production, animation is considered a great job for creative people to work as freelancers. Although, it takes years to master the art of animation, eventually, you can achieve a fruitful career through it. 

Thanks to the development of animation software, creating animation has become easier than ever compared to the traditional method of drawing frame by frame on paper. Software tools like Adobe After Effects, Toonboon, and Mojo help create animation videos easily. 

15. Photography And Photo Editing

Last but not least, Photographers with photo editing skills are the gem of our last freelancing list. Apart from big industries, small businesses, agencies, real estate, and influencers are frequently hiring freelance photographers and photo editors to collaborate. You can upgrade from editing to photo manipulation to become the industry king.

How To Find Your First Client Freelancing As a Student?

Struggle is a common experience for every newbie freelancer in their initial phase. Without any response from clients due to lack of testimonials and reviews. You have to spend weeks, even months generating leads, sending cold emails, and consistently bidding on new projects on a freelancing platform until a potential client responds. 

Confidence is the key to impressing and assuring them that you can complete the work to their satisfaction. If you lie or give false promises, your pitch will be rejected. So, honesty is the only way to win clients. 

From my experience, it took me around 2 weeks to find my first client working as a data entry and virtual assistant freelancer. Preparing a convincing and personalized script helped me receive more responses from potential clients. 

How Much Can You Earn Freelancing As a Student?

There is no exact figure in freelancing on how much you can earn as a student. The figure can vary drastically from day to month. Sometimes you will spend weeks without any work, and on other days, you may secure high-paying, long-term clients that compensate for the time spent without a single client.

Generally, student freelancers make between $200 to $1000 weekly on average depending on the number of projects you can secure. To earn a decent, stable income, you have to acquire long-term clients and take on big projects.    

Tips For Freelancing As a Student 

Freelancing is considered to be the best job, with all the freedom and independence you will get. But it can also be challenging if you don’t keep certain things in mind as a beginner. Prevention is better than cure, so I have listed some useful tips you can follow to avoid common pitfalls and become a successful freelancer as a student. 

• Avoid Scammers: There is no work in the freelancing space that you have to pay upfront for registration or applying to get the work.
• Avoid using your payment method in any situation: A lot of smart hackers and scammers manipulate freelancers into purchasing products or subscriptions using your payment method. Many freelancers have fallen victim to them, so be cautious. 
• Always be polite when you refuse work or cancel the order: They might give you work in the future, so never avoid or make them feel ignored. It is also important for rating and reviews. 
• Satisfy clients with your work: Testimonials and reviews are a crucial part of freelancing. A single negative review can have a big impact on your freelancing journey, many freelancers stopped freelancing because of bad reviews.
• Improve response time: Time is precious. Clients prefer a freelancer who has a prompt reply and is ready to take on a project immediately. 
• Manage workflow: Only take projects that you can deliver on time. Always try to avoid multitasking and juggling with multiple projects.
• Reach out to potential clients: Send reminders to your previous clients to offer your service again. Cold email your new potential clients.

By now, I think I have cleared all your doubts, and all the questions you had about how to start freelancing as a student should be answered. I hope your freelancing journey is filled with achievement and success!

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