When I started freelancing, I didn’t know anything about how the freelance world worked. But that didn’t stop me from building a successful freelance business and doubling my corporate salary within a year. The thing is, there are several very important tools that I use that every freelancer should know about. They help me run my business daily and I find them invaluable. You can certainly freelance without using these tools (but I don’t recommend it.) So let’s get right into it, shall we?

Let’s talk about money for a minute. It’s a bit uncomfortable, isn’t it? I know, me too. But we aren’t doing anyone any favors by not talking about it. I feel like for years, money has seemed to be this elusive thing, tied to my job and the level that I was at professionally. But at the same time, I had no idea how much I should be making or how much I COULD be making because you want to know the real truth? Businesses don’t want their employees talking about how much they make.

Are you interested in working from home at a job that will actually pay you a decent income from the get-go? Have you thought about freelancing but have no idea how to go about starting or have no idea how your skills translate? Let me help you. No matter where you come from, you have skills to utilize that translate into a service. Let’s explore some examples of skills and how you can use them in the freelancing space.

How I started freelancing and quit my 9 to 5 in just a few months! This is just my story, but I have heard thousands of others similar to mine. Stories full of people who aren’t fulfilled in their corporate jobs. Or maybe they are pregnant and facing an unsuitable amount of time at home with their baby (and lets face it, if you are in the US, any amount of time less than 6 months is not enough.) And, lots of stories of people who just want more work-life balance and don’t want to be stuck in the 9 to 5 grind their entire life. My story is similar, except I wanted all of these things.

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a freelancer, but are worried about how you will find clients, I hear you! I had those thoughts too. I was SO worried I wasn’t going to be very good at networking, or that I would not know where to look. I’d tried websites like Fivrr and Upwork, but the rates that people wanted to pay for work seemed ridiculously low. I get that you can often charge more once you get established (that’s true in any job) but I didn’t want to basically work for $1 an hour. Yeah, it was that bad. But it doesn’t have to be that way!