How I got My First Freelance Contract

Why I Decided to Try Freelancing

My goal is to fully replace my 9-5 income over the next 3 years. I don’t necessarily want to do this with freelancing, but it would be nice to have the option. Freelancing gives you full flexibility to work where/when you want, and there are plenty of jobs that can be completed in just a few hours over the weekend.

Getting the Job

I applied for 7 projects before getting a proposal accepted. I only spent about 5 minutes per proposal, so I think that’s reasonable. I looked for jobs that were posted within the past hour, and I wrote short proposals about how I’d be able to help the client quickly. Although I am a developer, I didn’t limit myself to programming jobs because I just wanted to get my feet wet and snag a quick 5 ⭐ review.

I found a job offering $150 with the title:

Need help transferring sequences from 2 crms into a new crm

This is the project I ended up landing. I think the key to getting the job was submitting a video of myself to stand out. In the video, I back briefed the client on what he wanted so that it was clear that I understood the job. The job involved migrating the client from two different Customer relationship management (CRM) platform’s (Close and Zendesk) into just a single CRM (Salesmate). A CRM is a tool to manage relationship’s with customers/clients, and I had absolutely zero experience using one before this job. I made this clear, and luckily the client didn’t see it as an issue given my technical background.

What I Did

The job was easy but boring, and I made a few mistakes along the way. I basically copied and pasted texts/emails from one platform to another. The only slightly technical part was correctly setting up the templating which looks like this:

Hello {{ Customer.Name }},
Would you like to sell {{ Customer.Address }}?

The CRM will automatically fill in the customer’s info so when you send a text/email it turns into

Hello Nick,
Would you like to sell 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

This was still trivial and just involved a few clicks.

I asked 2-3 questions throughout the job and had to correct a weird spacing issue, but otherwise had no problems.

Lessons Learned

The biggest mistake I made was upfront. I massively underestimated the time it was going to take. I was confident that I could finish the job in 2 hours, and that I would net $60/hr. Not bad for my first gig. Except I didn’t really understand the scope, and the job took 7 hours netting $20/hr. I didn’t expect my first gig to be perfect, so I’m still happy.

In the end, I made $144 ($150 contract + $30 tip - $36 fee) after UpWork’s 20% fee, and I earned a 5 ⭐ review. More importantly I finally got my feet wet with freelancing, and I’m looking forward to finding more opportunities.

My biggest piece of advice would be to not accept a contract until you fully understand the scope.