If you’re just starting out in your freelancer career, having checks with small to moderate amounts at first can be discouraging.

When my husband and I went freelance, we started as virtual assistants; now, we’re running my own web design agency business where I can thankfully close deals with some of my dream clients. Here are some tips on how to become a six-figure freelancer (these are based in the Philippines but could be useful in your part of the world as well):

1. Invest in your skills. There are a lot of free websites that offer courses about digital marketing, graphic designing, social media marketing and SEO. The more flexible you are, the more likely clients will hire you for the job.

Make use of free websites that offer courses in digital marketing, graphic designing, social media marketing and SEO. The more flexible you are, the more likely clients will hire you for the job and it will also help you justify your hourly rates if you decided to increase it in the future.

In my case, I spend a lot of time watching digital marketing videos on YouTube in my free time. As much as possible, I try to be productive even when I am just sitting in the toilet. (LOL) I value my time so much that I’d rather watch video tutorials that would help me gain more knowledge that I can use in my freelancing career than just waste time scrolling down non-sense stuff on my Facebook newsfeed.

I also once invested in a dropshipping course that cost me $47 (it was on sale back then) and it helped me understand a lot of things about Shopify and Facebook ads. (Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock.) I I also shared it with my husband. After that, I got an e-commerce client that offered me a contract for 40 hours a week. Imagine the return on investment you get when you invest in your skills. We’re looking forward to building our own dropshipping store too as a means of passive income.

2. Network with like-minded individuals. Join entrepreneur or freelancer groups and ask for advice from the experienced freelancers.

There’s this saying: “If you surround yourself with nine millionaires, you’re bound to be the 10th.”

3. Directly reach out to your prospective clients online. Join different online business groups on Facebook and find your dream clients there. You will meet a lot of entrepreneurs from all over the world looking for assistance to their businesses. Reach out to them and pitch your services (you can do this via personalized Facebook messages!)!

In fact, I found my major client from Melyssa Griffin’s Online Business BFFs group a year ago and he’s still my client up to now and I learned a lot of skills from working with this client too, including the Infusionsoft & Clickfunnels platforms.

4. NEVER lower your hourly rate. If your client can’t afford your hourly rate proposal, don’t work at a lower rate. Work a few numbers of hours instead.

In the past few months, I even dropped a few clients. Some of them have tasks that I don’t particularly enjoy and some are low-paying. I did not hesitate to do it. Dropping them gave me up a lot of time to focus on my personal life and re-center my mind so I can focus on providing more to my high-paying and long-term clients.

5. Learn how to outsource and delegate.

This is the main key to earning six figures per month. Even if you raise your rate, you’ll still find that it is difficult to level up your business when you’re the only one accomplishing all of the tasks.

You’ll need to hire people who could help you reduce your workload by delegating them your small or repeatable tasks. This will help you free up your own time so you can focus on more important tasks.

What I did is I delegate graphic design tasks and social media management to my husband and I assign article writing and some social media management stuff too to our friend who’s expert in SMM and content writing. It helped me reduce my workload and free up time so I can focus more on clients that need marketing automation and funnel building tasks done. (My team members work under my Upwork agency)

6. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Lastly, the most dangerous strategy that I have implemented as a freelancer but MADE ME LEARN TONS OF STUFF that I use now in my career is this. This learning strategy is very risky, it will not work for everyone, but for me, this was the way I learned most of the skills early in my career. I always say that I have that skill that they are looking for even though I don’t. The positive effect of this is that you’ll learn under pressure with a deadline. You either have to work hard to learn the skill that you promised your client, or you will disappoint and break your promise. But before you do this, make sure you’ll still deliver tasks on time with quality output. Of course, if you really think that you cannot learn that major skill with a set deadline, just be honest that you can’t do it so your client can find someone who is expert in the field. Show them how concerned you are with their business.

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