Starting your freelance career – Step 1: Find a Niche
If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
Can’t pick one place? Me either.
There are just too many options.
Choosing ONE destination from THOUSANDS seems impossible.
So how do we choose?
(I threw a dart once and almost ended up in Oymyakon, Russia. No thank you.)
The trick is limiting your choices…
Instead of choosing one city or country to travel to, how about choosing a top three?
Can you do that?
MUCH easier right?
Here’s my travel short-list:
- Tokyo, Japan (raw fish and magic toilets!)
- Jaipur, India (naan and rickshaws!)
- Medellin, Colombia (arepas and Sofia Vergara!)
…What?
…A man can dream.
Plus…I hear she’s totally into dreamy 5’8” dad bods.
Malcolm, I thought you were going to teach me how to start my freelance career?
Right.
Here’s my point…
To get off my butt and start traveling I just need pick from my short-list INSTEAD of the thousands of other possibilities.
Here’s the funny thing…
Choosing a freelance career = planning for a trip
When I talk to people about starting to freelance, most of them have no idea where to start.
For good reason too…
There are almost 100 different job categories on the largest freelancing site.
That’s almost 100 different roads you could go down.
How do you choose between 100 different jobs?
Most people don’t. They freeze.
They never start freelancing because there are so many options.
What do you do then?
Throw a dart?
I’ve got a better idea…
Why not treat it like travel planning and create a freelance career short-list?
Creating your freelance career short-list
Remember when I showed you a “sneak peak” at my freelancing process way back on the first page?
You know the one that if you follow you CANNOT fail. 100%. Guaranteed.
Remember that one?
Here’s where we dig into it.
Choosing a career path is the very first step in the process (and it’s an IMPORTANT one).
See that bit on the left?
That’s how we are going to trim your freelance career options down from almost 100 to a short-list of 2 or 3 options to explore further.
Here are the 4 criteria you should use when selecting your freelance career.
These are in order and one of them doesn’t matter. More on that in a minute.
1) Skills you already have:
I’m going to show you how to start from scratch (i.e. ZERO EXPERIENCE)
But…
If you already have some skills why start over?
2) Your interests:
This one is simple.
If you are excited about your work you are more likely to get out of bed and do it.
3) Job availability:
more JOBS = more OPTIONS = more MONEY = more FLEXIBILITY = more TRAVEL
4) Highest paying jobs:
I listed this because it is probably your natural instinct.
It was mine.
It’s A LOT of other people’s too…
Okay this might be controversial but…
IGNORE THE HOURLY RATE…
FOR NOW.
Actually I’m not even going to include it in the discussion because it isn’t important.
Remember we just need to get you hired at the freelance “McDonald’s” and then multiply that by three.
Start with the destination
When I’m planning my trip to go see Sofia Vergera in Medellin I’ve got two things that are almost certain.
First, I know I’m going to Medellin. That’s my final destination.
Second, I’m almost positive I’ll be leaving from my local airport. That’s my starting point.
What happens in between – the connecting cities – matters but the goal is always going to be to get from the starting point to the final destination as quickly as possible.
With that in mind, this exercise is going to be about choosing your freelance final destination.
From there we can see what the best starting point (“McDonald’s job”) is going to be.
It might be your local airport or it might be one a few hours up the road.
Where are you going?
If you are like I was (and like most people I’ve helped start freelancing) you probably have no idea what types of freelance jobs are available.
For that reason we are going to start at a high level and work down.
We’ll start with the “continents” of the freelance world…
Freelance REGIONS
Check out this screenshot from Upwork – the biggest online freelancing marketplace.
Those are the high-level categories – we’ll call them REGIONS – for freelance jobs.
Now within each of those regions there are a TON of different job possibilities.
Just like you would for a trip let’s start broad and work our way down.
Want to go to Asia next?
No.
Okay how about Central America?
No.
South America?
BINGO.
We can do the same thing with these freelance categories.
The goal here is to ELIMINATE some of these regions so we can narrow our focus.
Before we start ripping up the map and crossing things out…
Remember my #1 criteria from earlier?
1) Skills you already have
Let’s go ahead and include any of those categories you think you’ve worked in (again just read along here, bottom of the page = super easy tool).
Don’t worry about the details for now.
Even the smallest bit of work or training can give you a head start.
Now let’s shred that freelance map up!
This is where we get rid of any freelance categories that make you sick to your stomach.
Maybe the words “Data” and “Science” together flip your stomach upside-down faster than Mexican huarache topped with chopped up hot dogs and slimy mushrooms.
Remind me to tell you that story some time…
Not one of my best decisions.
Moving on.
Back to the list. See any you can cross off immediately?
Thought so.
The more the merrier really.
What gets your heart beating?
Now that we’ve gotten rid of those rotten things let’s start picking out the pretty one’s.
Remember my second criteria for choosing a freelance destination?
2) Your interests
This one is easy. Do any of these sound good to you?
Could you see yourself saying “I work in Design” or “I’m in Networking”?
What’s available?
Now we’ve got a list of freelance categories to work with, but…
We need to start focusing in a little closer.
Remember what #3 on my freelance destination criteria was?
3) Job availability
To whittle down your list to a few options let’s add that to the equation.
The number next to the freelance REGIONS below are the number of jobs that were posted when I put this page together.
They pretty much stay the same all the time.
IMPORTANT: The number of jobs should weigh into your decision but it shouldn’t be THE determining factor. That’s why I have it at #3 on my list. If you have experience in or really like the idea of a region with a low number of jobs don’t worry, there’s plenty to go around.
Now we’re getting somewhere
Alright now we’ve got your freelance category shortlist.
When you are travel planning what do you do after narrowing your trip down to a REGION?
Pick a COUNTRY!
Choosing a freelance career
Getting tired yet? I am.
All of this planning can wear a guy out.
Just one last step though…
What you see is a list of the job sub-categories (countries) for a main freelance category (region).
(the one below happens to be the sub-categories for writing)
I got these straight from Upwork’s website which means we’ll be able to do some job searching – looking for your freelance CITY – much easier when we get there.
Make sense? Good.
Now all you need to do is to pick one or two jobs categories that sound good to you.
Now you are ready to start freelancing
Hard part. Done.
On the next page I’m going to show you how you can start one of those career paths and take that freelance trip.
Ready to find out what your freelancing “McDonalds” job is?
Fill out the form below and on the next page I’ll show you where you can start and where you are going…