{"id":127,"date":"2020-06-28T23:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-28T20:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/ent\/?p=127"},"modified":"2020-06-28T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2020-06-28T20:00:10","slug":"first-time-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niabusiness.com\/entity\/first-time-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"The first time you get paid for freelance work you do online"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember the first time I got paid for work I did online as a\u00a0freelancer<\/a>. It was a few years ago. And I could have forgotten about it all, but it is still fresh in my mind.<\/p>\n

I remember the details well. I got paid to write an article – in the WordPress niche – to write a review for an email lead generation plugin developed by\u00a0Elegant Themes<\/a>. And the blogger I wrote it for paid me fifty dollars for the article.<\/p>\n

What I did before that first payment<\/h2>\n

I had to create a portfolio<\/strong>. Basically something (sample posts) I could show potential clients to help them gauge if they’d want to work with me or not.<\/p>\n

In my case, I had a blog which I built myself from scratch on the\u00a0WordPress<\/a>\u00a0platform – and then I had a few articles on the blog itself that could show somebody that I could write quality articles in the blogging \/ WordPress niche.<\/p>\n

I went out looking for clients<\/strong>. At the time all I did was just email blogs I already knew about in the WordPress \/ blogging niche to see if someone would want to outsource some writing work to me.<\/p>\n

In my emails, I mentioned how much I wanted (per word), talked about my experience (using WordPress and figuring ways to help beginners get up and running with their own WP sites) and just linked to a few posts I had published on my blog.<\/p>\n

So, when starting out, I just offered a\u00a0freelance service<\/a>\u00a0in a niche I knew a lot about.<\/p>\n

How did I find the people to reach out to for my first freelance work online?<\/h2>\n

I was an email subscribers to some of the blogs I reached out<\/strong>. So, I just went to my inbox, found some of the emails they had sent me, hit reply and asked if they’d be interested in me\u00a0writing blog posts<\/a>\u00a0for them.<\/p>\n

I visited some of the blogs I emailed and checked their Contact pages<\/strong>. I emailed some directly from their contact pages. And some I just grabbed their email, switched to a tab on my browser with Gmail on before copy pasting that same email and clicking Send.<\/p>\n

Once the emails started coming in (from the people saying no, the ones saying maybe, the ones interested and wanting to know more) it was just a matter of figuring what to do next.<\/p>\n

So, with this client, they asked for a review, and gave a link to the product they wanted me to review. We agreed on a rate and I got to work.<\/p>\n

I did the work in a cyber cafe in two days. I think I paid around KSh 100 the first day. And on the second day when I went to complete the\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0and send it over to the client, I paid slightly over one hundred Shillings to the cafe attendant.<\/p>\n

Then I sent the work to the client. As an email attachment. The article was all written and formatted in a Microsoft Word document.<\/p>\n

And then boom, a little later, I got paid. Money dropped on my PayPal account.<\/p>\n

That is when I realized a few things.<\/p>\n

What I realized from the first online job I did as a freelancer<\/h2>\n

People outsource tasks to freelancers mostly after figuring out two things<\/strong>: how to save their time and how to make money. And once you know this, you can come up with creative ways to align yourself more with your client’s needs (have less of yourself – caring about what they think of you) so you can do your best on every task outsourced to you.<\/p>\n

Two, this information can also help you plan and work hard to become an employer too. For example, once you figure out the math that makes them\u00a0outsource<\/a>\u00a0with confidence, you can slowly start implementing strategies that can help you diversify your income – for example if you make money from\u00a0freelancing<\/a>, you can double your efforts on your own blog – to increase how much you earn from display ads and affiliate programs.<\/p>\n

And if you need motivation to help you take the risk to seriously start exploring other ways you can make money:<\/p>\n