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As a freelancer (or contractor) you’d be building and running your own business.
You would use specific skills or training to provide an online service. Clients or agencies would pay you for your time and/or output.
You might hire other people to help you out occasionally, but you’d be doing most of the work yourself.
If you don’t want to get a remote job, freelancing is my #1 recommendation to get started earning a living online.
Freelancing is one of 19 types of online business and considered a Level 2 online business, according to our framework.
Okay for side income or beer money, but hard to earn a living.
Best for earning a living online when you’re starting out, but hard to scale.
Easier to scale and higher income potential, but you usually need significant investment of time and/or money upfront.
Even more scalable and even higher income potential, but also more complex / difficult / expensive.
Most complex / difficult / expensive, but the rewards here can be massive.
These are the misfits. Many aren’t even considered businesses in the traditional sense, but they are all ways to make money online. You typically need a lot of time, money, or luck to succeed with anything here.
Here are the legit ways I’ve found to make money online with a freelance business…
You probably already have skills you can freelance online.
For example, if you’re good with kids, you could try your hand at virtual babysitting via VeeBee…
If you’re an experienced entertainer, you could earn even more working as a performer at Virtual Babysitters Club…
If you have decent social skills and enjoy teaching, you could help people learn English on iTalki…
You can earn even more on iTalki if you have a language teaching certification (like TEFL)…
Or you could start freelancing the same skills you used at your 9-to-5 job.
That’s what Kat Ambrose did, going from producing content for an ad agency in Denver to running her own online writing business…
Similar story for Carrie Dagenhard…
To be clear: you will have to learn additional skills to become a successful freelancer – the skill of getting clients being the most crucial – but leveraging your existing skills can get you earning good money fast.
This can be done faster than you might think, given how easy it is nowadays to learn new skills via inexpensive or even free online courses.
A great example is Justin Clifton, a college dropout who spent two months building and practicing a new skill set. He landed his first client at $9 per hour and a year later was charging as much as $50 per hour while traveling the world…
Fiona Wong got kicked out of college but was able to teach herself enough to earn a living online as a single mom with two kids…
Writing is one of the most popular skills people learn to start freelancing.
Conor Walsh confessed to having “zero experience” when he started freelance ghostwriting, but was quickly able to earn a good income from it…
To give a more extreme example of a self-taught freelancer, this 19-year-old hacker from Argentina earns big money helping major companies improve their cybersecurity…
A popular way to boost your freelance earnings is to offer a productized service.
For example, Wayne Chin sells his voiceover service as several “products” on Fiverr…
When you sell a productized service like Wayne, each project you work on is quite similar, making it easier to optimize your workflow and thereby earn more money in less time.
Another way to scale a freelance business is to offer the same service to a group of clients rather than working with each of them individually.
For example, Nagina Abdullah started offering group coaching in addition to one-on-one coaching and was able to work with “hundreds more clients.”
Yes, it can be.
I see it as the simplest type of online business to start and earn a living from.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy – many freelancers struggle to find clients and earn consistently – but it’s usually easier to earn a living with freelancing than with any other type of online business.
Here are some courses you may want to consider…