Wherever you are in your college journey, 2020 will have played havoc with your plans. Many students are struggling to make ends meet having lost part-time jobs, while others don’t know how to start looking for work after graduation. The tough job market has become even harder to navigate.
The good news is that, in 2020, you do not need to find a job in the traditional way. You can use your knowledge and skills to create your own home business. This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds, with most freelancers today having had little idea of what they were doing at the start.
If you are motivated and good at adapting, you can stake your claim in the gig economy immediately.
Follow these steps to get started.
Check out freelance platforms
There is a lot of debate among freelancers over whether or not starting out on a freelance platform is a good idea. However, if you are brand new to working online and need to start earning as soon as possible, have a look at Upwork and Fiverr. Each of these platforms take a different approach to matching freelancers and clients. On Upwork, you “bid” for a project, whereas on Fiverr you set a specific price for your services.
These platforms are necessarily easy to use. The drawback is that most of the clients who use these platforms are either strapped for cash or looking to exploit desperate workers. It is important to know your worth, and to say no to any job that pays less than minimum wage or pays in “exposure.”
If you work smartly and craft a profile that really sells you as a professional, you can earn more than you would at any traditional job.
Create your own website
Ultimately, every freelancer should create a website at some point. Ideally, it will eventually become your main marketing tool. Instead of searching for decent clients on the above platforms, you can market to big companies or startups with significant capital.
To create a great freelancers website, start off by finding the right hosting. Check out these Hostinger reviews to get an idea of what to look for.
Once you have hosting, choose a CMS like WordPress or Wix. These are platforms that make web creation incredibly simple. They will help you set up your site in just a few steps, with attractive themes and functionality. Wix will even help you design a logo appropriate to your field.
Build a portfolio
One of the difficulties new job seekers face is that hiring companies all want applicants with experience. How do you get experience if you can’t get a job without it? Freelancing circumvents this problem to an extent. However, you still need to sell yourself by proving you can do the job.
This is why you will need a portfolio from the get-go. The advantage of working online is that you are assessed based on results more than anything else. If you can prove you can do the job well, it does not matter to clients how long you have been doing it.
Once you have a few clients, you can ask whether you can add the work you did for them to your portfolio. For now, build a portfolio on sample work. Create samples along the lines of something you might do for a client. As long as your work is good, clients will be happy to hire you.
It is tough being a college student in 2020, especially if you are supposed to be heading out into the work world right now. Working online is a more surefire way to make money than what we have always considered traditional jobs.
