How to Make $1000 as a FREE Lancer in Your First Month

No, You can not do this. Your goal should be to make $100 from 1st month.

For those professionals who want to live their lives independently and happily, freelancing could be an ideal income source. The whole year I could travel all around the world and still be able to make a decent living freelancing.

This article will prove my point on how you can make over $1000 as a freelancer in your first month of a freelancing career. Yes! It is very much possible to earn this much amount.

You can earn even more with various other kinds of freelancing work.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the things I’ll cover in this post:

• What I did to build my confidence and get some writing experience
• The strategy that kickstarted my writing career
• How I chose a niche and started to land paying clients
• My favorite platform for landing work
• The types of gigs that steadily built my monthly income
• How I juggled freelance writing with a full-time job
• I plan to take my writing business to the next level

How I Made$1000+ Freelancing in My First Month

I started my Freelancing career right from scratch and went all the way to make $1000+ in the very first month. You might wonder how it is possible to make $1000 in your first month of a freelancing career.

Well! This is no rocket science.

Although there were many other ways to earn money online I started with freelancing because it was really fun to work with so many wonderful clients.

The $1000 amount is very low as compared to what other freelancers have made in their first month. But we don’t have time to talk about others so in this article I will share my experience only.

Although, there are different types of freelancing work like writing, marketing, data entry, tutoring, coding, designing, SEO, etc I made my money with 4 kinds of freelancing work only.

1. Writing
2. Data Entry Work
3. WordPress Plugins
4. SEO

You can choose freelance work according to your area of interest.

Before we move forward, I want to give you a breakdown of my $1000 earnings. This will give you an idea of how earning $1000 in the first month became possible.

1. Writing – $700
2. Data Entry Work – $150
3. SEO – $155
4. WordPress Plugins – $100

Adding all the four will give you a figure of something over $1000.

It is very clear from the above breakdown that more than 70% of my freelance earnings came from writing because writing is my forte. However, I also did some data entry work and a little bit of SEO & WordPress Plugins. Data entry work is also kind of a writing job.

Now let us see step by step how I started from scratch and ended up earning $1000 in the very first month.

Step 1: Choosing Right Platforms

There are many platforms online which offer genuine freelancing work. However, I used only two to earn my $1000, Upwork and Fiverr. For writing and online data entry jobs, I chose Upwork and for SEO and WordPress Plugins I used Fiverr.

It is not necessary to choose only these two, if you like then you can go to many other websites too. But choosing the right platform is very important if you want to get high-paying work regularly.

Step 2: Building a Solid Profile – Getting Feedback

Once you have chosen a platform/platform you need to build a compelling profile on each one of them. When I started my bidding process for content-writing using Upwork, I bid for 20 jobs at a time.

You can also find customers on LinkedIn and other social platforms.

To my dismay, not even a single bid was accepted. I was rejected for all my 20 bids! Though I was very disappointed but never thought of quitting. After brainstorming for a while I found out why I was rejected.

“My Profile”!

My profile had zero feedback. All the other freelancers who got accepted had at least 2 to 3-star feedback given by their clients. Moreover, my photo also didn’t look professional. So I changed my photo.

But what to do about feedback? As a freelancer, this was supposed to be my first project. I didn’t work earlier. So how would I get any positive feedback?  And without feedback, no one would dare to give me any work.

No Feedbacks! No Work! But No Prior Work then-No Feedback! So this was a Chicken and Egg situation.  

However, soon I found a way to get around this problem. So next time when I bid for work, I did it for free. Initially, I was asking for $20 for writing an article. But this time I offered to write at least 4 articles for free.

I finally got the breakthrough and wrote 4 articles (1000 words each) for free. In return, my client awarded me 4/5 star feedback. Now my profile was almost complete for at least getting started.

The moral of the story is that getting positive feedback for a new freelancer is a must and they must know how to get it at any cost. You can do the same thing that I did.

Step 3: Right Bidding Strategy

Competition is very tough and you have to bid smartly to beat all of your competitors. Freelance work is swamped by low-level bidders from India and the Philippines. They are ready to do the same work for 5 times less than yours. Hence, you have to bid smartly.

There is no point in bidding low because with $2 or $3 for an article you are not going to make $1000 in just one month. Some clients are ready to pay anything as long as the quality of the work is outstanding.

But most of the time work submitted by freelancers is of very poor quality. The reason is most of these freelancers are from India and the Philippines and are not native English speakers, so usually, their finished work is of very poor quality.

You need to go after such clients who want quality work only. To lure such clients you need to bid high so that it stands out from the bids of other low-level freelancers from India and the Philippines.

If you are bidding 4 to 5 times higher for the same work then clients will think that you are an experienced freelancer with great writing skills who can submit high-quality work on time.

This is how to beat the competition.

Step 4: Choosing the Right Freelance Work

Once you have outbid your competitors you need to choose high-paying freelance work only.

Usually, high paying freelance work is those

1. A Job that no one or very few people want to do.
2. A job that requires a very specific skillset hence only a few can do.

Most freelancers don’t want to do tough jobs because they have very poor skillsets.

For example in my case, I wrote articles good enough that Native English speakers would love to read. So I went for clients who were looking for native English speakers only. I offered my services saying I’m exactly what they were looking for and they accepted me.

So choose freelance work which is of high quality and very rare.

Step 5: Completing Your First Freelance Project

I told earlier in the article that I wrote 4 free articles for a client to get positive feedback. After getting feedback, many clients were ready to accept my bids. A client offered me to write 30 articles for 10 dollars each.

Articles that were to be written by me were from various niches like blogging, SEO, WordPress, Google Adsense, making money online, etc.

Each article had to be 1200 words long and I was paid an overall $300 for this freelance writing project. I had to complete it in 15 days and submit it to my clients.

Initially, $10 for each article sounded quite low to me because I wanted $20 at least. But I accepted the offer immediately considering this was my first breakthrough.

I completed my work and submitted it to clients before the deadline. My clients were quite happy with my work. Except for a few articles where he wanted some changes. So I have to write it again but he was ok with the rest.

Overall clients were happy and rewarded me with 5-star feedback. This further embellished my profile and helped me get more projects.

So going back, it took over 10 days to get my first freelance project. In the initial days, first I had to work hard to get feedback and then find clients who were willing to offer high-paying writing jobs.

Step 6: Winning Hearts and Minds of Your Clients

To get more high-paying work, you need to win the hearts and minds of your clients. Always submit your work before the deadline. Clients love freelancers who always submit their work at the given time.

Secondly, you can always put in some extra effort. If you are being paid to write 1000 words long article then you can write 200 words more making it a 1200+ words long article.

Thirdly, if the client wants some changes to the article then happily do so. You must listen to them and make necessary changes accordingly even if the entire article has to be rewritten.

Don’t think why should I write it again?

Lastly, always do thorough research while writing an article. The research will help to improve the quality of your articles making them more enjoyable to read. Your clients will appreciate these efforts and reward you with more high-paying work.

That is what happened to me.

Step 7: Get the Ball Start Rolling

Once you are been able to win over your clients with your first project then they would be willing to shower you with more work. In my case, I received more freelancing writing work worth $400 in the next few days. I also got some data entry work (form filling) worth $150 immediately.

But this time I increased my fees. Now for writing each article, I charged $20 instead of $10. In just a few days I was confident enough to double my rates. So for writing 20 articles I made $400 in the next 10 days.

Similarly, I also joined Fiverr and offered my SEO and WordPress services. There I earned some $250+ in the last 5 days of the month.

In my first month, total I was able to make $300 + $400 (articles) + $150 (data entry) + $155 (SEO) + $100 (WordPress Plugin) = $1000+.

So this is how I earned $1000+ as a freelancer in my first month. With some more experience you can earn even more in the coming days.

Right now many freelancers are making over $5000 per month doing various freelance works. Choose freelance work according to your expertise and get going fast.

Happy Freelancing!